In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind by Eric Kandel

From Barnes & Noble

This singular book by Austrian-born Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel interweaves two strands: First, the narrative of his own life; and second, the story of his breakthrough research on memory. In Search of Memory describes how the findings of several disciplines (behaviorist psychology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and molecular biology) converged to form a new science of mind.

From the Publisher

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.

The New York Times - Sherwin B. Nuland

His is an important and marvelous book. Sigmund Freud and the illustrious cavalcade of pioneering neuroscientists, psychologists and philosophers who have contributed so much to our understanding of the human mind during the past century would look with pleasure on it.

Publishers Weekly

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.

Library Journal

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.

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents