The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves

Written by Eric R. Kandel

Narrated by David Stifel

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 disorders 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Little, Brown (Hachette UK) Audio
• Release date: Sep 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781472143389

Eric R. Kandel

Eric R. Kandel is the University Professor and Fred Kavli Professor at Columbia University and a Senior Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his studies of learning and memory, he is the author of In Search of Memory, a memoir that won a Los Angeles Times Book Prize; The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present, which won the Bruno Kreisky Award in Literature, Austria’s highest literary award; and Reductionism in Art and Science: Bridging the Two Cultures, a book about the New York School of abstract art. He is also the coauthor of Principles of Neural Science, the standard textbook in the field.

Reviews for The Disordered Mind

[steve02476 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Discussion of how the brain works, illustrated by examples of what happens when it doesn’t work properly. Lots of history too, about how the brain has been understood in the past. The author certainly knows what he’s talking about - he won a Nobel Prize for his work on brain function. Clearly written for a lay audience.

[lisapeet · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was dry as dust throughout—very small proportion of narrative to medical terms and descriptions of brain workings, and I think he made one joke about 20 pages from the end—but at the same time I found it fascinating and it held my attention all the way through, an interesting phenomenon right there. I will say Kandel's writing was very accessible, and none of it was hard to parse. I hope I retain at least a little of it, because there's a LOT of information there about brains, brain functions, genes, synapses, genetics, all that good stuff.