Eric Kandel - Life Quotes

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This dialogue between the ongoing research in brain science and art continue to this day.... Such dialogues could help us explore the mechanisms in the brain that make perception and creativity possible, whether in art, the sciences, the humanities, or everyday life. In a larger sense, this dialogue could help make science part of our everyday experience.

Eric Kandel
The idea that we are unaware of much of out mental life, first developed by Hermann Helmholtz, is central to psychoanalysis. Freud has added the interesting idea that although we are not aware of most instances of mental processing, we can gain conscious access... by paying attention.

Eric Kandel
One of the characteristic features of Viennese life at this time was the continual, easy interaction of artists, writers, and thinkers with scientists.

Eric Kandel
The Modernist reaction to the Enlightenment came in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, whose brutalizing effects revealed that modern life had not become... mathematically perfect...

Eric Kandel
Viennese life at the turn of the century provided opportunities in salons and coffeehouses for scientists, writers, and artists to come together in an atmosphere that was at once inspiring, optimistic, and politically engaged.... science was no longer the narrow and restrictive province of scientists but had become an integral part of Viennese culture.... a paradigm for how an open dialogue can be achieved.

Eric Kandel
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.

Eric Kandel
The Age of Insight is a product of my... fascination with the intellectual history of Vienna from 1890 to 1918, as well as my interest in Austrian modernist art, psychoanalysis, art history, and the brain science that is my life's work.... I examine the ongoing dialogue between art and science that had its origins in fin-de-siècle Vienna and document its three major phases.

Eric Kandel
Modernism began in the mid-nineteenth century as a response not only to the restrictions and hypocrisies of everyday life, but also as a reaction to the Enlightenment's emphasis on the rationality of human behavior.... The founders of the Royal Society thought of God as a mathematician who had designed the universe according to logical and mathematical principles. The role of the scientist—the natural philosopher was to... decipher the codebook that God had used in creating the cosmos.

Eric Kandel
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 to biology, where a delusional optimism still abounds.

Eric Kandel
CREB's opposing regulatory actions provide a threshold for memory storage, presumably to ensure that only important, life-serving experiences are learned. Repeated shocks to the tail are a significant learning experience for an Aplysia, just as, say, practicing the piano or conjugating French verbs are to us: practice makes perfect, repetition is necessary for long-term memory. In principle, however, a highly emotional state... could bypass the normal restraints on long-term memory. In such a situation, enough MAP kinase molecules would be sent into the nucleus rapidly enough to inactivate all of the CREB-2 molecules, thereby making it easy for protein kinase A to activate CREB-1 and put the experience directly into long-term memory.

Eric Kandel
The intellectual life of turn-of-the-century Vienna is in my blood: my heart beats in three-quarter time.

Eric Kandel