Memory is the primary intellectual function of the higher animals. It is memory that allows them to navigate in space (and so to find food and shelter and to reproduce) and to structure time (when to migrate, when to hibernate).
Georges Chapouthier has dedicated most of his scientific career, in both France and the United States, to the study of the biology of memory. Here, in an accessible but informed manner, he describes the different types of memory and the chemical and behavioural techniques that have enabled scientists to differentiate them.
Finally, he shows the crucial role played by the emotions in the process of memorisation, and he argues that, chemically, memory is the daughter of anxiety.

Georges Chapouthier is a senior research fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the director of a research team at Hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière, in Paris. He is the author of L’Homme, ce singe en mosaïque (2001).