Even though I had long been taught that the genes of the brain are the governors of behavior, the absolute masters of our fate, our work showed that, in the brain as in bacteria, genes are also servants of the environment. ...An environmental stimulus... activates modulatory interneurons that release serotonin. The serotonin acts on the sensory neuron to increase cyclic AMP and to cause protein kinase A and MAP kinase to move to the nucleus and activate CREB. The activation of CREB, in turn, leads to the expression of genes that changes the function and the structure of the cell.
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About Eric Kandel
Eric Kandel was a contemporary American neuropsychiatrist. Eric Richard Kandel is an Austrian-born American medical doctor who specialized in psychiatry. He was also a neuroscientist and a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. Read more on Wikipedia →