Zusatztext Gets us a lot closer to the problem of how the brain records experience. The Los Angeles Times Crisp prose. . . . a cross between Hunter S. Thompson and E.O. Wilson or Stephen Jay Gould. Providence Journal A fascinating book."-- Seattle Times [A] compelling ride. Look for it. Remember it. The Oregonian A fascinating portrait of one brilliant! eccentric scientist and an insight into some of the groundbreaking science that seeks to explain memory. San Francisco Book Review "A fun read about some fascinating neuroscience! and! even more importantly! provides a rare look into how science is really done." --Leonard Mlodinow! author of The Drunkard's Walk This is an engrossing story of science and the brilliant! flawed people who make it. Publishers Weekly A stirring account of how important scientific research gets done." Kirkus "Engrossing . . . a book about the truth! and the endless human struggle to find it."--Jonah Lehrer! author of How We Decide "Thrilling . . . a story you won't forget." --David Eagleman! author of Sum Informationen zum Autor Terry McDermott is a former national reporter for the Los Angeles Times and the author of Perfect Soldiers: The 9/11 HijackersWho They Were, Why They Did It. He lives in Southern California. Klappentext A riveting narrative account of a brilliant, rebel scientist and his notorious lab as they unlock the mystery of memory. For decades Gary Lynch sought to uncover what physically happens in the brain when we form a memory. Luckily award-winning journalist Terry McDermott was with Lynch in his lab as his staff worked tirelessly to achieve this groundbreaking scientific discovery. Here with the verve of a novelist, McDermott introduces the cutting-edge science and wild cast of characters that enabled Lynch to reveal the inner workings of the memory machine. He then explains some practical applications of these discoveries: drugs that could possibly cure a wide range of neurological conditions, including ADHD. He also shows where Lynch's sights are now set: on discovering the larger architectural of memory formation. Chapter One The Talking Cure THE ENGRAM Save for Lynch, Lynch Lab was empty the day I arrived, a clear blue winter morning in the last week of December 2004. Outside, the parking lot contained nothing but clean black asphalt and bright white lines. Inside, the double ranks of stainless-steel lab benches were bare and quiet. Much to Gary Lynch's chagrin, every single one of the dozen or so scientists, students, and technicians who worked in the lab had gone on holiday. Lynch's attitude toward other people's vacations could most charitably be described as dim. He worked 365 days a year. Why couldn't they? Especially now. Scientists in Lynch's lab at the University of California, Irvine, had recently developed a technique that Lynch, a neuroscientist who had been investigating the biochemistry of memory for more than thirty years, thought would allow researchers for the first time to visualize a trace of memory; that is, to see a map of the physical changes in the brain that occur when a memory is made. This was not an insignificant undertaking. For at least a century, scientists had been tryingand failingto do exactly what Lynch thought his lab was on the verge of accomplishing: to teach an animal a new skill or experience; to, in other words, expose that animal's brain to something in the exterior world, then look deeply enough into the close, dark, complicated space that is the mammalian brain and say, with certainty, There! Right there! That's it. The thing itself, Lynch sometimes called it, making it sound like a rumored but never- quite-glimpsed spirit in the night. Terry McDermott is a former national reporter for the Los Angeles Times and the author of Perfect Soldiers: The 9/11 Hijackers—Who They Were, Why They Did It. He lives in Southern California.

Klappentext

A riveting narrative account of a brilliant, rebel scientist and his notorious lab as they unlock the mystery of memory. For decades Gary Lynch sought to uncover what physically happens in the brain when we form a memory. Luckily award-winning journalist Terry McDermott was with Lynch in his lab as his staff worked tirelessly to achieve this groundbreaking scientific discovery. Here with the verve of a novelist, McDermott introduces the cutting-edge science and wild cast of characters that enabled Lynch to reveal the inner workings of the memory machine. He then explains some practical applications of these discoveries: drugs that could possibly cure a wide range of neurological conditions, including ADHD. He also shows where Lynch's sights are now set: on discovering the larger architectural of memory formation.

Leseprobe
Chapter One

The Talking Cure

THE ENGRAM

Save for Lynch, Lynch Lab was empty the day I arrived, a clear blue winter morning in the last week of December 2004. Outside, the parking lot contained nothing but clean black asphalt and bright white lines. Inside, the double ranks of stainless-steel lab benches were bare and quiet. Much to Gary Lynch’s chagrin, every single one of the dozen or so scientists, students, and technicians who worked in the lab had gone on holiday. Lynch’s attitude toward other people’s vacations could most charitably be described as dim. He worked 365 days a year. Why couldn’t they? Especially now.

Scientists in Lynch’s lab at the University of California, Irvine, had recently developed a technique that Lynch, a neuroscientist who had been investigating the biochemistry of memory for more than thirty years, thought would allow researchers for the first time to visualize a trace of memory; that is, to see a map of the physical changes in the brain that occur when a memory is made. This was not an insignificant undertaking. For at least a century, scientists had been trying—and failing—to do exactly what Lynch thought his lab was on the verge of accomplishing: to teach an animal a new skill or experience; to, in other words, expose that animal’s brain to something in the exterior world, then look deeply enough into the close, dark, complicated space that is the mammalian brain and say, with certainty, “There! Right there! That’s it.” “The thing itself,” Lynch sometimes called it, making it sound like a rumored but never- quite-glimpsed spirit in the night.

Such a physical trace of memory is commonly called an engram. Karl Lashley, a famed American psychologist, had popularized the term in the mid-twentieth century and had devoted a significant portion of his career to pursuing it. His search had been exhaustive and, in the end, fruitless.

“This series of experiments has yielded a good bit of information about what and where the memory trace is not,” Lashley wrote. “It has discovered nothing directly of the real nature of the engram. I sometimes feel, in reviewing the evidence on the localization of the memory trace, that the necessary conclusion is that learning just is not possible. It is difficult to conceive of a mechanism that can satisfy the conditions set for it. Nevertheless, in spite of such evidence against it, learning sometimes does occur.”

The history of memory research since Lashley had been rife with heated disagreements about whether such a thing as an engram actually existed, about whether such a thing could actually be seen, about what such a thing would look like if it did exist and could be seen, about where it would be, and, especially, about what did or did not occur inside the brain cells, called neurons, that would cause such a thing to exist. If, that is, it did.

Of course, Lashley’s original impulse had been right. It had to be. If memory left no mark, then there could be no such thing as memory, no such thing as a personal past, no learning, no store of intimate and …