We did not realize that the hippocampus is concerned with perception of the environment and therefore represents multisensory experience... - Eric Kandel

For some representations of space the brain typically uses egocentric coordinates (centered on the receiver)... For other behaviors... the brain uses allocentric coordinates (centered on the world).

Even though I had long been taught that the genes of the brain are the governors of behavior, the absolute masters of our fate, our work showed that, in the brain as in bacteria, genes are also servants of the environment. ...An environmental stimulus... activates modulatory interneurons that release serotonin. The serotonin acts on the sensory neuron to increase cyclic AMP and to cause protein kinase A and MAP kinase to move to the nucleus and activate CREB. The activation of CREB, in turn, leads to the expression of genes that changes the function and the structure of the cell.

I was astonished to discover that working in the laboratory—doing science in collaboration with interesting and creative people—is dramatically different from taking courses and reading about science.