In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind

In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind

By: Eric R. Kandel  

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Average Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Great science, Excellent Writer - Eric Kandel has created a surprisingly personal and touching book with In Search of Memory. I found it remarkable that he is not only a world renowned scientist and a talented technical writer, but he is a very gifted writer that I could imagine writing on other subjects. On this subject, neural science and memory, Kandel is obviously an expert having one a Nobel Prize related to his work on the subject. His work over 50+ years is fascinating. I took a depth of knowledge away from the book about the new science of the mind. On the subject of his personal life, I learned surprising new lessons about WWII, Vienna, and Austria's place in the persecutions of the Jewish people. I felt this additional dimension to the book was wonderful.

This is one of the best science related books I have read, and it also a great autobiography and history lesson.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Attempting to discover the mysteries of the Human memory - Eric Kandel has the gift of unpacking the complexities/intricacies of the brain and mind to the basics in which the lay person with an elementary biology would understand. Kandel starts his book with his life as a Jewish child and how he developed his obsession with memory. What actually amazed me about Kandel was his ability to teach you neuroscience by reading his book without him actually being there with you. I will not detailed what I learned from this book in this review. However, if you are a person looking for inspiration, knowledge about neuroscience and experiments being done to improve mental illnesses, I highly encourage you to read this book. It is stunning! This author truly deserved the Nobel prize.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Our illusionary minds - a journey into the centre of the brain - The story of Eric Kandel begins in Vienna when his family was dispossessed and deported - he and his brother escaped to America while his parents were murdered in the concentration camps. The scientific biography begins in the early 1970s when studies by Kandel and others first linked cellular neurobiology with the science of learning, thus creating a new molecular science of behavior. In 1983 the Howard Hughes Medical Institute asked Schwartz, Axel and Kandel to form the nucleus of a group devoted to the science of mind - or molecular cognition thus founding what is possibly the most exciting field of research in the world today.

Over a period of about 40 years Kandel made many interesting discoveries about the brain, with his most important assistant - the sea snail Aplysia - which taught him how memories are created and stored through repetition, the function of synapses and about the plasticity of the brain.

Eric Kandel's original intention was to study psychoanalysis and he worked closely with cognitive psychologists, who he says were driven by two underlying assumptions:

1. The brain is born with prior knowledge
2. The brain achieves its analytical triumphs by developing an internal representation of the external world - a cognitive map

As cognitive psychologists worked with brain scientists to investigate these assumptions, cognitive neural science was born, which focused on the biology of internal representation. This draws heavily on two lines of inquiry: the electro physical study of how sensory information is represented in the minds of animals (such as Aplysia) and the imaging of sensory and other complex internal representations in the brains of "intact, behaving human beings."

The researchers found that the visual cortex deconstructs messages and then reconstructs them. In other words, our perceptions are illusory. As Kandel put it: "The brain does not simply take the raw data that it receives through the senses and reproduce it faithfully, instead, each sensory system first analyses, deconstructs, and then restructures the raw incoming information according to its own built-in connections and rules."

Kandel thus became intrigued about how information about motion, depth, colour and form, which is carried by separate pathways, is organized into a cohesive perception. According to the cognitive neural science researchers, the "cohesive perception" is far different from the literal solid reality that many take for granted. Some people, for instance cannot recognize depth of field, so their whole world is two dimensional, others cannot recognize faces (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat).

These exceptions make us realize what a remarkable experience it is just to live our ordinary every day lives. "Merely recognizing a person is an amazing computational achievement," said Kandel. "All of our perceptions - seeing, hearing, smelling and touching - are analytical triumphs."

Eric Kandel describes the sensory systems as hypothesis generators saying we confront the world neither directly nor precisely.

"The central neuron is a story-teller with regard to the nerve fibers, and it is never completely trustworthy, allowing distortions of quality and measure...sensation is an abstraction, not a replica of the real world."

It is interesting to find such 21st century scientific support for the views expressed so long ago by the Existentialists and the Buddhists - namely that there is no reality only illusion.

After nearly half a century of exploring the human brain, Eric Kandel's sense of wonder was undiminished. As each mystery was solved, another would present itself.

He offered no simple conclusions at the end of the book, but rather pointed out that many unknowns still remain, such as the whereabouts of the seat of consciousness. When I finished the book I felt intrigued and happy that not only inside the heads of human beings but inside those of the simplest creatures, lies an incredible piece of apparatus - the brain.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Humbling - As a layperson interested in understanding the workings of the human mind (and having read pop science books by Pinker, Damasio, Schacter, Ramachandran and others) I could never have imagined I would become entranced by a detailed description of the morfology of a sea slug (Aplysia). But Kandel is so thoroughly enamored of his subject that you follow him wherever he takes you. It has three of the key ingredients for a successful nonfiction books: (i) Honesty, (ii) Authority and (iii) Passion for the subject. It was great to read how Kandel entered Med School with megalomaniac goals of understanding how the mind works in general and then having to drudge through the path of narrow, specific research, until he garnered enough knowledge to formulate broader concepts. It was also refreshing to see his (apparently) hard work bear fruit. Sometimes -albeit rarely - life is fair.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
As if winning a Nobel Prize is so easy - Marvellous book. Dr Kandel is a master writer. He is able to lead the reader and guide him or her throughout the whole book as to how to conduct experiments to investigate the mystery of memory. He makes it sound so easy. When you finish the book, you should have a basic concept of what memory is. His speculation that the field of psychiatry should be able to extend meaningfully if it learns from neuroscience is also inspiring. He is also very skilful in weaving his life story into the narrative (rather poignant at times). A masterpiece.

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