History of
Neurology
Eric Kandel MD
1929-PRESENT
KUMC Neurology Morning Report
Richard J. Barohn, MD
May 22, 2017
YEAR
ACHIEVEMENT
1929
B. Vienna, Austria
• Mother born in Ukraine/Father
Galicia
• Moved to Vienna after WW1/
assimilated Jews
1938
Fled Vienna to Brooklyn when annexed
by Germany/Nazis
• He observed Kristallnacht
Eric Kandel MD
Biography
Judaic studies (Yeshiva)and Erasmus
Hall High School
1948-52
Harvard University-History and
Literature
• became interested in learning &
memory
1952-56
New York University Med School,
exposed to Stephen Kuffler/neuron
experiments in marine invertebrates
• Learned from Stanley Crain how to
make intracellular microelectrodes
to record crawfish giant axons
Eric Kandel MD
Biography
Year
Achievments
1957
NIH Record from hippocampus
neurons/intracellular
• Residency in psychiatry, studied
psychoanalysis
1962
Paris; studied Aplysia Californica under
Ladislav Tauc
1965
Published first paper about learning
Aplysia
1965
Faculty in Physiology and Psychiatry
Depts. NYU
1966
James Schwartz joined; biochemical
changes assoc w/ learning
1971
Tom Carew joined team. Short and long
term memory
1973
Dept Psychiatry Columbia Univ
1983
Formed Howard Hughes Medical Research
Institute at Columbia devoted to
molecular neural science
Eric Kandel, MD
Aplysia Learning
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In Psychiatry residency began plan to study memory and learning
Select simple animal model to do electrophysiologic analysis of synaptic changes of learning and
memory storage
In Paris studying Aplysia: simple learning such as habituation, sensitization, classical conditioning, and
operant conditioning
 Could be demonstrated in Aplysia
Neurons 1mm wide
Sensory cells detect danger and send signals to motor neurons (6)
Snails breathe by exposing gills, covered by siphon
Stimulus cause muscles around gill to pull gill and siphon back
He studied this circuit
As snail learned to avoid shocks, its nervous system changed: enhancing synaptic connections, more
powerful connections recorded by microelectrodes
First evidence that learning led to neuro plastic strengthening of connections between neurons
Repeated shocks - sensitization and learned fear/over-react to more benign stimuli (like anxiety in
humans)
 Gently touching siphon- habituation
Eric Kandel, MD
Aplysia & Molecular Basis of Learning/Memory
• With Carew at NYU then Columbia demonstrated short and long term memory
• With Schwartz showed long term memory associated with synthesis of
cAMP(second messenger)
• Serotonin (first messenger) involved in molecular basis of sensitization of
gill-withdrawal reflex
• With Greengard, found protein kinase A was activated by CAMP and K channel
regulated by PKA
• Nuclear target of PKA is gene for transcriptional control protein CREB (CAMP
response element binding protein
• CREB is a protein involved in long term memory storage
• CREB activation increases number of synaptic connections
• Short term memory - functional changes in existing synapses
• Long-term memory - change in number of synaptic connections
Eric Kandel, MD
Learning & Memory
 Same process discovered in Aplysia probably occurs in humans:
 When we learn we alter which genes in our neurons are turned on
 Our genes shape us
 When we learn our minds also affect which genes in our neurons are
transcribed. Thus we can shape our genes, which in turn shape our brains
microscopic anatomy, Kandel believes psychotherapy changes people
“Through learning and by producing changes in gene expression that alter the
strength of synaptic connections, and structural changes that alter the
anatomical pattern of interconnections between nerve cells and brain"
Eric R. Kandel - Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014
15 May 2017.
Eric Kandel, MD
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He observed Kristallnach, the "night of broken glass" when Nazis destroyed all the
synagogues in the German Reich including Austria
His father was arrested/ Jews evicted from homes
"I remember Kristalnacht even today, more than sixty years later, almost as if it were
yesterday. I fell two days after my ninth birthday, on which i was showered with toys
from my fathers shop (he owned a toy shop). When we returned to our apartment a
week or so having been evicted, everything of value was gone, including my toys. It is
probably futile, even for some trained in psycoanalyatic thinking as I am, to attempt to
trace the complex interests and actions of my later life to a few selected experiences in
my youth. Nevertheless I cannot help but think that the experiences of my sat year in
Vienna helped to determine my later interests in the mind, in how people behave, the
unpredictability of motivation, and the persistence of memory... I am struck as others
have been, at how deeply these traumatic events of my childhood became burned into
memory".
Eric R. Kandel - Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014.
15 May 2017.
Awards
1983
1983
1987
1988
1993
1999
2000
2005
• Dickson Prize
• Lasker Award
• Gardner Foundation International Award
• National Medal of Science
• Harvey Prize
• Wolf Prize in Medicine
• Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• Austrian Decoration for Science and Art
Eric R. Kandel after receiving his
Nobel Prize from his Majesty the
king of at the Stockholm Concern
Hall 2000
Eric Kandel MD
Nobel Prize 2000
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He said it was "certainly not an Austrian NObel, it was
a Jewish-American Nobel“
Austrian President called him to say "how can we
make things right?"
He said rename a street in Vienna named after Karl
Luger, an anti-Semite (was renamed in 2012)
He wanted the Jewish intellectual community to be
brought back to Vienna with scholarships for Jewish
students and researchers
He proposed a symposium to respond to one on
Austrian National Socialism
He since accepted an honorary citizenship of Vienna
and participates in cultural and academic life in
Vienna
Habituation and Dishabituation of the
Gill-Withdrawal Reflex in Aplysia
Science 1970 167 ;(3926):1740-2.
Principles of Neural Science,
Kandel & Colleagues
Fifth Edition (2012)
Principles of Neural Science
Principles of Neural Science,
Kandel & Colleagues
Fifth Edition (2012
Principles of Neural Science,
Kandel & Colleagues
Fifth Edition (2012
Eric Kandel-The Age of Insight (2012)
Portrait of Adele BlochBauer by Gustav Klimt
(1907)
In Neue Galerie, NYC
Eric Kandel-The Age of Insight (2012)
Eric Kandel-The Age of Insight (2012)
The Kiss by Gustav
Klimt (1907-08)
Eric Kandel-The Age of Insight (2012)
My Notes From Kandel lecture
(Cambridge 1982)
• An extra hour: sleeps until 7:30 am
• Creatures of Habit: same breakfast. Half grapefruit and cup
coffee and oatmeal; read NYT Jog the memory: work out
at home: stretches; push ups, walk 15 min treadmill; lifts
weight for an hour with trainer
• Joy of separate Bathrooms
• Light Lunch: banana, yogurt, or a vegetable soup
• Shared passion: go to museums:
• Neue Galerie/ Met/Moma/ Guggenheim
• Stroll mates: walk through Riverside Park 116th street to
96th street
• Family dinner: Denise cooks; Eric cleans up.
Granddaughter and Son and family come by
• In Sync: at 9 to respective studies to work for an hour
"Some people relax by watching TV, my equivalent of TV is
writing”
• We meet in bedroom at 10:30 pm