Today, we had our first Neuroscience Journal Club of the semester. Though no science was discussed, we did begin brainstorming for Brain Awareness Week 2010; it’s an international program promoting neuroscience and the field’s pursuit to eradicate neurodegenerative diseases  and substance abuse and psychiatric disorders. Through this brainstorming, we’ve decided to have a movie night in the department (mainly to use the department’s new Blue Ray) and show the recent documentary on the pioneer of the molecular and cellular mechanisms of learning and memory: Dr. Eric Kandel, a neuroscientist of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a Nobel Prize Laureate. The movie, appropriately named “In Search of Memory” is a Hollywood version of his eloquently written book also titled In Search of Memory. Dr. Kandel’s narratives of  his childhood in Nazi-occupied Austria are utilized as  a backbone to explain the molecular/cellular mechanisms of remembering and  forgetting. He also provides a  time line of the ground-breaking neuroscience researchers/experiments from the early 20th century, most of whom became his colleagues. Besides the information presented in the book, most of which was novel to me, the most salient advice from his autobiography regards the importance of collaboration.