Explorers of the black box : the search for the cellular basis of memory / Susan Allport.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Explorers of the Black Box is a scientific adventure story. The "Black Box" is the brain. The "Explorers" are neuroscientists in search of how nerve cells record memories, and they are as ruthless and dauntless as any soldiers of fortune. The book centers around the early, often-controversial research Nobel Prize-winner Eric Kandel. It takes readers behind the scenes of laboratories at Woods Hole, Columbia, Yale, and Princeton to create an absorbing account of how the brain works and of how science itself works.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

A freelance journalist's provocative report on research on the cellular basis of learning memory. Using microelectrodes to ``talk'' with the cells of simple experimental animals, scientists have concluded that learning involves chemical changes in the junctions between cells or within cell membranes. Allport's discussion of complex biochemical mechanisms will be demanding reading for the nonscientist. Even casual readers, however, will be engrossed by her revealing portraits of two highly competitive neurobiologists. According to Allport, personalities and politics mightily influence who gets funded, who gets published, and who gets the ultimate recognition. Her description of the climate surrounding scientific research will be controversial. Laurie Bartolini, formerly with Lincoln Lib., Springfield, Ill. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

When today's neuroscientists turn from their lab work to discuss distinctions between such terms as ``brain'' and ``mind,'' they betray how mysterious, subtle and indeterminate is their study of the human brain. Allport, herself one of the ``explorers of the black box'' (she has worked at the Massachusetts Woods Hole Marine Biological Lab), makes clear the reasons why there is such excitement in this new field. Psychiatry has gone just so far, while the Pavlovian behaviorism of the past century, itself at an impasse, has given way to an experimental science using astonishing techniques. Allport's history of the study of the brain, from the time of the first Golgi stain (of a slice of tissue) through Adrian's discovery of brain ``spikes'' in 1925 to Eric Kandel's experiments on the sea-snail Alypsia (beginning at Woods Hole in the 1960s), makes wondrous if challenging reading. Students and serious readers will study Allport profitably. (November 17) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Utilizing extensive interviews, Susan Allport reconstructs the history of brain research and profiles leaders in the field. She focuses on the significant neurological contributions of Eric Kandel, a psychiatrist who made major breakthroughs in the 1960s with his research on snails. By studying the large and simple nervous system of the Alpysia, Kandel was able to determine that brain function had a biological, not chemical or electrical, basis. This discovery fostered new data on how the processing of information occurs. A challenging example of incisive scientific journalism. To be indexed. MES. 153.1'2 Memory Physiological aspects / Neurons / Neurophysiology [OCLC] 86-8502

Kirkus Book Review

Science writer Allport has taken on the dual challenge of explaining a frontier area of neuroscience as well as the highly competitive frontiersmen (and women). She succeeds admirably on both counts. First the frontier. In the past few decades, neuroscientists have seized upon species of aplysia--unlovable marine slugs capable of exuding inky bad smells as the test animals of choice. Why? The slug's abdominal ganglion contains only a few thousand super-sized nerve cells. Among the first on board was Eric Kandel, who now presides over a research empire at Columbia University. Kandel has published seminal papers on the nerve cell biochemical and electrophysiological changes he believes underlie habituation (the nerve cell turns off to a repeated stimulus), sensitization (the cell gets more excited with repeated stimulation), and associative learning. Meanwhile, other aplysia camps have cropped up, some spun off from Kandel's lab, some representing early rivals like Daniel Alkon, who has contended and contested with Kandel every step of the way. It appears that a shaky truce was Formed when the principals were confronted with Allport's invasion into the sociology of science--and that, too, she reports with verve. (Why, since The Double Helix and other insider tales, scientists persist in denying the importance of competition is in itself an interesting sociological question Allport discusses.) As for the facts and issues, Allport handles these masterfully. Whether or not findings in marine invertebrates apply to man (another bone of contention), it is clear that the new cell-centered approach is yielding a wealth of molecular-level information on how environmental stimuli cause an individual neuron to change its tune--to adapt, to learn, perhaps even to remember. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.