Antonio Damasio (Portuguese:António Damásio; born 25 February 1944) is a Portugueseneuroscientist. He is currently the David Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience, as well as Professor of Psychology, Philosophy, and Neurology, at theUniversity of Southern California, and, additionally, an adjunct professor at theSalk Institute.[1] He was previously the chair of neurology at the University of Iowa for 20 years.[2] Damasio heads theBrain and Creativity Institute, and has authored several books. Damasio's research in neuroscience has shown that emotions play a central role in social cognition and decision-making.[3]
During the 1960s, "Damasio studied medicine at theUniversity of Lisbon Medical School, where he also did his neurological residency and completed his doctorate in 1974."[4] "For part of his studies, he researchedbehavioral neurology under the supervision ofNorman Geschwind of the Aphasia Research Center in Boston."[4]
Damasio's main field isneurobiology, especially the neural systems which underlie emotion, decision-making, memory, language and consciousness.
Damasio in 2008 (2nd from right)
Damasio formulated thesomatic marker hypothesis,[5] a theory about how emotions and their biological underpinnings are involved in decision-making (both positively and negatively, and often non-consciously). Emotions provide the scaffolding for the construction ofsocial cognition and are required for the self processes which undergird consciousness.[citation needed] "Damasio provides a contemporary scientific validation of the linkage between feelings and the body by highlighting the connection between mind and nerve cells ... this personalized embodiment of mind."[6]
The somatic marker hypothesis has inspired manyneuroscience experiments carried out in laboratories in the U.S. and Europe, and has had a major impact in contemporary science and philosophy.[7] Damasio has been named by theInstitute for Scientific Information as one of the most highly cited researchers in the past decade. Current work on the biology ofmoral decisions,neuro-economics,social communication, and drug-addiction, has been strongly influenced by Damasio's hypothesis.[citation needed] An article published in the Archives of Scientific Psychology in 2014 named Damasio one of the 100 most eminent psychologist of the modern era. (Diener et al.Archives of Scientific Psychology, 2014, 2, 20–32). The June–July issue ofSciences Humaines included Damasio in its list of 50 key thinkers in the human sciences of the past two centuries.
Damasio also proposed that emotions are part ofhomeostatic regulation and are rooted in reward/punishment mechanisms. He recoveredWilliam James' perspective on feelings as a read-out of body states, but expanded it with an "as-if-body-loop" device which allows for the substrate of feelings to be simulated rather than actual (foreshadowing the simulation process later uncovered bymirror neurons). He demonstrated experimentally that theinsular cortex is a critical platform for feelings, a finding that has been widely replicated, and he uncoveredcortical andsubcortical induction sites for human emotions, e.g. inventromedial prefrontal cortex andamygdala.[8] He also demonstrated that while the insular cortex plays a major role in feelings, it is not necessary for feelings to occur, suggesting that brain stem structures play a basic role in the feeling process.[9]
Damasio has continued to investigate the neural basis of feelings and demonstrated that although the insular cortex is a major substrate for this process it is not exclusive, suggesting that brain stem nuclei are critical platforms as well.[10] He regards feelings as the necessary foundation of sentience.[11]
In another development, Damasio proposed that the cortical architecture on which learning and recall depend involves multiple, hierarchically organized loops ofaxonal projections that converge on certain nodes out of which projections diverge to the points of origin of convergence (theconvergence-divergence zones). This architecture is applicable to the understanding ofmemory processes and of aspects of consciousness related to the access of mental contents.[12]
According to theUniversity of Iowa's Department of Neurology's website, "Damasio's research depended significantly on establishing the modern human lesion method, an enterprise made possible byHanna Damasio's structuralneuroimaging/neuroanatomy work complemented by experimental neuroanatomy (with Gary Van Hoesen and Josef Parvizi), experimental neuropsychology (with Antoine Bechara, Ralph Adolphs, andDan Tranel) andfunctional neuroimaging (with Kaspar Meyer, Jonas Kaplan, and Mary Helen Immordino-Yang)."[4] The experimental neuroanatomy work with Van Hoesen and Bradley Hyman led to the discovery of the disconnection of the hippocampus caused by neurofibrillary tangles in theentorhinal cortex of patients with Alzheimer's disease.[13]
As a clinician, he and his collaborators have studied and treated disorders ofbehaviour and cognition, andmovement disorders.
