Antonio R. Damasio Quotes & Sayings

common sense observations of human behavior support a similar dissociation in reasoning abilities which cuts in both directions. We all know persons who are exceedingly clever in their social navigation, who have an unerring sense of how to seek advantage for themselves and for their group, but who can be remarkably inept when trusted with a nonpersonal, nonsocial problem. The reverse condition is just as dramatic: We all know creative scientists and artists whose social sense is a disgrace, and who regularly harm themselves and others with their behavior. The absent-minded professor is the benign variety of the latter type. At work, in these different personality styles, are the presence or absence of what Howard Gardner has called "social intelligence," or the presence or absence of one or the other of his multiple intelligences such as the "mathematical. — Antonio R. Damasio

It is also true that the separate brain units, by
virtue of where they are placed in a system, contribute different
components to the system's operation and are thus not interchangeable. — Antonio R. Damasio

The neural basis for the self, as I see it, resides with the continuous reactivation of at least two sets of representations. One set concerns representations of key events in an individual's autobiography, on the basis of which a notion of identity can be reconstructed repeatedly, by partial activation in topologically organized sensory maps ...
In brief, the endless reactivation of updated images about our identity (a combination of memories of the past and of the planned future) constitutes a sizable part of the state of self as I understand it.
The second set of representations underlying the neural self consists of the primordial representations of an individual's body ... Of necessity, this encompasses background body states and emotional states. The collective representation of the body constitute the basis for a "concept" of self, much as a collection of representations of shape, size, color, texture, and taste can constitute the basis for the concept of orange. — Antonio R. Damasio

Neither anguish nor the elation that love or art can
bring about are devalued by understanding some of the myriad
biological processes that make them what they are. Precisely the
opposite should be true: Our sense of wonder should increase before
the intricate mechanisms that make such magic possible. Feelings
form the base for what humans have described for millennia as the
human soul or spirit. — Antonio R. Damasio

Most of our decision making was shaped by somatic states related to punishment and reward. But — Antonio R. Damasio

Because the brain is the body's captive audience, feelings are winners among equals. And — Antonio R. Damasio

Phineas Gage's case is not the only important
historical source in the effort to understand the neural basis of
reasoning and decision making ... [to understand the effect of] prefrontal damage ... The Hebb-Penfield and Ackerly-Benton shared a number
of personality traits ... They are bereft of a theory of
their own mind and of the mind of those with whom they interact — Antonio R. Damasio

The self is a repeatedly reconstructed biological state. — Antonio R. Damasio

I do not see emotions and feelings as the intangible and vaporous qualities that many presume them to be. Their subject matter is concrete, and they can be related to specific systems in body and brain, no less so than vision or speech. — Antonio R. Damasio

The immune system, the hypothalamus, the ventro-medial frontal cortices, and the Bill of Rights have the same root cause. — Antonio R. Damasio

Leaving out appraisal also would render the biological description of the phenomena of emotion vulnerable to the caricature that emotions without an appraisal phase are meaningless events. It would be more difficult to see how beautiful and amazingly intelligent emotions can be, and how powerfully they can solve problems for us. — Antonio R. Damasio

I sense that stepping into the light is also a powerful metaphor for consciousness, for the birth of the knowing mind, for the simple and yet momentous coming of the sense of self into the world of the mental. — Antonio R. Damasio

The distinction between diseases of "brain" and "mind," between "neurological" problems and "psychological" or "psychiatric" ones, is an unfortunate cultural inheritance that permeates society and medicine. It reflects a basic ignorance of the relation between brain and mind. Diseases of the brain are seen as tragedies visited on people who cannot be blamed for their condition, while diseases of the mind, especially those that affect conduct and emotion, are seen as social inconveniences for which sufferers have much to answer. Individuals are to be blamed for their character flaws, defective emotional modulation, and so on; lack of willpower is supposed to be the primary problem. — Antonio R. Damasio

The popular antidepressant Prozac, which acts by blocking the reuptake of serotonin and probably increasing its availability, has received wide attention; the notion that low serotonin levels might be correlated with a tendency towards violence has surfaced in the popular press. The problem is that it is not the absence or low amount of serotonin per se that "causes" a certain manifestation. Serotonin is part of an exceedingly complicated mechanism which operates at the level of molecules, synapses, local circuits and systems, and in which sociocultural factors, past and present, also intervene powerfully. A satisfactory explanation can arise only from a more comprehensive view of the entire process, in which the relevant variables of a specific problem, such as depression or social adaptability, are analyzed in detail. — Antonio R. Damasio

Perhaps the most indispensable thing we can do as
human beings, every day of our lives, is remind ourselves and others
of our complexity, fragility, finiteness, and uniqueness. — Antonio R. Damasio

WE ALMOST NEVER think of the present, and when we do, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. — Antonio R. Damasio

It is not customary to refer to organisms when we talk about brain
and mind. It has been so obvious that mind arises from the activity
of neurons that only neurons are discussed as if their operation
could be independent from that of the rest of the organism. But as I
investigated disorders of memory, language, and reason in numerous
human beings with brain damage, the idea that mental activity, from
its simplest aspects to its most sublime, requires both brain and body
proper became especially compelling. — Antonio R. Damasio

We all woke up this morning and we had with it the amazing return of our conscious mind. We recovered minds with a complete sense of self and a complete sense of our own existence - yet we hardly ever pause to consider this wonder. — Antonio R. Damasio

The good news, however, is that the self also has made reason and scientific observation possible, and reason and science, in turn, have been gradually correcting the misleading intuitions prompted by the unaided self. Overcoming — Antonio R. Damasio

Somatic markers depend on learning within a system that can connect certain categories of entity or event with the enactment of a body state, pleasant or unpleasant. Incidentally, — Antonio R. Damasio

feel an emotion it is necessary but not sufficient that neural signals from viscera, from muscles and joints, and from neurotransmitter nuclei - all of which are activated during the process of emotion - reach certain subcortical nuclei and the cerebral cortex. Endocrine and other chemical signals also reach the central nervous system via the bloodstream among other routes. — Antonio R. Damasio

When emotion is entirely left out of the reasoning picture, as happens in certain neurological conditions, reason turns out to be even more flawed than when emotion plays bad tricks on our decisions. — Antonio R. Damasio

By now you may have concluded that the conversation was neither
about Descartes nor about philosophy, although it certainly was
about mind, brain, and body. My friend suggested it should take
place under the Sign of Descartes, since there was no way of approaching
such themes without evoking the emblematic figure who
shaped the most commonly held account of their relationship. At
this point I realized that, in a curious way, the book would be about
Descartes' Error. You will, of course, want to know what the Error
was, but for the moment I am sworn to secrecy. I promise, though,
that it will be revealed. — Antonio R. Damasio

Emotions and the feelings are not a luxury, they are a means of communicating our states of mind to others. But they are also a way of guiding our own judgments and decisions. Emotions bring the body into the loop of reason. — Antonio R. Damasio

We use our minds not to discover facts but to hide them. One of things the screen hides most effectively is the body, our own body, by which I mean, the ins and outs of it, its interiors. Like a veil thrown over the skin to secure its modesty, the screen partially removes from the mind the inner states of the body, those that constitute the flow of life as it wanders in the journey of each day. (p.28) — Antonio R. Damasio