Memory is everything. Without it we are nothing. Eric Kandel More Quotes by Eric Kandel More Quotes From Eric Kandel I went to medical school after having decided to do so somewhere between my junior and senior year at Harvard - very late. I initially wanted to be an intellectual historian. Eric Kandel senior years school After the war, the Austrians just denied their role in it all. They didn't teach it in school. But since 1990 they have openly acknowledged their role in the Holocaust and I feel more comfortable in Austria. I feel a sort of reconciliation. Eric Kandel holocaust war school The biology of mind bridges the sciences - concerned with the natural world - and the humanities - concerned with the meaning of human experience. Eric Kandel biology experience mind world A brain scan may reveal the neural signs of anxiety, but a Kokoschka painting, or a Schiele self-portrait, reveals what an anxiety state really feels like. Both perspectives are necessary if we are to fully grasp the nature of the mind, yet they are rarely brought together. Eric Kandel nature mind together brain I have a philosophy that has guided me throughout all of my scientific career, and that is, I think of myself as a fairly thoughtful person. I don't go into projects impetuously, and I try to select important problems. Eric Kandel problems myself think me The brain is a complex biological organ possessing immense computational capability: it constructs our sensory experience, regulates our thoughts and emotions, and controls our actions. Eric Kandel thoughts emotions experience brain I was born in Vienna on November 7, 1929, eleven years after the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire fell apart following its defeat in World War I. Eric Kandel november born war world The problem of psychoanalysis is not the body of theory that Freud left behind, but the fact that it never became a medical science. It never tried to test its ideas. Eric Kandel medical problem science ideas I like problems at the borders of disciplines. One of the reasons that neurobiology of learning and memory appeal to me so much was that I liked the idea of bringing biology and psychology together. Eric Kandel memory me learning together Rather than studying the most complex form of memory in a very complicated animal, we had to take the most simple form - an implicit form of memory - in a very simple animal. So I began to look around for very simple animals. And I focused in on the marine snail Aplysia. Eric Kandel memory look simple animal Nerve cells communicate with one another at specialized points called synapses. And these synapses are plastic - they can be modified by learning. Eric Kandel another plastic learning cells I found working in the lab is so completely different than reading a textbook about it. You know, you're planning strategies; you're working with your own hands. There's essential satisfaction in running experiments. Eric Kandel you satisfaction reading hands Ever since the Enlightenment, people thought that we were living in a rational universe. They thought that God was a mathematician and that the function of the scientist was to figure out the mathematical rules whereby the universe was created. Eric Kandel thought universe god people There was little in my early life to indicate that an interest in biology would become the passion of my academic career. In fact, there was little to suggest I would have an academic career. Eric Kandel career biology passion life My parents genuinely loved Vienna, and in later years I learned from them why the city exerted a powerful hold on them and other Jews. My parents loved the dialect of Vienna, its cultural sophistication, and artistic values. Eric Kandel loved city parents powerful My parents were not born in Vienna, but they had spent much of their lives there, having each come to the city at the beginning of World War I when they were still very young. Eric Kandel city parents war world In the 1950s and early 1960s, psychoanalysis swept through the intellectual community, and it was the dominant mode of thinking about the mind. People felt that this was a completely new set of insights into human motivation, and that its therapeutic potential was significant. Eric Kandel community mind people thinking Long-term memory involves enduring changes that result from the growth of new synaptic connections. Eric Kandel result new memory growth You could double the number of synaptic connections in a very simple neurocircuit as a result of experience and learning. The reason for that was that long-term memory alters the expression of genes in nerve cells, which is the cause of the growth of new synaptic connections. Eric Kandel you experience learning simple I was interested in the nature of human mental processes, which is what got me interested in psychoanalysis. And it became clear to me after a while that mental processes come from the brain, and in order to understand them, you need to be a biologist of the brain. Eric Kandel me you nature brain
