Eric R. Kandel Books
Eric R. Kandel is an Austrian-American neuroscientist and professor at Columbia University.
Known for: The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present, The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves
Books by Eric R. Kandel
The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present
This book explores how the intersection of art, science, and medicine in Vienna around 1900 led to groundbreaking insights into the human mind. Nobel laureate Eric R. Kandel examines the work of artis...
The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves
What can mental illness teach us about the healthy mind? In The Disordered Mind, Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel argues that brain disorders are not only medical problems to diagnose...
Key Insights from Eric R. Kandel
Vienna 1900 as a Cultural Nexus
Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century stood as one of history’s most fertile cultural intersections. Its wealth and cosmopolitan life gave rise to a generation of thinkers who questioned every inherited norm—artistic, moral, and scientific. Here the Secession movement emerged under Gustav Klim...
From The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present
The Artistic Revolution: Klimt, Schiele, and Kokoschka
Klimt and his younger contemporaries radically altered how the human form was represented. Klimt’s portraits of women, adorned with gold and flowing patterns, were not mere decorative achievements: they visualized sensual desire and introspection. Behind their beauty lies a psychological tension—a s...
From The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present
Mind Emerges From Brain Biology
The most intimate parts of human life—thought, feeling, imagination, and memory—are not separate from biology but expressions of it. One of Kandel’s central arguments is that the old division between mind and brain no longer holds up. For centuries, philosophers and physicians often treated mental l...
From The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves
Autism Reveals Social Brain Architecture
We often notice the social mind most clearly when it struggles to connect. Kandel uses autism spectrum disorders to explore one of humanity’s defining capacities: our ability to understand others, share attention, read emotional cues, and build relationships. Autism is not a single, uniform conditio...
From The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves
Depression Distorts Mood and Meaning
Depression is not simply sadness; it is a disorder that can alter how a person experiences time, motivation, memory, and even the value of being alive. Kandel presents depression as a powerful example of how mood is rooted in brain biology while also being shaped by personal history and environment....
From The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves
Schizophrenia Exposes Fragile Reality Construction
Reality feels seamless—until the brain systems that construct it begin to fail. In Kandel’s account, schizophrenia reveals just how actively the brain creates coherent experience. This disorder can involve hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking, emotional blunting, and cognitive difficulti...
From The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves
About Eric R. Kandel
Eric R. Kandel is an Austrian-American neuroscientist and professor at Columbia University. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2000 for his research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons. Kandel is also known for his influential books on neuroscience and the m...
Read more
Eric R. Kandel is an Austrian-American neuroscientist and professor at Columbia University. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2000 for his research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons. Kandel is also known for his influential books on neuroscience and the m...
Eric R. Kandel is an Austrian-American neuroscientist and professor at Columbia University. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2000 for his research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons. Kandel is also known for his influential books on neuroscience and the mind, bridging science and human experience.
Frequently Asked Questions
Eric R. Kandel is an Austrian-American neuroscientist and professor at Columbia University.
Read Eric R. Kandel's books in 15 minutes
Get AI-powered summaries with key insights from 2 books by Eric R. Kandel.