In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

*Starred 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
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"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"

Charting 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.

Shows how behavioural psychology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience and molecular biology have converged into a powerful science of mind.

Eric Kandel, geboren 1929 in Wien, ist einer der bedeutendsten Neurowissenschaftler des 20. Jahrhunderts. Er emigrierte 1939 in die USA, studierte Geschichte und Literatur an der Harvard University und danach Medizin an der New York University. Seit 1974 ist Kandel, der sich vor allem mit den biologischen Grundlagen des Gedächtnisses beschäftigt, Professor an der Columbia University in New York.