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An interview with Eric Kandel

By neurophilosophy on April 21, 2008.


Our German counterparts at ScienceBlogs.de have produced this 21-minute video of an interview they did with neuroscientist Eric Kandel, who won the 2000 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of learning and memory in the sea slug Aplysia californica.

Kandel is one of the authors of Principles of Neural Science, the standard textbook  for neuroscience at the undergraduate and postgraduate level. His autobiography, In Search of Memory, which was published in 2006 (and which I reviewed at the time), won the LA Times Book Award for Science and Technology in that year.

Among the topics Kandel discusses in the interview are the differences between biological and digital memory, neurogenesis in the hippocampus, free will and consciousness, drug development and the use and abuse of drugs by children, and the state of science in the U.S. and Europe.

Tags
neuroscience

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I don't know of a transcript. If I had more time, I'd transcribe it myself. Maybe I'll do it in a couple of months.

"French science is still a disaster" - funny. I wonder why he says that.

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