Remembering the past is a form of mental time travel; it frees us from the constraints of time and space and allows us to move freely along completely different dimensions.引自第1页
For biologists working on the brain, mind loses none of its power or beauty when experimental methods are applied to human behavior. Like wise, biologists do not fear that mind will be trivialized by a reductionist analysis, which delineates the component parts and activities of the brain. On the contrary, most scientists believe that biological analysis is likely to increase our respect for the power and complexity of mind.
Memory -- the ability to acquire and store information as simple as the routine details of daily life and as complex as abstract knowledge of geography or algebra -- is one of the most remarkable aspects of human behavior. Memory enables us to solve the problems we confront in everyday life by marshaling several facts at once, an ability that is vital to problem solving. In a larger sense, memory provides our lives with continuity. It gives us a coherent picture of the past that puts current experience in perspective. The picture may not be rational or accurate, but it persists. Without the binding force of memory, experience would be splintered into as many fragments as there are moments in life. Without the mental time travel provided by memory, we would have no awareness of our personal history, no way of remembering the joys that serve as the luminous milestones of our life. We are who we are because of what we learn and what we remember.引自第9页
In Grundfest's laboratory I soon appreciated that to understand how the brain functions, I would have to learn how to listen to neurons, to interpret the electrical signals that underlie all mental life. Electrical signaling represents the language of mind, the means whereby nerve cells, the building blocks of the brain, communicate with one another over great distances. Listening in on those conversations and recording neuronal activity was, so to speak, objective introspection.引自第74页
I learned from Popper what for me is the essence of scientific investigation -- how to be speculative and imaginative in the creation of hypotheses, and then to challenge them with the utmost rigor, both by utilizing all existing knowledge and by mounting the most searching experimental attacks. In fact I learned from him even to rejoice in the refutation of a cherished hypothesis, because that, too, is a scientific achievement and because much has been learned by the refutation.
Through my association with Popper I experienced a great liberation in escaping from the rigid conventions that are generally held with respect to scientific research ... When one is liberated from these restrictive dogmas, scientific investigation becomes an exciting adventure opening up new visions; and this attitude has, I think, been reflected in my own scientific life since that time.引自第97页
Whenever I penetrated a cell, I, too, could hear the crack of an action potential. I am not fond of the sound of gunshots, but I found the bang! bang! bang! of action potentials intoxicating. The idea that I had successfully impaled an axon and was actually listening in on the brain of the crayfish as it conveyed messages marvelously intimate. I was becoming a true psychoanalyst: I was listening to the deep, hidden thoughts of my crayfish!引自第108页
What you need to do is find which is the best system to experimentally solve the problem, and as long as it [the problem] is general enough you will find the solution there.
The choice of an experimental object remains one of the most important things to do in biology and is, I think, one of the great ways to do innovative work... The diversity in the living world is so large, and since everything is connected in some way, let's find the best one.引自第144页
