Proustian moments

摘要

When Eric Kandel was a boy, his family's home in Vienna was ransacked by the Nazi police. Nearly 70 years later, he can replay the entire scene in his mind, down to the toy car he was playing with when he heard the banging on the front door. Dr Kandel begins his memoir with this story because his family's flight from Austria to America was such a decisive event in his life. But he also uses it to illustrate how the vividness of memory is itself a wondrous thing. By what magic, he asks, can sound waves from a banging door leave a mark on a boy's brain that persists for decades?