IN SEARCH OF MEMORY — THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW SCIENCE OF MIND by Eric R. Kandel. W. W. Norton, 2006
OUTLINE OF BOOK'S FACTS & IDEAS
PREFACE (xi-xv)
PART 1 —
QUOTE = "It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past. These are often as highly structured and selective as myths. Images and symbolic constructs of the past are imprinted, almost in the manner of genetic information, on our sensibility. Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past." by George Steiner in "In Bluebeard's Castle" [1971]
1) PERSONAL MEMORY AND THE BIOLOGY OF MEMORY STORAGE (3-11)
2) A CHILDHOOD IN VIENNA (12-32)
3) AN AMERICAN EDUCATION (33-50)
PART 2 —
4) ONE CELL AT A TIME (53-73)
5) THE NERVE CELL SPEAKS (74-89)
6) CONVERSATION BETWEEN NERVE CELLS (90-102)
7) SIMPLE AND COMPLEX NEURONAL SYSTEMS (103-115)
8) DIFFERENT MEMORIES, DIFFERENT BRAIN REGIONS (116-134)
9) SEARCHING FOR AN IDEAL SYSTEM TO STUDY MEMORY (135-149)
10) NEURAL ANALOGS OF LEARNING (150-162)
PART 3 —
11) STRENGTHENING SYNAPTIC CONNECTIONS (165-179)
12) A CENTER FOR NEUROBIOLOGY AND BEHAVIOR (180-186)
13) EVEN A SIMPLE BEHAVIOR CAN BE MODIFIED BY LEARNING (187-197)
14) SYNAPSES CHANGE WITH EXPERIENCE (198-207)
15) THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF INDIVIDUALITY (208-220)
16) MOLECULES AND SHORT-TERM MEMORY (221-239)
17) LONG-TERM MEMORY (240-246)
18) MEMORY GENES (247-260)
19) A DIALOGUE BETWEEN GENES AND SYNAPSES (261-276)
PART 4 —
QUOTE = "These scenes . . . why do they survive undamaged year after year unless they are made of something comparatively permanent?" by Virginia Woolf in "Sketch of the Past" [1953]
(277)
20) A RETURN TO COMPLEX MEMORY (279-285)
21) SYNAPSES ALSO HOLD OUR FONDEST MEMORIES (286-294)
22) THE BRAIN'S PICTURE OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD (295-306)
23) ATTENTION MUST BE PAID! (307-316)
PART 5 —
QUOTE = "There are many aspects of humanity that we still need to understand for which there are no useful models. Perhaps we should pretend that morality is known only to the "gods" and that if we treat humans as model organisms for the gods, then in studying ourselves we may come to understand the gods as well." by Sydney Brenner, Nobel Lecture [2002] (317)
24) A LITTLE RED PILL (319-334)
25) MICE, MEN, AND MENTAL ILLNESS (335-351)
26) A NEW WAY TO TREAT MENTAL ILLNESS (352-362)
27) BIOLOGY AND THE RENAISSANCE OF PSYCHOANALYTIC THOUGHT (363-375)
28) CONSCIOUSNESS (376-390)
PART 6 —
QUOTE = "The true Vienna lover lives on borrowed memories. With a bittersweet pang of nostalgia, he remembers things he never knew — the Vienna that never was is the grandest city ever!" by Orson Welles in "Vienna 1968" (391)
29) REDISCOVERING VIENNA VIA STOCKHOLM (393-415)
30) LEARNING FROM MEMORY --- Prospects (416-429)
GLOSSARY (431-452)
NOTES AND SOURCES (453-484)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (485-487)
INDEX (489-510)
BOOK'S DESCRIPTION & REVIEWS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR = Eric R. Kandel is Kavli Professor and University Professor at Columbia University and senior investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine in 2000. He lives in New York City.
SUMMARY = Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel (Columbia U., Kavli Institute for Brain Sciences, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute) presents an account of his personal quest to understand memory--from focusing first on history and psychoanalysis, then on the biology of the brain, and finally on the cellular and molecular processes of memory--and how his search has intersected with the efforts of modern science to understand the mind in cellular and molecular biologic terms. Featuring a glossary and an extensive list of notes and resources, the text is academic but accessible to general readers. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, (booknews.com)
Driven by vibrant curiosity, Kandel's personal quest to understand memory is threaded throughout this absorbing history. Beginning with his childhood in Nazi-occupied Vienna, In Search of Memory chronicles Kandel's outstanding career from his initial fascination with history and psychoanalysis to his groundbreaking work on the biological process of memory, which earned him the Nobel Prize.
