Eric R. Kandel: Quotes about memories

Eric R. Kandel is American neuropsychiatrist. Explore interesting quotes on memory.
Eric R. Kandel: 162   quotes 2   likes

“Birds in which spatial memory is particularly important”

Eric R. Kandel

In Search of Memory (2006)
Context: Birds in which spatial memory is particularly important—those that store food at a large number of sites, for example—have larger hippocampuses than other birds.... London taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus than others the same age.... the size of their hippocampus continues to increase with time on the job.

Bird , Memory

“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.”

Eric R. Kandel

In Search of Memory (2006)
Context: 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.

Life , Learning , Memory , Perfection

“I outline in simple terms… our current understanding of the cognitive psychological and neurobiological basis of perception, memory, emotion, empathy, and creativity. …the principles of the viewer's response to art are applicable to all periods of painting.”

Eric R. Kandel

The Age of Insight (2012)
Context: I outline in simple terms... our current understanding of the cognitive psychological and neurobiological basis of perception, memory, emotion, empathy, and creativity.... the principles of the viewer's response to art are applicable to all periods of painting.

Art , Understanding , Memory , Painting

“Long-term potentiation helps stabalize the internal representation of space, and… attention, a defining feature of explicit memory storage, modulates the representation of space.”

Eric R. Kandel

In Search of Memory (2006)

Memory , Help

“I was very much influenced by the psychology of Freud and by early workers in the field of learning and memory—James, Thorndike, Pavlov, Skinner, and Ulric Neisser. Their thinking, and even their errors, provided a wonderfully rich cultural background for my later work.”

Eric R. Kandel

In Search of Memory (2006)

Error , Thinking , Learning , Memory

“The same CREB switch is important for many forms of implicit memory in a variety of other species, from bees to mice to people.”

Eric R. Kandel

In Search of Memory (2006)

People , Memory , Bee

“The overarching ideas that have influenced my work and fueled my interest in conscious and unconscious memory derive from a perspective on mind that psychiatry and psychoanalysis opened up for me.”

Eric R. Kandel

In Search of Memory (2006)

Idea , Memory

“The growth and maintenance of new synaptic terminals makes memory persist. …The ability to grow new synaptic connections as a result of experience appears to have been conserved throughout evolution. As an example… the cortical maps of the body surface are subject to constant modification in response to changing input from sensory pathways.”

Eric R. Kandel

In Search of Memory (2006)

Appearance , Memory , Change

“O'Keefe… argued that many forms of explicit memory (for example, memory for people and objects) use spatial coordinates… we typically remember people and events in a spatial context.”

Eric R. Kandel

In Search of Memory (2006)

People , Memory

“Recall of memory is a creative process. What the brain stores is… only a core memory. Upon recall, this memory is then elaborated upon and reconstructed, with subtractions, additions, elaborations, and distortions.”

Eric R. Kandel

In Search of Memory (2006)

Memory

“Implicit memory is responsible not only for simple perceptual and motor skills but also, in principle, for the pirouettes of Margot Fonteyn, the trumpeting techniques of Wynton Marsalis, the accurate ground strokes of Andre Agassi, and the leg movements of an adolescent. Implicit memory guides us through well-established routines that are not consciously controlled.”

Eric R. Kandel

In Search of Memory (2006)

Memory

“For all of us, explicit memory makes it possible to leap across space and time and conjure up events and emotional states that have vanished into the past yet somehow continue to live in our minds.”

Eric R. Kandel

In Search of Memory (2006)

Memory , Time , Past

“In the Jacob-Monod model, signals from a cell's environment activate regulatory proteins that switch on the genes encoding particular proteins. This led [Philip] Goelet and me to wonder whether the crucial step in switching on long-term memory in sensitization might involve similar signals and similar gene regulatory proteins.”

Eric R. Kandel

In Search of Memory (2006)

Memory

“CPEB is the first self-propogating form of a prion known to serve a physiological function… perpetuation of synaptic facilitation and memory storage.”

Eric R. Kandel

In Search of Memory (2006)

Memory

“…in various types of organisms, from snails to flies to mice to people. …learning and memory, as well as synaptic and neuronal plasticity, represent a family of processes that share a common logic and some key components but vary in the details of their molecular mechanisms.”

Eric R. Kandel

In Search of Memory (2006)

People , Family , Learning , Memory

“Exceptionally good memory exhibited by some people may stem from genetic differences in CREB-2 that limit the activity of this repressor protein in relation to CREB-1.”

Eric R. Kandel

In Search of Memory (2006)

People , Memory

“The fact that a gene must be switched on to form a long-term memory shows clearly that genes are not simply determinants of behavior but are also responsive to environmental stimulation, such as learning.”

Eric R. Kandel

In Search of Memory (2006)

Behavior , Memory , Learning