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Vision of the Future (Part 2)

Eric R. Kandel James D. Watson: December 1, 2005; Running Time: 1:44:16

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

If the century just passed was “the province of the gene,” then the next hundred years shall be “the province of the mind,” believes Eric Kandel. Brain science is poised to reveal the biology of conscious and unconscious mental processes involved in perception, emotion, thought and action. There will also be “a revolution in understanding mental illness,” with animal models revealing the “mechanism of pathogenesis.” We shall gain an understanding of the biological underpinnings of personal wellbeing, using imaging to reveal the pathways in the brain involved in joy. Scientists have singled out one gene that in such animals as voles determines whether they will socialize, or act as loners, suggesting the possibility of molecular insight into social and aggressive behaviors. What’s more, says Kandel, neuroscience will suffuse all the disciplines: sociology will have to consider a “biology of free will;” economics must take up the biology of decision and choice; art appreciation will have to account for how sensory information gets processed, such that when “two people look at the same object, one finds it beautiful and the other finds it boring.” And psychology will become indistinguishable from neuroscience, leading to a common base of training for neurologists and psychiatrists.

A contrary James Watson offers a dose of skepticism around the direction of brain research described by his colleagues. In the words of his old partner Francis Crick, “we haven’t found the double helix of the brain and don’t know how to think about it.” Some “gigantic problems” exist, says Watson: How is perceptual information stored; what does it look like; and how does information get pushed from one part of the brain to another? Key to cracking these questions, in Watson’s opinion, will be a deep understanding of brain evolution. He also recommends delving further into the genetic basis of mental disease, which might uncover an underlying defect in neurogenesis -- the growth of new brain cells. Perhaps all mental disease will ultimately be characterized as a “deep learning defect.” Watson is much concerned with “why we lose the ability to learn as we get older.” He believes it must be because “the brain is finite—we can only have so much stored.” But while he plays tennis and reads books partly in the hope that they will expand his mind, Watson also looks to biology for a way “to speed up neurogenesis in adults, and raise IQ.” Part 1 of this panel can be found here.

Lecture Details

Location: Picower Institute

About the Speakers

Eric R. Kandel

University Professor, and Fred Kavli Professor and Director, Kavli Institute for Brain Sciences, Columbia University
Senior Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Kandel, who fled with his family from the Nazi occupation of Austria in 1939, was educated at Harvard University and New York University School of Medicine and began his career at the National Institute of Mental Health. He pursued studies in psychiatry, but soon shifted to neurobiology in an effort to understand the biological underpinnings of psychological phenomena. He came to Columbia in 1974 as professor of physiology and psychiatry and became the founding director of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior in 1975. He is the coauthor, along with Columbia colleagues Thomas Jessell and James Schwartz, of Principles of Neural Science, a widely used neuroscience textbook.

Kandel has received 15 honorary degrees, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences as well as the National Science Academies of German and France. He has been recognized with the Albert Lasker Award, the Heineken Award of the Netherlands, the Gairdner Award of Canada, the Wolf Prize of Israel, the National Medal of Science USA and the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2000.

James D. Watson

Chancellor, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

For proposing the double helical structure of DNA, James Watson and Francis Crick, together with Maurice Wilkins, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962.

While at Harvard, Watson wrote the seminal text, Molecular Biology of the Gene. He has also generated a best-selling autobiographical volume, The Double Helix, and recently published DNA: The Secret of Life.

Watson was a driving force behind the Human Genome Project. Among other honors, Watson was elected in 1962 to the National Academy of Sciences and, in 1977, received from President Ford the Medal of Freedom. Watson received the National Medal of Science in December 1997; the Philadelphia Liberty Medal on July 4, 2000; and the Benjamin Franklin Medal awarded by the American Philosophical Society. Queen Elizabeth II proclaimed him an honorary Knight of the British Empire on January 1, 2002.

About the Host

About the Host

Picower Institute for Learning and Memory

The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT focuses the talents of a diverse array of brain scientists on a single mission: unraveling the mechanisms that drive the quintessentially human capacity to remember and to learn, as well as related functions like perception, attention and consciousness.