The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves Paperback – Illustrated, August 13, 2019

Here, I summarize my thoughts on three books by Eric Kandel: The Disordered Mind, In Search of Memory, and Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures. Eric Kandel is a great American scientist and winner of the Nobel Prize. Interestingly, he started his career as a humanities major at Harvard, and he writes very much in that tradition. The books cover various topics, including psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, the molecular basis of memory, and the relationship between the subconscious and art, and incorporate his recollections of his life journey and world history, particularly related to Vienna. While the books focus on different things, they all look at different aspects of the same subject, like taking different views of one elephant. When discussing psychiatric diseases, I like how Dr. Kandel described the root causes and history of schizophrenia and autism. These diseases trace much of their early history to Vienna and some famous early brain scientists there, such as Kraepelin and Asperger. Within the topic of memory, I liked Dr. Kandel's reflection on how memory is stored in synapses from inhibitory and excitatory neurons, and, in parallel fashion, these synaptic memories turn into molecular events and gene expression through activating and repressing transcription factors of the CREB family. Kandel also talks about his own memories. It was striking how Vienna was such a center of scholarship in the early 20th century and so quickly fell into tragedy with the advent of the Nazis and has changed dramatically since then. Finally, I enjoyed reading about Dr. Kandel's relationship between the subconscious and art. He talked about how many recent artists have tried to move beyond the conscious representation of the figure and harness their subconscious and how abstract art can play into our deep mental processes, such as face recognition. Overall, I found these books very interesting reads that give an encompassing picture of both the mind and a great person.

As one reviewer noted, this book is written to stimulate neurons. Dr. Kandel has access to all the latest researchers and is able to deliver a thought-provoking book to bring all of the general population up to date with his findings from readings and conversation. It is wonderful that he wants to share this information in easy to read diagrams and paragraphs. I was sorry that a number of top researchers in psychiatry were not mentioned, but Dr. Kandel limited his space. I am ill with schizophrenia and I was encouraged to read about the latest findings of Dr. Steven McCarroll's team. Those of us ill with the disease have long suspected the immune system, as many of us have also have had cancer.Read this book in all of its awe and wonder at the findings of brain diseases.Luanne Holsinger

Kandel earned his Nobel laureate for work on how the brain stores memory. He was still publishing major papers in his field as late as ten years ago. (He’s ninety now.) But since 2007, he has reached out deliberately to the lay audience with first, an exemplary autobiography, In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind (2007), which is, as the subtitle implies, as much a history of his discipline as of his own life. In 2012, he published The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain from Vienna 1900 to the Present, and in 2017 Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures.A year later, in 2018, he brought out this slim book, in which he assesses the state of our knowledge of the causes and potential remediations for a number of troubling brain disorders: in order of presentation, autism, depression and bi-polar disorder, Alzheimer’s and dementia, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases, PTSD, addiction, misassignment of gender identity. He discusses artistic creativity among schizophrenics and the interesting case of dyslexic, prosopagnosic (face blind) painter Chuck Close. He concludes with a chapter on the great puzzle of consciousness: we‘re circling around an explanation of it but haven’t gotten there yet. A singular virtue of Kandel’s crystal clear prose is that he never uses it to fudge over what we don’t know, so what we get from this exemplary short book is a Cook’s Tour of the state of neuroscience and some idea where it may be leading. We also learn how study of these problems have led to increases in understanding of how the brain works that reach beyond the discrete areas of particular brain maladies or dysfunctions. The book is copiously, and helpfully, illustrated. Kandel is a master explainer.

Always like Kandel, from his textbooks to his personal revelations (the latter more so). As a rundown of the status of neuroscience today, this deserves a fifth star. He presents the material beautifully, so that even when technical terms (such as particular areas of the brain) are tossed in without full definition, the whole still carries you along with superb clarity.My only reservation is his stance that certain mechanisms of the brain have been firmly established, when, from what I've read elsewhere, that's not necessarily the case. He's a staunch materialist (as am I), but I wonder if it doesn't make him want to believe that the neural and genetic foundations of the conditions he describes, such as Alzheimer’s, are solidly established and incontrovertible (are amyloid beta deposits definitely a cause of Alzheimer’s or a result or an association?).But it's as good an up-to-date look at the state of neurophysics in the brain as you'll find anywhere. I gained a lot of new insights (for instance, that my cat has likely damage to the lateral nucleus of his amygdala – and here I thought he was just nuts).

Estou gostando muito, ainda estou lendo. O livro traz informações muito relevantes para os estudantes de neurociências. Recomendo! Tem versão em português!

It was very informative and if you do psychology it's a good book to bring every thing you leaned together

Entregaron lo que prometieron, pero el libro no venía envuelto en plástico y eso pudo haber terminado mal.

I highly recommend this book for mental health professionals and non-professionals as well. It helped me to understand many things about how I think and perceive my own reality.

This very readable book uses brain disorders to discuss what we know about mental illness, addiction, sexual orientation and consciousness. From my study of neuroscience, the presentation is accurate, but Kandel says more than textbooks about specific mental illnesses and disorders. Having read it in a few days because it was compelling, I feel I must reread chapters to cement my knowledge.