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Memory binds our mental life together. We are who we are in large part because of what we learn and remember. Whether comforting or haunting, persistent or fleeting, memories are a sort of mental time travel, freeing us from the constraints of time and space. We can recall at will our first love experience -- the occasion, the setting, the accompanying thoughts and emotions. How does the brain create memories? Until a few decades ago, the very idea that memory and other aspects of the human mind could be explained through biological analysis and understood through molecular interactions was unthinkable. Since then, the biological study of the mind has become not only a viable possibility but also a reality.
Charting the intellectual history of the emerging biology of the mind, Nobel Prize winner Eric R. Kandel explains the revolutionary landmarks of modern biology and illuminates how behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and molecular biology have converged into a powerful new science of the mind. Scientists are now positioned to provide meaningful and nuanced insights into mental functioning -- from perception, thought, emotion, and memory to schizophrenia, depression, and age-related memory loss. These windows into the mind also open the way to more effective healing.
Driven by vibrant, engaging curiosity, Kandel’s personal quest to understand memory is threaded throughout this absorbing intellectual history. Beginning with his memories of childhood experiences in Nazi-occupied Vienna, In Search Of Memory chronicles Kandel’s outstanding career from his initial fascination with history and psychoanalysis through his exploration of neurobiology to his groundbreaking work on the cellular and molecular 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.
Eric R. Kandel is University Professor at Columbia University, Kavli Professor and director of the Kavli Institute for Brain Sciences, and senior investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Kandel received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2000. Kandel lived in Vienna until age nine and fled to the United States in 1939, one year after Hitler came to power. He currently lives in New York City with his wife, Denise, a professor of sociomedical sciences in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University.
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