Book description
Steven Rose's The Making of Memory is about just that, in both
its senses: the biological processes by which we humans - and other
animals - learn and remember, and how researchers can explore these
mechanisms. But it is also about much more.
When the first edition of this fascinating book won the Science book
Prize in 1993, the judges described it as 'a riveting read...a
first-hand account by a practicing scientist working at the forefront
of medical research and Rose does not duck the issues which that
raises.'
Now ten years on, research has itself moved forward, and Rose has
taken the opportunity to fully revise the book. But this is more than
mere revision. Where ten years ago he argued the case for research on
memory because it is the most extraordinary of human attributes,
Rose's own research has now opened the doors to a potential new
treatment for Alzheimer's Disease undreamed of a decade ago, and in an
entirely new chapter he describes how this potential breakthrough has occurred.
Steven Rose is Professor of Biology and Director of the Brain and
Behaviour Research Group at The Open University, Visiting Professor in
the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology at University
College London, and, jointly with sociologist Hilary Rose, Professor of
Physic (genetics and society) at Gresham College, London. His previous
books include The Chemistry of Life (1996), Science and Society (with
Hilary Rose) (1973), The Conscious Brain (1973), Molecules and Minds:
Essays on Biology and the Social Order (1988), and The Making of Memory
(1992).