A deft mixture of memoir and history, modern biology and behavior, In Search of Memory traces how a brilliant scientist's intellectual journey intersected with one of the great scientific endeavors of the twentieth century: the search for the biological basis of memory.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN = Kandel, who received the Nobel Prize in 2000, traces advances in understanding learning and memory. His own groundbreaking findings showed that learning produces changes in behavior by modifying the strength of connections between nerve cells. He conveys his immense grasp of the science beautifully, but it is his personal recollections that make the book especially compelling. He begins with his searing childhood memories of the German annexation of Austria and his family's escape to the U.S. when he was nine. And he ends with a conference he organized in Vienna to examine the strange reluctance of Austria (unlike Germany) to acknowledge its role in the Holocaust. One comes away in awe of the scientific advances—and of a life well and fully lived.
LIBRARY JOURNAL REVIEW = Nobelist Kandel's career mirrors the growth and development of cognitive sciences from the mid to late 20th century to today. From his early attraction to psychoanalysis to the biological mechanisms of the mind itself, Kandel has kept close to the research frontiers. His first-person account thus serves as much as a history of the field as it does an autobiography (indeed, the personal anecdotes are sporadic and almost all intertwined with academic elucidation). What comes through vividly, though, is the passion and enthusiasm of a leading researcher working in intellectually revolutionary times. The "new science of mind" Kandel discusses is both symbolically and mechanistically represented by human memory, which subsumes a person's own logic and values, but at the same time can be studied at the cellular and molecular levels. In keeping with the theme that his own career is a microcosm of the changes in the field, Kandel enthuses that the study of memory not only stimulated a lifetime's worth of personally rewarding work, but commends a similarly rich future to the next generation. Recommended as a first book to read for anybody with a more than merely curious interest in the subject, or as a companion to Daniel Schacter's Searching for Memory or Joseph LeDoux's The Synaptic Self.-Gregg Sapp, Science Lib., SUNY Albany Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW = When, as a medical student in the 1950s, Kandel said he wanted to locate the ego and id in the brain, his mentor told him he was overreaching, that the brain had to be studied "cell by cell." After his initial dismay, Kandel took on the challenge and in 2000 was awarded a Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking research showing how memory is encoded in the brain's neuronal circuits. Kandel's journey into the brain spans five decades, beginning in the era of early research into the role of electrical currents flowing through neurons and ending in the age of genetic engineering. It took him from early studies of reflexes in the lowly squid to the founding of a bioengineering firm whose work could some day develop treatments for Alzheimer's and on to a rudimentary understanding of the cellular mechanisms underlying mental illness. Kandel's life also took him on another journey: from Vienna, which his Jewish family fled after the Anschluss, to New York City and, decades later, on visits back to Vienna, where he boldly confronted Austria's unwillingness to look at its collusion in the Final Solution. For anyone considering a career in science, the early part of this intellectual autobiography presents a fascinating portrait of a scientist's formation: learning to trust his instincts on what research to pursue and how to pose a researchable question and formulate an experiment. Much of the science discussion is too dense for the average reader. But for anyone interested in the relationship between the mind and the brain, this is an important account of a creative and highly fruitful career. 50 b&w illus. (Mar.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
BOOKLIST REVIEW = While most memoirs merely give the reader the contents of memory, this remarkable account by a pioneering neurobiologist actually opens up the cellular and biochemical structure of memory and details the epoch-making science that has uncovered that structure. Through the doors of his own memory, Kandel revisits the Vienna of his childhood, a city recalled with appreciation for its intellectual and artistic life and with antipathy for the anti-Semitism that swept through the region in the thirties, forcing the Kandel family to flee to New York. Kandel carried a career-shaping interest in Freud with him to Brooklyn, but he soon realized that the biology of the brain could explain more about mental processes than could Freud's theorizing. Kandel recounts his own revolutionary research in establishing the molecular chemistry of short-term memory and the cellular dynamics of long-term memory, highlighting particularly the potential of his findings for the treatment of Alzheimer's and other mental disorders. But even as he outlines the biomechanics of memory, Kandel shares his personal reminiscences of the years during which he unraveled those mysteries--a daughter's whimsical fascination with laboratory snails, for instance, and his wife's difficult search for a gown for the Nobel Prize ceremony recognizing his breakthroughs. In a provocative conclusion, Kandel contemplates the broad cultural meaning of memory as he chronicles his visit to a twenty-first-century Vienna still determined to forget its complicity in Nazi atrocities. An autobiography of exceptional substance. – Bryce Christensen Copyright 2006 BooklistDistributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.
