NEUROSCIENCE AND PSYCHOLOGY

When I entered the field in 1957, it was a very small and very primitive discipline.
One of the characteristic features was that its three main subdisciplinesthe
anatomy of the brain, the biochemistry of the brain, and the physiology of the
brainwere all separate fields. One of the early strides forward occurred when
Harvards Stephen Kuffler launched the field of neurobiology, a discipline that
combined all three of them into a coherent whole.

The second step forward was the bringing together of neurobiology and
psychologythe science of the brain and the science of the mindinto cognitive
neuroscience. We did the first experiments on a simple level doing this in terms
of Aplysia, where we combined behavioral and cellular analyses. But people were
beginning to do this in flies, in rats, and in monkeysmore complicated
organisms.

And a final step in the evolution of field was the merger of molecular biology and
cognitive neuroscience, to develop a new science of the minda new approach to
thinking about the brain and its mental functioning.

I think the major change that has occurred during my career is the fact that
people no longer study the nervous system simply as a set of abstract
subsystems, without recourse to behavior. They now almost invariably study the
nervous system in relationship to one or another behavior. And the realization on
the part of psychologists, most of whom, of course, were there and knew this, that
all mental processes come from the brain and that neuroscience and psychology
are really different sides of the same coin.

Eric Kandel is a professor at Columbia University in New York, and a

Howard Hughes Medical Institute Senior Investigator.

October 1, 2011