A Good Mystery Novel

Kandel tells the story of how fascination with memory has led him to a life-long search for the biological underpinning of memory and consciousness. It’s part autobiography and part textbook, but reads like a good mystery novel. I could hardly put it down until I finished it. His writing is very fluid and concise, and he inserts figures at just the right junctures to illustrate and summarize the concepts. I learned many things in several fields that fascinate me, psychoanalysis, molecular biology and neurobiology.

Humorous and Revealing

Kandel’s accounts of his personal life, though relatively rare compared to those of his research activities, are also humorous and revealing. I burst out laughing when reading about how he and his wife turned from progressive parents to disciplinarians after being forced out of their shared bed by their screaming son and lying on the floor for ten minutes, and how he and his colleague from Columbia, both opera addicts, sneaked into the Metropolitan by bribing the ushers and he broke out in a cold sweat “periodically” for fear of becoming headline news. (Incidentally, both of them won the Nobel Prize later on).

(For full review, see http://booksontrial.wordpress.com/200...) ( )

Had Eric Kandel been my Science teacher in High School, there's a chance I would've picked Medicine or Biochmistry as my BA, instead of English.

When regarded as Kandel's autobiography, detailing his progress, his origins and motivation to comprehend the biology of memory, it is a fascinating text.

When regarding as a biography that narrates the birth and development of a new science that combines Biology, Chemistry, Psychology, Psychiatry and many specific sub-areas within these disciplines, it is simply a "must read". Even for someone who, like me, completely lacks scientific formation. ( )

Interesting book but a bit on the technical side. A decent amount of time spent on his childhood in Vienna, subsequent flight to the US. Really fairly horrifying depiction of the Austrians at the time of the occupation by Hitler. All things told, a good book but not quite what I was expecting.

THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW SCIENCE OF MIND

This is a delightful book and a treat! I would love to meet Eric Kandel, because, as an electrical engineer, I am also interested in science and wish that I might find a way to afford a living as a neuroscientist so that I may explore an area that would be at the boundary of disciplines that Dr. Kandel is so fond of. I, too, have made new "discoveries" in the form of patent ideas that have come to me as I have moved in and out of integrated circuit (semiconductor) design (my specialty), hardware design and software engineering.

I have also had decades-worth of interest in neuroscience and read quite a bit on the side. Hence, I am serious about my desires. But with a new family with includes 2-year-old daughters, I would not yet be able to command the same salary that I have built over the years as an engineer. I have not given up, nonetheless and will continue to enjoy exploring the possibilities. In this book, Dr. Kandel also expresses some concerns about how his passion for science affected his family. It appears that he struggled to balance this passion with his love for family and had some success!

This book briefly touches on this challenge, but explores in much more depth Dr. Kandel's path from psychoanalyst to cellular/molecular neurobiologist (and how he still integrates the two and so much more and advocates such integration).

On this path, he made choices that ultimately led to his (shared) discovery of how short and long term memory works in all animals, by discovering how it works in the much simpler Aplysia (marine snail). By drawing on evolution, he was able to propose and test similar mechanisms in mammals and humans with the help of and research of other scientists and colleagues to whom he gives much description and credit. The book contains numerous easy-to-understand diagrams and details of the electrochemical reactions that make up essential brain functions.

Without sugar-coating the rivalries and challenges of competing and collaborating with other scientists, Dr. Kandel appears to make the best of such relationships in the advancement of science and ultimate benefit to humanity. His descriptions include a brief history of brain research and scientists that include greats from Cajal to Crick and so many more that I am doing an injustice by not mentioning them here. Dr. Kandel does a far better job giving credit!

On the subject of humanity, Dr. Kandel traces much of his early interest in human behavior to his tragic personal experience of the Nazi's in Austria, and explains his desire to have and help Austria "come clean" regarding its involvement with the Nazi's and terrible treatment of the Jews, even, as he explains, to this day.

He extends his humanitarian views to speculate on the near future abilities of science to predict, diagnose and treat ever more complex neurological conditions and the related ethical ramifications.
He even speculates on current and upcoming research on conciousness.

I had purchased this book "blindly" via the internet and had expected more of a dry, textbook-style discussion of memory. Instead, I got a warmly engaging book that gave me a bit of "everything", including my desired introduction to how memory works.
I do not think Eric Kandel could have done a better job in combining so many things in such an enjoyable way!

Kudos and congratulations to Eric Kandel!