| In Search of Memory - an Interview with Eric Kandel |
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bridges vol. 13, April 2007 / Feature Article
by Laura Rossacher 
Eric Kandel is known as one of the most influential neuroscientists of our time. Born in 1929 in Vienna as the son of a Jewish toy shop owner, he emigrated to the United States at the age of nine to escape the Nazis. He received his undergraduate degree at Harvard in history before becoming interested in psychoanalysis and neuroscience. Since 1974 he has been a professor at the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University in New York. In 2000, Eric Kandel was a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the cellular basis of learning and memory. The following is an interview with him conducted by the Austrian Press and Information Service at the Embassy of Austria in Washington, DC, for Austrian Information, volume 59, November/December 2006. In 2006 you published a book called In Search of Memory - The Emergence of a New Science of Mind that chronicles your life and research. You have dedicated your entire scientific career to the exploration of the human mind. Where does this interest come from? I came to the United States after having escaped from Nazi Austria, and I spent my early years in high school and at Harvard trying to understand what happened in Vienna. How could people who love Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven at one moment be so terribly anti-Semitic and destructive the next? I thought I was going to do graduate work on modern European history, but I got interested in psychoanalysis during my years at Harvard. I met a woman, Anna Kris, whose parents, Ernst and Marianna Kris, were gifted young people of the Freud circle. And so I, too, became interested in psychoanalysis. I thought I would have a better understanding of human motivation by studying psychoanalysis. I decided on short-term notice to go to medical school, where I was determined to become a psychiatrist and do psychoanalysis. I spent my summers working in psychiatric hospitals, learning about mental illness. But at the end of my medical school career, I thought that maybe even a psychoanalyst should know something about the brain. So I took an elective course with Harry Grundfest at Columbia University on neurobiology. I fell in love with neurobiology, and I have studied that ever since. My passion has now been the biology of the brain and particularly memory and how memories are formed and maintained. So I have devoted my career, fifty years of science, to studying the biological basis of memory storage. You once said that we are all "made of memories." What happens in our brain so that we are able to remember something? Access to the full article is free, but requires you to register. Registration is simple and quick – all we need is your name and a valid e-mail address. We appreciate your interest in bridges. |