In 2013, the Escola Secundária António Damásio was dedicated in Lisbon.
Damasio says he writes in the belief that "scientific knowledge can be a pillar to help humans endure and prevail."[16] He is married toHanna Damasio, a prominent neuroscientist and frequent collaborator and co-author, who is a professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California and the director of the Dornsife Neuroimaging Center.
In 2017, he was designated member of the Council of State ofPortugal, replacing Antonio Guterres, the 9th Secretary-General of the United Nations. Damasio additionally serves on the board of directors of theBerggruen Institute, and sits on the jury for theBerggruen Prize for Philosophy.[17][18]
Damasio's books deal with the relationship between emotions and their brain substrates. His 1994 book,Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain, won theScience et Vie prize, was a finalist for theLos Angeles Times Book Award, and is translated in over 30 languages. It is regarded as one of the most influential books of the past two decades.[19]
His second book,The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, was named as one of the ten best books of 2001 by theNew York Times Book Review, aPublishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, aLibrary Journal Best Book of the Year, and has over 30 foreign editions.[citation needed] On the basis of a single-case experiment, Damasio suggested emotions belong to the automatic vital processes of the body and thus can be recognized by a person without any form of memory.[20] InThe Feeling of What Happens, Damasio laid the foundations of the "enchainment of precedences": "the nonconsciousneuralsignaling of an individual organism begets theprotoself which permits core self andcore consciousness, which allow for an autobiographical self, which permitsextended consciousness. At the end of the chain,extended consciousness permits conscience.[21][22]
In 2003, this work was followed by the publication ofLooking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. In it, Damasio suggested that the philosopherBaruch Spinoza's thinking foreshadowed discoveries in biology and neuroscience views on the mind-body problem and that Spinoza was a protobiologist.
Damasio's fourth book,Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain suggests that the self is the key to conscious minds and that feelings are the basic elements in the construction of the protoself and core self. The book received the Corinne International Book Prize.[23][24]
Damasio AR, Grabowski TJ, Bechara A, Damasio H, Ponto LL, Parvizi J, Hichwa RD (2000). "Subcortical and cortical brain activity during the feeling of self-generated emotions".Nature Neuroscience.3 (10):1049–1056.doi:10.1038/79871.PMID11017179.S2CID3352415.
Damasio AR. (1996). "The somatic marker hypothesis and the possible functions of the prefrontal cortex".Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.351 (1346):1413–1420.doi:10.1098/rstb.1996.0125.PMID8941953.S2CID1841280.
Anderson SW, Bechara A, Damasio H, Tranel D, Damasio AR (1999). "Impairment of social and moral behaviour related to early damage in human prefrontal cortex".Nature Neuroscience.2 (11):1032–1037.doi:10.1038/14833.PMID10526345.S2CID204990285.
^abc"History".Department of Neurology. Retrieved2023-09-29.
^Damasio AR. "The somatic marker hypothesis and the possible functions of the pre-frontal cortex".Transactions of the Royal Society. (London) 351:1413–1420. 1996.
^Lara Trout.The Politics of Survival (2010). p. 74.
^Damasio AR, Grabowski TJ, Bechara A, Damasio H, Ponto LLB, Parvizi J, Hichwa RD. Subcortical and cortical brain activity during the feeling of self-generated emotions"Nature Neuroscience 3:1049–1056. 2000
^Shackleton-Jones, Nick (2019-05-03).How people learn: designing effective training to improve employee performance. London, United Kingdom.ISBN978-0-7494-8471-2.OCLC1098213554.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Damasio AR. Time-locked multiregional retroactivation: a systems level proposal for the neural substrates of recall and recognition"Cognition 33:25–62. 1989
^Hyman B, Van Hoesen GW, Damasio A, Barnes C. Alzheimer's disease: cell-specific pathology isolates the hippocampal formation"Science 225:1168–1170. 1984
^Shackleton-Jones, Nick (2019-05-03).How people learn: designing effective training to improve employee performance. London, United Kingdom.ISBN978-0-7494-8471-2.OCLC1098213554.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
.jpg)
.jpg)
