Eric Kandel ist nicht nur eine unfassbar interessante Persönlichkeit, sondern ein Lehrer der die Themen rund um die Gedächtnisforschung für Laien wie mich verständlich rüberbringt.
Dieses Buch ist eine Mischung aus persönlichen Memoiren, der Geschichte von Neurowissenschaften und seinen eigenen Errungenschaften in der Forschung des Gedächtnisses mit dem Seehasen Aplysia, dass ihm sogar einen Nobelpreis beschert hat!

Besonders seine persönliche Geschichte, entflohen aus Wien während des Holocausts, um in die Vereinigten Staaten zu immigrieren, ist eine die berührt. In diesem Buch arbeitet er sehr viel seiner persönlichen Traumata auf, was einem auch einen tiefen Einblick in die Psyche des Menschen gibt. Was im Endeffekt seine Inspiration war sich der Hirnforschung zu widmen.

Wer einmal mit Eric Kandel in Berührung kommt, der wird alles lesen uns sehen wollen!

After reading this book I feel it is the only one I've read, apart from MAUS, that deserves five stars.

I'll be honest, I didn't finish it, and I likely won't any time soon. But, I wanted to say a few things about it in case anyone else was interested.

Kandel does a fantastic job of explaining the neurobiology of learning and memory to the layman. He makes it understandable without dumbing it down. If you're interested in that, read this book. This guy is one of the greats. He has a noble prize and co-wrote Principles of Neural Science, the standard neuroscience book that every neuroscientist has. And I'm a neuroscientist.

This book is part autobiography. Sorry, but although I have the utmost respect for him as a scientist, the autobiography part is pretty dull. He left Vienna in time to escape Hitler when he was a child. Other than that, boring stuff.

If you're looking for a fantastic book that mixes biography and science, pick up Genius by James Gleick. It's about Richard Feynman, who's a character and a half. Gleick's other books aren't as good, so don't let that stop you.

Three stars just because I applaud people who explain science well. He does that.

A remarkable book about memory, it may also work as an introduction to neuroscience, though, some background in neuroanatomy and related areas may be required.

When I read the synopsis: ''Nobel Prize winner Kandel intertwines cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and molecular biology with his own quest to understand memory. '' I thought the book was going to be very technical and arduous, so I prepared myself for that. However, when I started reading it, I discovered that it was really easy-readable.

Further, I didn't know that it also was an autobiography and I truly enjoyed those parts, because when you want to follow a similiar path, it's good reading about what others have done.

As I said, the book is mixed with his life (marriage, nazi period, Nobel prize), his discoveries, other scientists discoveries and explanations about memory/the brain. Ofyenly, the last was hard to get, not because the concepts were difficult, just because the rhythm in the book changes. Therefore, sometimes you are reading about his life, and then he starts speaking about the brain, its chemistry, anatomy.. etc. I got used to it, but it maybe a little bit disturbing.

I found it weirdly interesting when he talked about psychoanalysis (he was going for that career path. Nonetheless, he decided to go for Neuroscience). Psychoanalysis is not dead for him, he even talks about it getting a bit together with neurology. For me, that's a ridiculous idea, I think they are really opposite, but I am curious, so if anyone knows a book that talks about that idea, I will welcome it.

Great book anyway.

In Search of Memory offers a lucid, accessible, and shall I say memorable, window into the new science of the mind. Dr. Eric Kandel’s accolades are numerous – an Austrian American neuroscientist with training in psychiatry, longtime professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Columbia, and recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research on neurons. This book reflects not only this new cellular and molecular biological paradigm of memory, but also the life and scientific career of its author, from Vienna under the persecution of the Nazis to the labs of Harvard College to the stage of the Nobel Prize award ceremony in Stockholm. Dr. Kandel’s story is unforgettably heroic.

Kandel began his career deeply interested in psychoanalysis, being influenced by Freud. Quickly drawn to the hippocampus and the emerging biology of memory, Kandel pivoted to neuroscience and molecular biology, where he began to observe how behavior could be modified through learning and stored in brain structures over time. Kandel spends pages delving into the evolution of the field, from a philosophy of mind architected by Freud, to cognitive psychology, to neuroscience, and later to molecular biology. He devotes pages to the work of numerous scientists who contributed to these advancements, including the anatomy of nerve cells, the electrical impulses which underpin memory formation, the biochemical signals which mediate synaptic exchanges, how memory is localized to certain brain regions, different types of memory (implicit vs explicit, short-term vs long-term) and their different neural pathways, and how behavior can be conditioned through certain stimuli. Each of these developments is vivified through digestible diagrams and simple explanations.

Kandel’s work on “learned behavior” was what ultimately won him the Nobel Prize, and he elucidates his research journey in the book, alongside a host of developments in the field that both preceded and accompanied his work. His work on the Aplysia marine snail takes center stage, where alongside his colleagues he probed how learning was facilitated through certain biochemical pathways that led to memory consolidation. This research was influential in the movement of the field away from philosophical analysis to observable and testable science. More importantly, Kandel’s personal story is inspirational, and is a testament to his resilience, passion for intellectual discovery, and insatiable desire to peel back the curtain on the mystique of the mind.

