"Kandel builds on the work of Gombrich and the psychoanalyst and art historian Ernst Kris -- to compare the painters' rendering of emotion, the unconscious, and the libido with contemporaneous psychological insights from Freud about latent aggression, pleasure and death instincts, and other primal drives. The book also summarizes centuries of research on perception. You'll find dossiers on vision as information processing; the brain's three-dimensional-space mapping and its interpretations of two-dimensional renderings; face recognition; the mirror neurons that enable us to empathize and physically reflect the affect and intentions we see in others. Kandel discusses the scientific evidence that creativity is nurtured by spells of relaxation, which foster a connection between conscious and unconscious cognition." - Adriano

7 April 2012 Jonah Lehrer interviews Kandel regarding his book. Kandel discusses the influence of Carl von Rokitansky throughout all of Viennese Modernism. http://www.wired.com/wiredsc... - Adriano