Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain

Descartes' Error

Professor Antonio Damasio reassesses a history of philosophy and science that has long valued rationality over emotion

Rich in provocative concepts about intelligence, memory, creativity and passion

Damasio is a profound thinker and an elegant writer...Descartes' Error is a fascinating exploration of the biology of reason and its inseparable dependence on emotion

Antonio Damasio is a University Professor, David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Neurology, and director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. Damasio's other books include Self Comes to Mind, Looking for Spinoza and The Feeling of What Happens. He has received the Honda Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, and, shared with his wife Hanna, the Pessoa, Signoret, and Cozzarelli prizes. Damasio is a fellow of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. He lives in Los Angeles.

In the centuries since Descartes famously proclaimed, 'I think, therefore I am,' science has often overlooked emotions as the source of a person's true being. Even modern neuroscience has tended until recently to concentrate on the cognitive aspects of brain function, disregarding emotions. This attitude began to change with the publication of Descartes' Error. Antonio Damasio challenged traditional ideas about the connection between emotions and rationality. In this wonderfully engaging book, Damasio takes the reader on a journey of scientific discovery through a series of case studies, demonstrating what many of us have long suspected: emotions are not a luxury, they are essential to rational thinking and to normal social behaviour.

Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain

Looking For Spinoza

'Looking for Spinoza is exceptionally engaging and profoundly gratifying. Its erudition and wisdom provide a powerful statement that the pursuit of scientific knowledge about the human brain can go hand in hand with an overarching concern for our fellow humans' Nature

Big claims, well made: it is a rare pleasure to pick up such a rigorous and readable book about scientific advance that is so firmly anchored in philosophical history

Virtually all the interesting philosophy today is done, not by professional philosophers, but by scientists like Damasio... The map may be incomplete, but thanks to Damasio we do at least know the principal landmarks

Damasio's book interweaves lucid and fascinating explanations of neurological findings with historical and philosophical ruminations on Spinoza... Rich and informative

There is much in this book to please Damasio's fans. He is a lively and humane writer, and ranges easily across a wide variety of topics

ANTONIO DAMASIO is University Professor, David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Neurology, and director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. Damasio's other books include Descartes' Error; The Feeling of What Happens; and Self Comes to Mind. He has received the Honda Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, and, shared with his wife Hanna, the Pessoa, Signoret, and Cozzarelli prizes. Damasio is a fellow of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. He lives in Los Angeles.

Joy, sorrow, jealousy and awe - these and other feelings are the stuff of our daily lives. Presumed to be too private for science to explain and not to be essential for comprehending human rationality and understanding, they have largely been ignored. But not by the great seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher Spinoza. And not by Antonio Damasio. In this book Dr. Damasio draws on his innovative research and on his experience with neurological patients to examine how feelings and the emotions that underlie them support the governance of human affairs.

The Feeling Of What Happens

Neurophysiology expert, Professor Antonio Damasio, shows how consciousness develops out of mental and physical feeling in this poetic and illuminating book.

The life-changing read of the year... The book is crammed with tiny gems of information with which to reassess how you look at the world and think about yourself

A tour de force...a monumental book...a gem of a work

Compelling...a story told with clarity and pace, unencumbered by unnecessary technical jargon and illustrated with insightful clinical anecdotes

Both Descartes' Error and The Feeling of What Happens are essential reading. They are groundbreaking classics of psychology and neuroscience. These are the books to buy, keep and ponder upon. Do so, and you will be ahead of the ruck by at least a decade

ANTONIO DAMASIO is a University Professor, David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Neurology, and director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. Damasio's other books include Descartes' Error; Self Comes to Mind; and Looking for Spinoza. He has received the Honda Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, and, shared with his wife Hanna, the Pessoa, Signoret, and Cozzarelli prizes. Damasio is a fellow of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. He lives in Los Angeles.

‘The Feeling of What Happens will change your experience of yourself’ New York Times 
 
Where do our emotions come from? What does it mean to be conscious? 
 
At its core, human consciousness is awareness of the feeling, experiencing self, the 'very thought of' oneself. 
 Brilliantly wide-ranging in his scope, leading expert on the neurophysiology of emotions Antonio Damasio illustrates his thesis with fascinating and illuminating neurological case studies that are both stimulating and provocative.

Antonio Damasio

Awareness may be mostly mystery, but Damasio shapes its hints and glimmerings into an imaginative, informed narrative

The marvel of reading Damasio's book is to be convinced one can follow the brain at work as it makes the private reality that is the deepest self

Damasio's most ambitious work yet. It is a lucid and important work

The epicenter of Self Comes to Mind concerns the neurological basis for cognition and the issue of the superposition of a "self' onto the construct which we address as reality. Damasio is both eloquent and scholarly. His command of the themes he approaches is impressive, as is the vigor with which he tackles such recondite issues as the elusive "self," inside the head. A wonderful read, and a recommended one!

In this astonishing work, Antonio Damasio puts his years of investigation into the processes of the brain to open the impenetrable mysteries of self and mind, where all the contradictions of human experience unite in the ultimate unknown, consciousness.

Peter Brook, theater and film director and author of The Empty Space and Threads of Time.

Self Comes to Mind is often an exhilarating read. Not unlike Carl Sagan, Damasio is clearly excited by the findings he describes, and the thrill of discovery shines through his fine, clear prose

I was totally captivated by Self Comes to Mind.In this work Antonio Damasio presents his seminal discoveries in the field of neuroscience in the broader contexts of evolutionary biology and cultural development.This trailblazing book gives us a new way of thinking about ourselves, our history, and the importance of culture in shaping our common future

Damasio makes a grand transition from higher-brain views of emotions to deeply evolutionary, lower-brain contributions to emotional, sensory and homeostatic experiences. He affirms that the roots of consciousness are affective and shared by our fellow animals. Damasio's creative vision leads relentlessly toward a natural understanding of the very font of being

Jaak Panksepp, author of Affective Neuroscience

Lucid, elegantly written, and punctuated by humour... This is an exciting book by a wonderful thinker

Constructing the Conscious Brain

‘Will give pleasure to anyone interested in original thinking about the brain…Breathtakingly original’ Financial Times 
 
The trailblazing investigation of a question that has confounded us for centuries: how is consciousness created? 
 
 
In Self Comes to Mind, world-renowned neuroscientist Antonio Damasio goes against the long-standing idea that consciousness is separate from the body, presenting compelling new scientific evidence that consciousness - what we think of as a mind with a self - is in fact a biological process created by a living organism. His view entails a radical change in the way the history of the conscious mind is viewed and told, suggesting that the brain’s development of a human self is a challenge to nature’s indifference. 
 
 
Groundbreaking ideas and beautifully written, this is essential reading for anyone curious about the foundations of mind and self.

Antonio Damasio

Praise for Self Comes to Mind

Breathtakingly original

Awareness may be mostly mystery, but Damasio shapes its hints and glimmerings into an imaginative, informed narrative

The marvel of reading Damasio's book is to be convinced one can follow the brain at work as it makes the private reality that is the deepest self

Breathtakingly original

Awareness may be mostly mystery, but Damasio shapes its hints and glimmerings into an imaginative, informed narrative

The marvel of reading Damasio's book is to be convinced one can follow the brain at work as it makes the private reality that is the deepest self

Breathtakingly original

Awareness may be mostly mystery, but Damasio shapes its hints and glimmerings into an imaginative, informed narrative

The marvel of reading Damasio's book is to be convinced one can follow the brain at work as it makes the private reality that is the deepest self

Books by Antonio Damasio

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