In various sections in Damasio’s book he discusses people with a particular ailment – they feel limited or no emotion. Often these people start off as conscientious, upstanding members of society – people who can be counted on to provide emotional support to their fellows – but after brain damage they become withdrawn and disinterested […]
I continue my reading of the Damasio book; currently I’m on a chapter discussing the need for the evolution of emotions. It’s an explanation I’ve read in the past (in Damsio’s other books, in Jonah Leher’s “How We Decide”) but it’s still interesting to ruminate on. Before I get into it, let’s be clear what […]
In the past, I’ve mentioned my idea — drawn from various texts — that you can break the experience of pain into multiple components. I define these components as 1) the actual feeling of the pain, the firing of nerve endings etc. 2) your attention to the pain (in the same sense that you can […]
In the past, I’ve mentioned the writings of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. I’ve always enjoyed his work and I just starting reading his third book, “Looking for Spinoza,” which intermingles reflections on the biology of emotion with ruminations on the life of the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. At one point the book discusses the assassinations of […]
One of the more interesting aspects of this Antonio Damasio neuroscience book that I’ve been reading (“The Feeling of What Happens”) is his discussion on how the brain “represents” our surrounding reality. For instance, sound waves vibrate at a certain frequency, enter our ear, and are represented as a C# note. Photons reflect off a […]
I recently published my thought-provoking, award-winning acidlogic article entitled “What Is Emotion?” which analyzes the feeling process and will no doubt propel mankind towards a greater understanding of this complex topic. Much of my analysis — built off the work of neuroscientists and psychologists like Antonia Damasio and William James — is that the core […]
Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio makes an interesting comment in this interview (also found in the December 2010 issue of Discover magazine.) We have past memories that we have inherited through a whole history of evolution before us that in fact have memories of things that our forerunners have been doing and I’m not just talking about […]
It’s been a while since I’ve bored readers with musings prompted by the various neuroscience books I’ve been reading. Lately I’ve been trolling through “Descartes’ Error” by Antonio Damasio. His argument is that separating the mind — the tool we use to reason, feel emotion and generally interpret experience — from the body is incorrect; […]