“The process of consciousness is the process that allows us to run our lives personally and in society the way we do,” says Damasio. “It’s the thing that gives us […]
Neurologists learned about how emotion originates in the brain from people like Phineas Gage, who had a spike driven into his head. By learning about the specific impairment of a […]
From a neural standpoint, memory structures “are in of themselves rather dumb,” says Damasio. “It’s not that they know anything consciously. What they know is they have a sort of […]
“We do have a measure of control,” says Damasio, “but it is not true that we have full control and it is not true that when we are executing an […]
The USC neurobiologist and novelist speak about various topics on neurology and memory.
Many of the brain’s functions are designed to initiate a response to a detected imbalance. As our bodies strive to maintain homeostasis, our brains send signals that make us do […]
Our main mode of control has to do with our degree of knowledge and our understanding of the world. As we change what we know about the world, we change […]
We have brains because they optimize our bodies’ survival. Meanwhile, the body itself is the border in the translation service that will allow the outside world to come into the […]
An emotion consists of a very well orchestrated set of alterations in the body. Its purpose is to make life more survivable by taking care of a danger or taking […]
While our own personal histories happen one event at a time, our brains make sense of our lives by stringing these events together in an structured way.
The mind allows us to understand what the world is like, but it is consciousness that gives us the subjective vantage to say “I am here, I exist, I have […]
A conversation with the behavioral neurobiologist.
Instead of recording every event in your life, the brain records conjunctions of the occurrence of certain events. Out of the conjunction, it can then replay and reconstruct.