Bookraft

In Search of Memory by Eric Kandel - Norton, $30US

At the University of Michigan's Mary Markley Hall, probably like all university freshman dorms, there was an almost nightly debate during the course of the first term that asked the following question - What were the great unsolved problems of knowledge ?

Of course, Nature versus Nurture or the Blank Slate versus Anima est Machina all preprogrammed, Right and Wrong: Contingent or Absolute quickly surfaced among the great unanswered. But the Big Bang had done in the the Ultimate Cause and the Universal Extent, and What is Life had fallen to the DNA Helix. And the Ghost in the Machine - what is the Nature of Mind seemed, with roar of computing science and neurobiology, sure to fall. Barb or maybe Doug or Gale - who knows or remembers - raised a seemingly innocuous question: what is the biological basis of memory. That one quickly got beaten down with fresh research by Pribram on injury induced memory and functional deficits plus Hubel and Wiesel's pioneering work on visual feature detection in the brain - both implied that question would be answered soon - and possibly at the University.

Well many years later and Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist Dr. Eric Kandel has written a stunning summary of research on the nature of memory - In Search of Memory. And what emerges is that the nature of memory and how memories are recorded is still baffling science. Memory science lacks its DNA molecules and various RNA mediated transcription processes. Of course DNA itself is genetic memory - and cleary the Endocrine system has with its antigen systems "a memory" of diseases and infections. But to make matters worse there appears to be at least 3-5 types of basic memory processes from short term through long term to sensory function related memory caches - and each appear to have quite distinctive characteristics as well as localities.

But I rush ahead. Memory and learning are of active interest because the world is into a post-Industrial society where the ability to learn and adapt is at a premium. Also, as populations live longer the diseases of senility such as Dementia, Alzheimers, and Parkinsons become more prevalent. But at the young end the quadrupling of Autism cases and the continued travails of Scleroses in youth and young adults are of active interest. And this interest shows in little ways - Scientific American, Nature and the New Scientist have special issues devoted to the brain, memory or some other major neuroscience topic every year or two not every 5 years or so. So fifty years ago Eric Kandel, his family refugees from Austria going under the Nazi influence, chose well when he decided on a career first in psychiatry and then quickly into neurobiology.

And that is what In Search of Memory is about. But it is not just an autobiography but also a lucidly clear and well explained trip through the evolving science of neurobiology. So readers are treated not only to the step by step unraveling of the biological nature of memory; but also we meet many of the famous and some as yet unheralded memory researchers and see how they helped to shape the understanding of how brain and neural cells work. We also get treated to some of the great neuoroscience arguments. Very early on there is a strong debate between the idea that groups of neurons as circuits or potentiated nets and pathways versus a single neuron cell as "container" of the basic memory engram. And Dr. Kandel is at the heart of this research. But rather then being a curiosity spoiler by summarizing the key points, I will give you a direct sample of how well Dr. Kandel writes:

"Understanding consciousness is by far the most challenging task confronting science. The truth of of this assertion can bestbe seen in the career of Francis Crick, perhaps the most creative and influential biologist of the second half of the 20th century. ... In 1976, at age sixty, Crick turned to the remaining scientific mystery: the biological nature of consciousness. This he studies for the rest of his life in partnership with Christof Koch, a young computational neuoroscientist. Crick brought his characteristic intelligence and optimism to bear on the question; moreover he made consciousness a focus of the scientific community, which had previously ignored it. But, despite almost thirty years of continuous effort, Crick was able to budge the problem only a modest distance. Indeed, some scientists and philosophers of mind continue to find consciousness so inscrutable that they fear it can never be explained in physical terms. How can a biological system, a biological machine, they ask, feel anything ? Even more doubtful, how can it think about itself ? These questions are not new.... "

Still this passage is ironic, because it shows that like Crick's work on consciousness, the biology of memory has yet to yield its secrets. Instead the progress on deciphering how memory works, which we university freshman thought so many years ago "would be a sure thing within 5 at most 10 years - completely defined", certainly has eluded some brilliant minds in spite of the clear and lucid understanding of the problem displayed in this book. Despite the continuing , this book is such an engrossing story about the field of research, the people and new economic currents running through science - plus an outstanding primer for those who might want to enter the field and try their hand at uncovering one of the great unsolved problems of knowledge - what is the biology behind memories ? - that it is easy to highly recommend it for general reading.

(c) JBSurveyer 2006