Antonio Damasio
From Psy3242
http://www.counterbalance.net/stanford/damasio1-body.html
Contents |
Overview
Antonio Damasio, a Portuguese born behavioral neurologist and neuroscientist, is currently a professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California. Before moving to the USC, Dr. Damasio was the head of neurology as well as a professor at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics from 1976-2005. In addition, to being a prominent researcher in his field, Dr. Damasio is also a best selling author of several books. He is the recipient of several awards including the Arnold Pfeffer Prize, the Reenpaa Prize in Neuroscience, Kappers Neuroscience Medal, and the Beaumont Medal
Life and Work
Dr. Damasio studied medicine at the University of Lisbon and conducted research at the Aphasia Research Center in Boston, Massachusetts. Most of his research has been about the neurobiology of the brain and an attempt to understand better the placement of such activities as memory, language, emotion, and decision-making. In particular, Dr. Damasio's research has demonstrated the role that emotions play in decision-making and helped to explain the neural basis for emotions.
Books
Dr. Damasio's books deal with his specific area of interest of emotions and feelings and their locations in the brain. In addition, Dr. Damasio also investigates the relationship between philosophy and neurobiology. His books include:
¢ Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
¢ The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness
¢ Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain
In Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling of the Brain, hypothesizes that biology might provide guidelines for ethics. He writes: feelings are "mental sensors of the organism's interior...joy and sorry and other feelings are largely ideas of the body in the process of maneuvering itself into optimal survival." His other books also deal with the body-mind relationship as a way to understand how to provide better treatment.
Views
According to Dr. Damasio, "Emotions are unlearned reactions to events. When you laugh or cry, it's not a reaction that you have learned...it's a reaction that you share with the rest of humanity and with many non-human species." Through his studies of the neurobiology of feeling and emotion in both healthy and brain damaged individuals, Dr. Damasio has concluded that, because the links between emotions and the brain are close, injuries to specific regions will prevent patients from experiencing specific types of emotions. The argument that emotions are separate from the body, according to Dr. Damasio, is ridiculous.