Kandel provides incredible insights into the experimental challenges presented in his lifetime through periods of massive developments in molecular biology, medicine, and neuroscience. Throughout his career, he repeatedly showed an unparalleled ability to formulate the correctly sized questions to fit the technologies available and never lost sight of how to fit his scientific findings into an overarching framework of how memory operates on a neural level.

His writing in this book really exemplifies this ability to fit a wide range of topics and experiments into a synthesized idea, and he doesn't shy aware from the hard details involved in the lab work that led to crucial findings for various fields. He knows that to grasp the true significance of any experimental work, the details of design and control need to clearly explained in order to reach a real understanding of the conclusions found therein and (more importantly) how to formulate the next questions to ask.

In his career he experienced the explosion of science that came form DNA sequencing and remained on the forefront of neurobiology by applying these advances in the laboratory to find key genetic mechanisms at play in memory systems. His insights showed the intricate complexities of how genes are integral to how changes in memory occur, how they are triggered, how they are sustained, and how they stored in a multitude of locations and animals. He even began to touch the massively more difficult problems of systems integrations, and how the nervous system could possibly use the signaling from such a huge number of seemingly disparate specialized centers to create a unified whole of human experience.

Despite all of the insights this book provided, there is still an insidious aspect of his perspective that precludes him from grappling with much larger philosophical problems presented by modern advances in neuroscience. The theme of consciousness being the ultimate problem to solve and his rejection to really engage with this problem in one way shows his tact for choosing his battle in an informed manner, but by the end of the book, he doesn't seem to have a firm understanding of where these fields are truly going, and he constantly tries to stuff all of his achievements and the half century of advancement in cognitive psychology into the box of psychoanalysis all because he has an insufferable amount of nostalgia for things he once was drawn to. It reaches the point where he seems to imply that psychoanalysis is like some kind of intellectual sponge that can soak up every ounce of knowledge from every approach to psychology every spawned over the last century (behaviorism, cognitive, gestalt, molecular, computational, etc.) and come out the better than any one of them independently. His rampant defenses of Freud that crop up through his introspective segments boarder on the line of embarrassing for a man of his status and ability.

I still highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of neuroscience or seeking a better insight into the foundational experiments that led to much of what we know about neurobiology. Kandel is truly an icon and provides unparalleled insights into his lab work over the course of his career.

"Each time we learn something new, the cellular infrastructure of our brains changes. It is, in fact, these very changes that encode memory"

After a long time, I finally found a book which was seriously worth the read as this book was able to delve into Neuroscience, and the transformation of neuroscience into a modern, interdisciplinary field, combining biology, psychology, and molecular genetics. Which literally made it more interesting.

The book also delves into Kandel's personal and scientific journey, intertwining his life story with his groundbreaking research on memory.

There were sections in the book which was very insightful, like Synaptic Plasticity ( the concept of synaptic plasticity, demonstrating how the strength of connections between neurons changes as a result of learning and memory.)
The other being "Nature and Nurture", which includes Kandel's research into the interplay between genetics and environment in shaping memory, shedding light on the complex nature of human cognition.

This book is seriously a thought-provoking exploration of the science behind memory and a testament to the power of scientific inquiry in unraveling the mysteries of the human mind.

This book more-or-less successfully combined an autobiography and a research history into a holistic narrative of the life's work of the author. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about how brains enable animals to change their responses to environmental events.

The title captures the main theme of the book as far as the research aspect is concerned: Kandel spent much of his life examining neurons and related biological structures to determine a measurable, experimentally verifiable, biological basis for memory and learning. It was at times thrilling and other times a bit dry to read about lines of experiments to probe the inner workings of cells and how they enable learned responses to stimuli. I believe I would've gotten a bit more out of the book if I had a stronger background in biology (something beyond high-school bio), but it did leave me very interested in learning more about the rise of the empirical study of "mind". Much of these parts of the book will also provide guidance and inspiration to young scholars regardless of discipline (and can be summed up by: work really hard, work with other really smart people, and don't be afraid to move around to find the best place for you to succeed). The importance of the scientific community is also on display in this book: discoveries don't happen in isolation, they take collaborators and competitors to help stimulate fruitful inquiry.