CHOICE Review = In recalling his personal and scientific life, Kandel (Columbia Univ.) describes the fundamentals of nervous system structure and function, provides a coherent history of the development of theories of axonal transmission and synaptic communication, and breathes life into the socially complex and joyous nature of research. Kandel reveals intensely personal and traumatic recollections of his Jewish boyhood when a seemingly benign Vienna erupted in a paroxysm of anti-semitic fury on Kristallnacht. The underfoot crunch of shattered glass from Jewish storefronts, and the life-changing effect of midnight arrests and immigration to the US, became woven into a lifetime of neurological investigation that led to the Nobel Prize in 2000. Originally intending a practicing psychoanalyst's career, Kandel discovered that exposure to cell-level neuroscience completely changed his vision. Starting with individual neural cell relationships in the marine snail Aplysia, he and his associates, using electrophysiological recordings, biochemical analyses and genetic crosses, and (when they became available) very powerful molecular biological techniques, converted abstract conceptions (memory, learning, attention) into tractable, innovative, and conclusive investigations. Collaborators are named and their accomplishments fully credited. An extensive bibliography and effective glossary are provided. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All levels. A. B. Schlesinger emeritus, Creighton University
REVIEWS =
"This superb book is both the scientific memoir of a Nobel laureate and a fluent introduction to current thinking on the biology of memory." Robbie Hudson, The Sunday Times "In Search of Memory is popular science writing at its best." Financial Times "The weaving of science and memoir, in a clear and unadorned style, is especially effective..." The Economist
"Beyond autobiography, the book is also an accessible introduction to contemporary neuroscience..." Charles Gross, The Times Literary Supplement"
Nobel laureate Eric R Kandel charts the "intellectual history" of the emerging biology of the mind, and sheds light on how behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience and molecular biology have converged into a powerful new science called "neurobiology," since it deals with the biological nature of memory. These efforts provide insights into normal mental functioning and disease. It simultaneously open pathways to more effective treatments for brain disorders and diseases.
Kandel was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2000 for his contributions to neurobiology. Interwoven with descriptions of his professional work are many of his personal memories. The book is, therefore, part memoir and part textbook. It begins with some of Kandel's earliest childhood memories. The book describes memory as "a form of mental time travel that frees us from the constraints of time and space." It is the brain's amazing ability to store a seemingly infinite number of facts, figures and experiences which enables everyone to travel back in time and across space to retrieve the autobiographical information from their past.
Kandel fondly recalls his early years in Vienna --- family gatherings on Jewish holidays, his first sexual experiences with a seductive housekeeper, and his ninth birthday. The pleasure with which Kandel recollects these aspects of his childhood stand in stark contrast to the recollection of the anti-Semitism prevalent in Austria at that time and the fear he felt when Hitler marched into Vienna.
The idyllic memory Kandel has of playing with his shiny blue remote-controlled car, a present given to him by his parents for his ninth birthday, is suddenly interrupted by another, terrifying memory --- a loud banging on the door of the apartment, which signals the appearance of Nazi policemen, who order Kandel and his family to pack their things and leave. The situation is exaserbated by the disappearance of Kandel's father, who, it later transpires, was taken by the Nazis to an army barracks with hundreds of other Jewish men.
"How did terror sear the banging on the door of our apartment into the molecular and cellular fabric of my brain with such permanence that I can relive the experience in vivid visual and emotional detail more than half a century later?" he asks. The personal and the professional are for Kandel intimately connected: "My interest in the nature of memory was rooted in my childhood experiences in Vienna," he said. In fact, the last year he spent in Vienna was a defining one for Kandel.
