The Making of Memory

The human brain weighs, on average, just over two pounds, is wrinkled like a walnut and has the colour and something of the consistency of porridge. Yet somehow the interactions of the ten billion cells that comprise it produce our capacity to think, hope, believe, imagine, and also to remember - to learn and recall, perhaps years later, a face, a tune, a poem or a telephone number. Are there molecules of memory? Can we understand the brain best as a computer? What light do diseases of memory shed on its mechanism? What is it, locked into the interactions of the brain cells and the molecules composing them, that carries the memories which make each person unique? Deciphering this, Steven Rose argues, is the key to interpreting the links between brain and mind. In this book he traces the road to a new understanding of memory that he and other researchers have followed, with all its false turnings and misleading signposts. One of the aims of the book is to explore, through a description of the laboratory life of memory researchers, how scientists, in a world not free from political rivalry, ideology and self-deception, nevertheless strive to answer an important and fascinating question.

Combining a richly detailed account of scientists at work with a highly readable explanation of cutting-edge neuroscience, this book offers fascinating new insights on the cellular mechanisms of memory and learning.