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“A stunning book.”—Oliver SacksCharting the intellectual history of the emerging biology of mind, Eric R. Kandel illuminates how behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and molecular biology have converged into a powerful new science of mind. This science now provides nuanced insights into normal mental functioning and disease, and simultaneously opens pathways to more effective healing. 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.
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IN SEARCH OF MEMORY The Emergence of a New Science of Mind
ERIC R. KANDEL
Copyright © 2006 ISBN 0-393-05863-8
POUR DENISE
CONTENTS Preface xi
ONE 1. Personal Memory and the Biology of Memory Storage 3 2. A Childhood in Vienna 12 3. An American Education 33
TWO 4. One Cell at a Time 53 5. The Nerve Cell Speaks 74 6. Conversation Between Nerve Cells 90 7. Simple and Complex Neuronal Systems 103 8. Different Memories, Different Brain Regions 116 9. Searching for an Ideal System to Study Memory 135 10. Neural Analogs of Learning 150
THREE 11. Strengthening Synaptic Connections 165 12. A Center for Neurobiology and Behavior 180 13. Even a Simple Behavior Can Be Modified by Learning 187 14. Synapses Change with Experience 198 15. The Biological Basis of Individuality 208 16. Molecules and Short-Term Memory 221 17. Long-Term Memory 240
18. Memory Genes 247 19. A Dialogue Between Genes and Synapses 201
FOUR 20. A Return to Complex Memory 279 21. Synapses Also Hold Our Fondest Memories 286 22. The Brain's Picture of the External World 295 23. Attention Must Be Paid! 307
FIVE 24. A Little Red Pill 319 25. Mice, Men, and Mental Illness 335 26. A New Way to Treat Mental Illness 352 27. Biology and the Renaissance of Psychoanalytic Thought 363 28. Consciousness 376
SIX 29. Rediscovering Vienna via Stockholm 393 30. Learning from Memory: Prospects 416 Glossary 431 Notes and Sources 453 Acknowledgments 485 Index 489
PREFACE Understanding the human mind in biological terms has emerged as the central challenge for science in the twenty-first century. We want to understand the biological nature of perception, learning, memory, thought, consciousness, and the limits of free will. That biologists would be in a position to explore these mental processes was unthinkable even a few decades ago. Until the middle of the twentieth century, the idea that mind, the most complex set of processes in the universe, might yield its deepest secrets to biological analysis, and perhaps do this on the molecular level, could not be entertained seriously.
The dramatic achievements of biology during the last fifty years have now made this possible. The discovery of the structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953 revolutionized biology, giving it an intellectual framework for understanding how information from the genes controls the functioning of the cell. That discovery led to a basic understanding of how genes are regulated, how they give rise to the proteins that determine the functioning of cells, and how development turns genes and proteins on and off to determine the body plan of an organism. With these extraordinary accomplishments behind it, biology assumed a cen-<