The Neuroscience of Memory | Robert Wright & Eric Kandel [The Wright Show]

0:20 The research on memory that won Eric the Nobel Prize
2:11 The difference between normal memory loss and Alzheimer’s
7:26 Eric’s new book, The Disordered Mind
20:22 Eric’s breakthrough study of marine snails with giant nerve cells
30:03 What it’s like to win the Nobel Prize
33:00 Eric’s childhood escape from Nazi-ruled Vienna to America
44:49 Why Vienna was a center of intellectual ferment in the early 20th century

Recorded October 8, 2018

[smartmouth]

Once again, excellent show. Keep them coming. " Robert Wright For President "

[billd]

This show, and this episode is a fantastic example, is my favorite media product across all platforms.

[naideenfrancis]

Very informative interview, what a smile at 45:49.

[stefanbernegger]

I don't undersand why so many people get excited about Bob Wright's interviewing skills - I am disappointed whenever I follow one of his shows with most promising guests and topics. Bob does an excellent job in inviting fascinating people, but he totally fails in giving them the room they deserve. Bob uses most space to promote himself - seems he needs to pamper his ego. I consider Bob a very smart person and I don't see any need for him to engage in this kind of self-celebration, he should instead provivide the space to his guests. What a difference to Sean Carrol's Mindscape podcast - Sean manages to moderate a conversation with minimal - but always to the point - questions and comments and he then leave the arena to his guets. In this particular interview conducted by Bob, I learned quite a bit about Eric Kandel's interesting biography (in addidion to Bob's personal biography), but I learned very little about Eric Kandal's fascinating work.

[dimitrioskantakouzinos]

Bob is uncharacteristically impressive in this talk. Great guest.

[Oxirix]

Robert was correct in regards to the creation of new neurons. The discovery started with birds like Robert said, but has since been shown in mammals and even primates. It kinda a big deal, I'm surprised Eric is unaware of it.

[derrickcrane]

good interview but the audio sucks on Kandel's side of the talk--at times, garbled speech

[os]

It is awesome to listening to kandel, but unfortunately the flow of the interview is wrong, the interviewer seems to be asking random questions in a swallow way... never allowing kandel to go deep into any concept.

[mindfulmoments]

Neural changes are CORRELATED with our subjective experience – there is nothing more to it than that. For example, if we consider the loud sound he is talking about, the fear reaction is correlated with changes in neuronal connections. However, if one is told beforehand to expect a loud sound in a few minutes and therefore not to worry about it – the neural changes will not be that pronounced. In contrast, if there is an unexplained loud sound that we keep hearing, then we would worry about it, and if someone looks at the neural structure in our brain at that moment, they would see strengthening neural connections. All this indicates that we are not mere biological machines (that has to be understood by uncovering neural connections), but subjective experience plays a significant role in our experiences and changes is subjective experience is CORRELATED with neural changes.
Also, although “memory storage” often disused as if it is some kind of a file cabinet – research has shown that even when neurons are damaged (comparable to the file cabinet along with all its contents being destroyed), the damaged neurons can be regenerated (in the hippocampus where memory is said to be “stored”). For example, check out the following article:
Sun, D. (2014). The potential of endogenous neurogenesis for brain repair and regeneration following traumatic brain injury. Neural regeneration research, 9(7), 688.

[amandasheard]

Much of this is interesting and informative; however, DO NOT take Eric's remarks about autism as fact, or you'll wind up embarrassing yourself. His understanding of ASD/ASC is 15-20 years (and hundreds of scientific studies) out-of-date.

If you want more recent and reliable information about Autistic Spectrum Conditions, Google Scholar has numerous free access articles by Simon Baron-Cohen (possibly the UK's leading autism researcher and a prominent clinical psychologist) Sally Wheelwright, Francesca Happé, and other well-respected professionals who are involved with CURRENT research in this field.

Eric does not even have enough interest in the subject to know basic facts, and spouts misinformation such as, "Autistic people can't make eye contact." I'll have to tell my (severely autistic, non-verbal) daughter that... I imagine according to Eric, my son (also autistic, but more capable verbally) "can't" spontaneously say he loves me, either (and yet, he does...).

If anyone wants to know about autism, you're better off asking someone with an autistic friend or family member than Eric... winning a Nobel Prize doesn't make you an expert in every field related to your own, as is amply shown here.

PS: I'm currently awaiting assessment for what will probably turn out to be something like Aspergers, and it shows. My social interactions are often clumsy, eye contact is often painful for me, I have real trouble differentiating between private vs personal information, and I'd rather type 1, 000 words on a forum than speak 10 in public... no one who knows me would suggest that I lack empathy, though.

[work]

Not sure whether robert is too broke to afford a decent freaking microphone or what exactly. Do the podcast on the phone next time and spare us the garbage audio with your face on it.