The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves

‘[Eric Kandel is] one of the preeminent neuroscientists in the world’ – Sue Halpern, The New York Review of Books

The Disordered Mind is the definitive statement on all we know about the brain and its associated disorders by the eminent Nobel Prize-winning scientist and professor Eric R. Kandel.

Neurological and psychiatric disorders have long been regarded as fundamentally different, depending on whether they appear to affect the brain or the mind. In reality, the brain and the mind are inseparable. Both types of disorder can affect every aspect of brain function: from perception, action, memory and emotion to empathy, social interaction, attention and consciousness.

It is easy to view brain disorders as simply tragic or frightening. However, studying where these functions go wrong provides a window on the workings of the healthy brain, and makes it more likely that scientists and clinicians will be able to develop effective treatments or preventative strategies. As individuals, and as a society, we are also able to better empathise with people with disorders of the mind.

Building on his pioneering research, Eric R. Kandel illustrates how breakthrough studies of brain disruptions can deepen our understanding of thought, feeling, behaviour, memory and creativity, and perhaps in the future will transform medical care and lead to the development of a unified theory of mind.

Eric R. Kandel, M.D., is University Professor and Fred Kavli Professor at Columbia University and a Senior Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He has received 23 honorary degrees and is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences as well as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London. He has been recognized with the Albert Lasker Award, the National Medal of Science and the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2000 for his studies of learning and memory. He is the author of the award-winning books In Search of Memory and The Age of Insight. He is also the co-author of Principles of Neural Science, the standard textbook in the field.