Eric Kandel Quotes

The overarching ideas that have influenced my work and fueled my interest in conscious and unconscious memory derive from a perspective on mind that psychiatry and psychoanalysis opened up for me.

As knowledge advances and scientific disciplines change, so do the disciplines impinging on them.

In the Jacob-Monod model, signals from a cell's environment activate regulatory proteins that switch on the genes encoding particular proteins. This led [Philip] Goelet and me to wonder whether the crucial step in switching on long-term memory in sensitization might involve similar signals and similar gene regulatory proteins.

Mountcastle discovered that tactile sensation is made up of several distinct modalities; for example, touch includes... hard pressure on the skin as well as a light brush... He found that each distinct submodality has its own private pathway within the brain and that this segregation is maintained at each relay...

The life of a biological scientist in the United States is a life of discussion and debate—it is the Talmudic tradition writ large. ...The egalitarian structure of American science encourages this camaraderie. ...this would not—could not—have taken place in the Austria, the Germany, the France, or perhaps even the England of 1955.

Recall of memory is a creative process. What the brain stores is... only a core memory. Upon recall, this memory is then elaborated upon and reconstructed, with subtractions, additions, elaborations, and distortions.

My hope is that the difference in the three generations' attitudes may signal a lessening of anti-Semitism in Austria.

Giacomo Rizzolatti... calls these "mirror neurons" and suggests that they provide the first insight into imitation, identification, empathy, and possibly the ability to mime vocalization—the mental processes intrinsic to human interaction. Vilayanur Ramachandran has found evidence of comparable neurons in the premotor cortex of people. ...one can see a whole new area of biology opening up... that can give us a sense of what makes us social, communicating beings. An ambitious undertaking of this sort might... teach us something about the factors that give rise to tribalism, which is so often associated with fear, hatred, and intolerance of outsiders.

I outline in simple terms... our current understanding of the cognitive psychological and neurobiological basis of perception, memory, emotion, empathy, and creativity. ...the principles of the viewer's response to art are applicable to all periods of painting.

We now understand that every mental state and every mental disorder is a disorder of brain function. Treatments work by altering the structure and function of the brain.

The Viennese Kultusgemeinde... was going bankrupt... European governments typically compensate Jewish agencies... but the Austrian government's compensation was not adequate. ...I owe my existence in the United States to the generosity of the Viennese Kultusgemeinde.

It is much more meaningful and enjoyable to read the scientific literature about experiments you are involved in yourself than to read about science in the abstract.

Like other modern artists faced with the advent of the photography, Klimt sought newer truths that could not be captured by the camera. He... turned the artists view inward—away from the three-dimensional outside world and toward the multidimensional inner self and the unconscious mind.

Cori Bargmann... has studied two variants of C. elegans... The only difference between the two is one amino acid in an otherwise shared receptor protein. Transferring the receptor from a social worm to a solitary worm makes the solitary worm social.

Birds in which spatial memory is particularly important—those that store food at a large number of sites, for example—have larger hippocampuses than other birds. ...London taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus than others the same age. ...the size of their hippocampus continues to increase with time on the job.