Having been trained in history and the humanities, where one learns early on how depressing life can be, I am delighted to have ultimately switched t… - Eric Kandel

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.

What strategy does the brain use to read itself out? That question, which is central to the unitary nature of conscious experience, remains one of the many unresolved mysteries of the new science of mind.

Implicit memory is responsible not only for simple perceptual and motor skills but also, in principle, for the pirouettes of Margot Fonteyn, the trumpeting techniques of Wynton Marsalis, the accurate ground strokes of Andre Agassi, and the leg movements of an adolescent. Implicit memory guides us through well-established routines that are not consciously controlled.