Public Lecture by Nobel Laureate Professor Eric Kandel from the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University on 'The Biological Basis of Memory'.

1pm on Wednesday 4th February
The Maidment Theatre.Public Lecture by Nobel Laureate Professor Eric Kandel from the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University on 'The Biological Basis of Memory'.

1pm on Wednesday 4th February
The Maidment Theatre.I'm writing to let you know that Nobel Laureate
Professor Eric Kandel from the Center for
Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University
will be giving a public lecture in the Maidment
Theatre on Wednesday this week, entitled "The
biological basis of memory".

Together with two colleagues, Professors Arvid
Carlsson and Paul Greengard, Professor Kandel
received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2000
"for his discoveries of how the efficiency of
synapses can be modified, and which molecular
mechanisms take part."

Professor Kandel's discoveries include the
molecular mechanisms which lie under the
acquisition of memory, both short and long-term.
In the mid 1970s, his team discovered the
importance of the neurotransmitters to the
memory process. Their results showed that
serotonin triggered a series of steps in which a
chemical reaction strengthened the electrical
connections between neurons in the brain for
several minutes - the foundation of short-term
memory.

Professor Kandel later found genes which appear
vital in the conversion of short to long-term
memory and his work has potential to unravel the
reason why memory is lost in conditions such as
Alzheimer's disease.

Within the past year he has made dramatic findings
relating to prion type proteins (implicated in "mad
cow disease") to the processes of memory - the
first suggestion of the biological role of prions
in normal function.

His lecture, designed to appeal to a general audience,
will encompass discussion of the many types of
memory and how the brain functions in regard to that
most critical of processes.

Professor Kandel will speak at 1PM on Wednesday
4th February, in the Maidment Theatre.

Tom Barnes
Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research)
University of Auckland