Kandel recreates the climate in Austria in the months leading up to Kristallnacht, the nationwide pogrom which took place in Austria and Germany on November 9th, 1938, and which coincided with his ninth birthday and his family's encounter with the Nazi regime; his personal memories of that time are reinforced by the academic study of European history he would undertake later in his life.
Soon after his ninth birthday, Kandel and his older brother Ludwig are shipped off to stay with an aunt in Brooklyn, New York, to be followed by their parents six months later. Kandel would soon be enrolled in a yeshivah in Flatbush, and then a local high school. He would then read modern European History and Literature at Harvard, and an interest in psychiatry would lead him to study medicine and enter into neurobiological research.
Something that emerges from the book is the link between history and memory. History can be regarded as a form of collective memory. Historical events that are not recorded accurately may quickly be forgotten. Genocide involves not just the extermination of a race, but also erasing the memory of that race from history; and, of course, "never forget" is a mantra for survivors of the Nazi Holocaust.
Kandel's career spans a very exciting time in modern science. Within a year of his entry into medical school, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the molecular structure of DNA, revolutionizing every aspect of biology in the process. This discovery paved the way for investigating the molecular machinery of the mind, something which Kandel would go on to pioneer. He is therefore a perfect guide for a whistle-stop tour through the history of modern neuroscience, from the work of Santiago Ramon y Cajal, via classical experiments in the 1950s which provided leaps in our understanding of brain function, to the molecular mechanisms such as long-term potentiation (LTP) which underly memory formation.
Much of the work Kandel describes was crucial for his own discoveries. For example, Schwann and Schleiden had by the mid-19th Century established that the cell was the basic functional unit of which plant and animal tissues were composed. By the end of the century it was accepted that every tissue in the human body was also composed of cells - every tissue except the nervous system, which was believed to be composed of a large continuous tissue, or ‘reticulum'.
The subsequent development of increasingly powerful microscopes and the staining technique of Camillo Golgi eventually enabled neoroanatomists to resolve the 40 nanometre-wide synapse at the junction of neurons. Cajal, an outstanding Spanish neuroanatomist, would then suggest that Schwann and Schleiden's cell theory also applied to nervous tissue; thus the neuron doctrine was born.
Around half a century later, the work of John Eccles, Bernard Katz and Stephen Kuffler on peripheral synapses would determine that synaptic transmission is chemical and not electrical in nature. Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley used microelectrodes to perform intracellular recordings in the giant squid axon, and determined the movements of ions that generate the action potential.
Memory is a complex cognitive process that is still very much a mystery to neuroscientists. In the early twentieth century, Karl Lashley tried to determine the locus of memory in the brains of rats. He placed rats in a maze; when they had memorized the route to escape from it, he lesioned their brains in an effort to erase the trace, or ‘engram' of the memory. Lashley found that no matter where he made a lesion, the memory trace could not be erased, and concluded that there is no single location in the brain where memories are formed and stored. We know that there are different kinds of memories, and several areas in the brain, such as the hippocampus, are involved in the process.
Donald Hebb first suggested in 1949 that synaptic plasticity was crucial for memory formation; he further posultated that neurons were organized into "cell assemblies," with the trace of a memory being distributed over the entire neuronal circuit rather than being localized at a single synapse.
According to LTP, the current theory of how memories are formed, experience affects the strength of synaptic connections.
A lot of Kandel's professional career has been spent looking at how sensitization, habituation and classical and operant conditioning modify synapses in ganglia isolated from the sea slug Aplysia californica. Kandel's research during the 1970s led to the discovery that the second messenger molecule cyclic adensine monophosphate (cAMP) and the enzyme cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) are both required for experience-dependent synapse modidification in Aplysia.
In 1983 Kandel helped form the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Columbia University, where he has since continued to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of memory. Work in his lab is focused on the unconscious (implicit) recall of motor skills in Aplysia; genetically engineered mice are also being used to investigate conscious (explicit) memory storage.
The book by an individual who has collosal status in neuroscience. Kandel's memories evoke strong emotions in the reader, and his enthusiasm for history and passion for science jump out from every page. Students of neuroscience will find the book very beneficial, and academics already familiar with the science will still enjoy reading it.
In this film, Kandel is interviewed by John Spitzer of the University of California, San Diego.
