Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Eric Kandel Joins NeuroFocus Advisory Board
By Neurofocus, PRNEThursday, March 18, 2010
Columbia University Professor and Noble Laureate for His Contributions to Neuroscience Brings Expertise in Memory Research to World's Leading Neuromarketing Company
BERKELEY, California, March 19, 2010 - NeuroFocus, the world's leading neuromarketing company, announced today
that Nobel Prize laureate Eric R. Kandel, M.D., has joined its Advisory
Board. Dr. Kandel is a winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology
for his seminal contributions to the field of neuroscience. Specifically, he
was recognized with this top honor for his research on the physiological
basis of memory storage in neurons.
Dr. Kandel serves as University Professor of Physiology and Cell
Biophysics, Psychiatry, Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia
University. He was the founding Director of the University's Center for
Neurobiology and Behavior at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. In
addition, Dr. Kandel is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute senior investigator
and is a member of the National Academy of Science.
"NeuroFocus is greatly honored by Dr. Kandel's presence on our Advisory
Board, and we and our clients look forward to benefitting from his
unsurpassed knowledge in the neuroscience field," said Dr. A. K. Pradeep,
Chief Executive Officer of NeuroFocus.
Dr. Kandel's groundbreaking research into the molecular basis of higher
cognitive functions has been central in discovering that learning produces
changes in behavior by adjusting the strength of particular connections
between nerve cells. These discoveries of how cellular and molecular
mechanisms contribute to learning and memory storage have provided key
insights into learned behavior with immense implications for understanding
human cognitive function in health and disease.
He joins a constellation of other world-renowned experts in neuroscience
and business on NeuroFocus' Advisory Board, including Robert Knight, M.D.,
Director of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of
California, Berkeley and a Humboldt Prize winner in Neurobiology. Other Board
members include Dr.'s Gerald Zaltman, Stephen Kosslyn, and Rajiv Lal of
Harvard University; Earl Miller, Ph.D., Picower Professor of Neuroscience at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Ravi Parmeswar, Managing Director,
Global Consumer & Marketplace Insights & Client Advocacy at Citi; Hans-Jochen
Heinze, M.D., Director of the Leibniz Institute of Neurobiology and the
Department for Behavorial Neurology, in Magdeburg Germany; Anna Christina
Nobre, Ph.D., Director of Brain & Cognition Laboratory and the Centre for
Real-Time Brain Imaging at the University of Oxford in England; Leon Deouell,
Ph.D. Professor of Psychology at the Hebrew University; Mark D'Esposito,
M.D., Professor of Neuroscience and Chief Editor of the Journal of Cognitive
Neuroscience, the pre-eminent journal in human brain research; Barry
Herstein, general manager North America and chief marketing officer for
PayPal, and Dr. Adam Gazzaley, director of the Neuroscience Imaging Center at
the University of California, San Francisco.
Dr. Kandel is widely recognized and critically praised for the textbooks
he has helped write such as Principles of Neural Science, which is regarded
as the standard in the field. His autobiography, In Search of Memory: The
Emergence of a New Science of Mind, which was awarded the Los Angeles Times
Book Award, recounts his remarkable life and career achievements. His other
books include Cellular Basis of Behavior: An Introduction to Behavioral
Neurobiology, plus Behavioral Biology of Aplysia: A Contribution to the
Comparative Study of Opisthobranch Molluscs; Molecular Neurobiology in
Neurology and Psychiatry; and Memory: From Mind to Molecules (with Larry R.
Squire).
Among many other awards, Dr. Kandel has been honored with the National
Medal of Science; the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award; the
Gairdner International Award for Outstanding Achievement in Medical Science;
the Wolf Prize; and the Heineken Prize. He is also the recipient of eighteen
honorary degrees.
A graduate of Harvard College and New York University's School of
Medicine, Dr. Kandel trained in Neurobiology at the National Institutes of
Health and in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. In 1974 he joined the
faculty of the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University,
where he organized the neuroscience curriculum and became the founding
director of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior the following year.
About NeuroFocus
NeuroFocus (neurofocus.com) brings advanced neuroscience knowledge
and expertise to the worlds of branding, product development and packaging,
advertising, in-store marketing, and entertainment. NeuroFocus clients
include Fortune 100 companies across dozens of categories, including
automotive, consumer packaged goods, food and beverage, financial services,
Internet, pharmaceutical, retail, and many more sectors. Entertainment
category clients include major companies in the broadcast and cable
television and motion picture industries.
The company leverages Doctorate-level academic credentials in
neuroscience and marketing from the University of California at Berkeley,
MIT, Harvard, Oxford, and other leading institutions, combined with executive
business management and consulting experience. The Nielsen Company is a
strategic investor in NeuroFocus.
Tom Robbins of NeuroFocus Inc., +1-510-526-9882, Mobile, +1-510-367-1920, tom.robbins at neurofocus.com; or Melinda Chan Butts, +44(0)7949010777 (UK), +39-3489980957 (ITALY), melinda at i-linkpr.com, or Daniel de Filippis, +44(0)7766866483 (UK), +39-3337059563 (ITALY), daniel at i-linkpr.com, both for NeuroFocus Europe
Tags: Berkeley, california, denmark, March 19, Neurofocus, Western Europe