While certainly many more pages were devoted to the Nobel winning science that shaped Kandel's life, a substantial amount of space was spent characterizing the role of Vienna, Judaism, and family in Kandel's life. He is a testament to the importance of strong family relationships: escaping Nazi-held Austria as a child with the help of relatives in America, having a supportive wife who was essentially a single mother to allow Kandel time to his scientific pursuits, and having grown children who recognize the important work their father did and tolerated his absence from parts of their childhood (though still give him some lip about it). Kandel also placed great emphasis on being Jewish and the role faith played in his life - the book isn't preachy, but it doesn't ignore his religious background either. It's impossible to talk about 1930's Vienna without talking about Judaism in any event. As the Nazi movement spread into Austria and Jews were first marginalized and then persecuted, Kandel laments the loss of the intellectual center of Europe at that time (and dutifully highlights the role Jews had in building Vienna's intellectual elite). This is an important point that he would later be able to revisit upon earning the Nobel prize. Invited to celebrate another intellectual win as a native son of Vienna, Kandel took the opportunity to shine a light on the persistent anti-semitic views of too many citizens of Vienna. To be honest, I didn't realize that Holocaust denial or down-play was even possible in Europe in recent times, and I wish Kandel and his collaborators well on their current efforts to address that issue.

Finally, I will end on a note about the tone of the book. I found Kandel to come off as being a little condescending in places, especially when he was writing about the scientific discovery process. Obviously, Kandel is brilliant and is writing from a position of knowledge, but I just felt as though he could have made more of an effort to come across as an equal rather than a superior. Just an opinion, but I don't think it detracts from the book overall.

“In Search of Memory” spans the gamut from this Nobel Prize Winner in Physiology or Medicine, Eric R. Kandel. From epithets of Anti-Semitism to meeting his wife and the beautiful shining brain stuff of legend is found within. “Without memory, we would be nothing” and we discover words---like swords “böser jude” delineating the struggles of Jews in Austria and leaving parents behind at 9 years old.

The cerebral cortex is concerned with perception, action, language, and planning. Three structures lie within…amygdala coordinates autonomic and endocrine responses in the context of emotional states.
—Eric R. Kandel

How is a neuron like a signal? Inside this book we explore this and Freud (as usual) has a part in deciphering. In the brain---hard cheese like consistency—each cell is truly unique. Faces and how they are processed by the brain and the reactivity on the parts of facial recognition is an interesting study. We find how our responses gauge our reality at the time and what our brain retains. Information in a neural circuit travels, in what way?

Noting well that this is a book review and not a report---and we take a voyage to Kristallnacht (1938) with Dr. Kandel and the transition of Vienna from being the center of culture to a place of oppression and humiliation. Personally, I can attest and confer being in Vienna (one of the most stunning cities in the world) it’s hard to imagine what occurred. Must read! Savor, buy and share with loved ones.

Simply magnificent.

Kandel, who is perhaps one of medicine’s lesser known Nobel laureates, outlines the major advances in neural science over the last hundred or so years, from Ramon y Cajal's seminal work on neurons to the most recent advances in understanding how consciousness works. He is a champion of the reductionist approach for understanding how executive functions and emotions come about.

His exploration of how we know how nerves work is truly a testament to the inherent logic that underlies the functioning of physiological systems. Memory, which is the main focus of the book, is explained using the central tenets of how neurons work, making it very easy to understand. However, as Kandel does acknowledge, there is a lot more work that needs to be done - we only really have some pieces of the overall "memory jigsaw," and once we have more pieces, we can start putting it together to get a better idea of how memories are retained in the brain.

The work Kandel himself has done is quite incredible; he discovered the underlying molecular basis of strengthening connections between neurons during operant conditioning and learning. Funnily enough, it links to one of the most prominent intracellular secondary messengers - cyclic adenosine monophosphate. His analysis of how this messenger leads to growth of synaptic terminals forms the scientific basis for popular memory techniques like active recall and space repetition. What is most curious of all is that these studies were not based on humans, they were on a sea snail!

Despite the magnitude of the impact Kandel has made on neuroscience, he is remarkably humble, pausing only near the end of the book to describe the Nobel ceremony, but otherwise, mentioning the win only once or twice. He also explores his Austrian heritage, and how Austria, like Germany, was subject to intense anti-semitism during Hitler's rule.

I suppose my main takeaway from this book is that there is a lot of beauty in the rationality that is built into physiological systems, from the brain down to individual blood vessels.

This was an excellent story of the history of neuroscience dealing with memory and Dr. Kandel's approach to trying to understand it. It is a dense but comprehensible overview of the developments in biology and genetics and the snail that changed the world. I have had the privilege of hearing Dr. Kandel talk about his work and have peered into his laboratory at Columbia with awe. He has been a hero to me as a scientist. I enjoyed reading the story of his life and the scientific inquiries that led to a Nobel Prize. This is a book that every nonscientist should read.

Kandel turns his autobiography into a fascinating read by vividly sketching various events that have guided his research career & his personal life (starting by describing his childhood as a Jew in pre-war Vienna). In addition, his book incorporates a well-written, informative overview of modern neurobiology - spanning topics from reflexes to psychiatry. Even though the material gets a little technical sometimes, I enjoyed it nonetheless, largely because Kandel describes not only the discoveries but also the people who made them possible. Overall, a great book that describes the life of a great scientist.