This entry was written by MC and posted on Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 5:29 pm and filed under Google Video, Neuroscience, Blogs & Blogging, Books
A brilliant review of Prof. Kandel's book. In fact, a similar style of writing about memory was adopted by the British neurobiologist, Steven Rose in his 1992 book, The Making of Memory. He interfuses his Jewish upbringing with his fascination for Brain. Yet I think Kandel had a dramatic life dotted with several memorable events.
A great book. Kandel is currently one of the most respected neuroscientists, and this respect is not based just on the Nobel Prize, but is based on his brilliant life work. And in this book, he is trying to tell us the role of the memory besides other high brain functions.
Eric Kandel's work on memory was my inspiration (as an undergrad) to pursue graduate studies in neuroscience. I really love how in this book he interweaves his personal history with the development of memory. However, I do think he has given the field of long term potentiation (the prevailing paradigm for learning and memory in mammals) and its history short shrift. In particular, there appears to be no mention of the importance of synaptic receptor trafficking as a viable mechanism subserving LTP and ultimately memory, i.e., the work of Roberto Malinow, Robert Malenka, Roger Nicoll and others.
After a semester of exploring the workings of the brain and the mind, what (and how) will you remember? In his book In search of memory: the emergence of the mind, Eric Kandel—2000 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine for his work on signal transduction in the nervous system—presents a personal account of his lifelong attempt to understand the biological basis for memory set against a background of the development of modern cognitive neuroscience and the evolution of a new scientific paradigm. Kandel touches upon practically all of the topics explored this semester: the structure and function of neurons, how cells communicate via action potentials and neurotransmitter, the dynamic nature and multi-routed nature neuronal systems that incorporate both excitatory and inhibitory signals, how synaptic signals are strengthened. He also explores in greater detail the nature of short-term and long-term memory and the role that genes play with much more beside. Reminiscent of Watson's Double Helix, In Search of Memory conveys a passion and excitement for scientific discovery; but where Watson's 1968 work reflected his youthfulness, Kandel's work demonstrates his sensitivity and maturity. Kandel's familiarity with the key players and important contributions to his field of scientists and post-doctoral students is inspiring. We are presented with an almost Kuhninan intellectual account of the structure of the scientist revolution/evolution of neuroscience. We see how new ideas arise out of a mosaic of existing beliefs. Indeed, after reading Kandel's five hundred page book, one gets the sense of seeing not merely the forest of memory and neurons, but also of the trees proteins and genes that play a role in the strengthening of synaptic connections.
Although there are many themes explored in Kandel's work, two are particularly relevant and important in relationship to this course: first, the historical and evolutionary trends in attempts to understand the mind and how it operates; and second, an elucidation of the how memory (both short and long) is formed and stored in the brain. Understanding historical and evolutionary trends are crucial to appreciating the advantages of current methods and approaching in a given scientific field. When asking questions about the nature of the mind, it is critical to understand what questions have already been asked in order to appreciate the new questioned that can be asked. Kandel is useful here, describing four phases in the scientific approach to the study of the mind in the modern age.
In the first phase we follow Luigi Galvani's excitement in 1791 at discovering that nerve and muscle cells are capable of conducting and generating electrical current to the ‘father of modern neuroanatomy', Santiago Ramón y Cajal, a contemporary of Freud's, who helped to elucidate several important principles in the theory of neural organization known as the neuron doctrine: namely, that the neuron is the fundamental structural unit and is the fundamental unit responsible for signaling of the brain; that there is a small gap called the synapse at the endpoints or terminals of one neuron and the beginning of the next neuron; that the connections made between adjacent neurons are like circuits and signals traveling along these routes in predictable patterns which includes sensory, motor and inter-neurons; and finally, that the signals conveyed have directionality, with flow of signals typically occurring in the same direction. Cajal's contemporary Charles Sherrington would clarify that cells could have either an excitatory or inhibitory effect on cells.
In the second phase (1920s), Edgar Douglas Adrian was able to uncover the nature of the all-or-none actional potential across the nervous system to convey messages. He also established that the intensity of a stimulus is directly related to the frequency of action potentials emitted. The third phase focuses on the work of Julius Bernstein at the beginning of the twentieth century who investigated the mechanisms that underlie the action potential and the nature of the membrane. He concluded that the cell membrane was a barrier to all the ions in the cell except potassium, but that ions were able to enter and leave the cell via specialized ion channels. This arrangement allowed for the establishment of a resting membrane potential. The fourth phase centered on the development of the ionic hypotheses and the work of Andrew Huxley. By studying the axon, he demonstrated that an action potential is caused by the selective permeability of the membrane to specific ions.
Yet it was the work of psychologists and psychoanalysts that inspired Kandel's interest. Kandel was initially attracted to psychoanalysis because it focused on those "aspects of behavior that could be publicly observed and objectively quantified", rather than the introspective and philosophical approaches that predominated attempts to understand the mind before the twentieth century. He originally planned to become a physician in order to train as a psychiatrist practicing psychoanalysis. His future wife, Denise, whom he met while in medical school in 1955, was a Bryn Mawr College graduate and Ph.D. candidate in medical sociology at Columbia University. She encouraged him to pursue his research interests in understanding the biological basis from memory. The evolution of Kandel's questions about the nature of memory is fascinating. While a medical student during research with researcher Harry Grundfest in Columbia, he shifted attention away from isolating a biological basis for Freud's structural theory of the mind to focusing on how the nerve cell functions. Working with Grundfest forces him to appreciate that "electrical signaling" of neurons represents the "language of the mind" and that a reductionistic approach were the key to understanding the nature of the mind.
Years later, Kandel would use these two ideas of reductionism and cell function to study the the nature of memory and behavior in the giant marine snail Aplysia. Though initially criticized and ignored by others working in the field of neurophysiology, Kandel stuck to the study the creature because it had a comparatively small number of cells (200,000 compared to the 100 billion in the mammalian brain) grouped in nine main ganglia that were many times larger than those in mammals, allowing for the easier mapping of neuronal circuitry. By mapping out neuronal circuitry Kandel was able to develop analogs of learning in the creature to improve understanding of the function of humans and link actual changes in the synapse to instances of learning and memory. He was able to establish with fellow researchers the "neuronal controls of a behavioral response mediated by the abdominal ganglion in Aplysia". Sensitization and habituation could alter the strength of synaptic connection in different ways; sensitization and classical conditioning strengthens and increases the number synaptical connections, while habituation weakens and decreases the number of synpatical connections. Thus he was able to discover the nature behind the key elements of (what we have termed in this course as) the central pattern generator which is strengthened established by experience.
Eventually, Kandel help to demonstrate how short-term memory involves temporary strengthening of pre-existing synaptic linkages and the modification of the neuron. Long-term memory differed from short-term memory in that it involved in the altering of genes as well as protein synthesis, followed by the development and growth of synaptic association in already existing circuits. Long-term memory is facilitated cAMP (cyclic adenonsine monophosphate) by signaling pathways by in the neuron. This chemical helps to initiate a series of chemical processes in the cell that help convert a transient stimulus into a more persistent change. In long-term memory, as a result of prior stimulus a sensory cell's nucleus send dormant messenger RNA to axon terminals. These cause pulses of serotonin, a neurotransmitter, at one terminal to convert a prion-like protein called CPEB which is present at all synapses into a more dominant and self-perpetuating form. This new dominant CPEB can then activate dormant messenger RNA which can in turn activate protein synethesis at a new synaptic terminal. This phenomemon helps to stabilize the synaptic connection and maintain memory. It was for his elucidation of this process that Kandel was awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine.
Ultimately, for me In search of memory serves as a potent reminder of why I have felt compelled from a strong interest in social sciences to the biological sciences general. He demonstrates that science benefits from creativity and unconventional thinking. There is optimism about medicine and research which he could not elsewhere. He is a firm believer that "it is important to be bold, to tackle difficult problems, especially those that appear initially to be messy and unstructured" and that "one should not be afraid to try new things". I am certain therefore that Eric Kandel would approve of the nature and structure of this course. Our classmates, like Kandel, have done an excellent job of trying to blend the art, science and history of the new neuroscience; yet we, like Kandel, will undoubtedly lose some readers. Some portions of In Search of Memory will have just a tad too much scientific details for some. Similarly, his extensive review of history—both personal and of the scientific field—will undoubtedly cause some ‘true scientists' to skim certain pages. Yet the book, like this course, is not at a disadvantage for this because both provide a wide audience both the ability and flexibility to learn about the mind which is a most noble goal.
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