Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain » (Unabridged, 10 CDs, 11 hrs. 35 min.)

Antonio Damasio is an internationally recognized leader in neuroscience. Since 2005 he is the director of the USC's Brain and Creativity Institute. Prior to that he was M.W. Van Allen Professor and head of neurology at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. Damasio's books include Descartes' Error: Emotion,
Reason and the Human Brain, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, named one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, and Looking for Spinoza: Joy Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain.

Self Comes to Mind is a nuanced and original chronicle of the evolution of the human brain. It reveals how the brain's development of a self becomes a challenge to nature's indifference and opens the way for the appearance of culture, a radical break in the course of evolution.

Damasio views brain development through the lens of biological evolution -- starting with the simplest organisms that exhibit elaborate life regulation devices but do not require brains. The arrival of neurons, in some ways no different from other body cells, but also possessed of the unique ability to transmit and receive messages, allows neurons to organize themselves in complex circuits and networks, networks that serve to represent events occurring in the body, influence the function of other cells, even their own function. In this framework, the distinction between body and brain is blurred -- the neurons that make up the brain and eventually generate the mind are body cells and are perpetually connected to the body. Neurons are the producers of mind states. And in the increasing complexity of the patterns in which neurons organize themselves is to be found at once the mystery and the clues to the myriad ways in which the brain operates, manages life and controls human behavior in ways that we are only beginning to understand.

The systems of neurons that govern life in the interior of a body - the process of homeostasis - are first assisted by reflex-like dispositions, and eventually by images, the basic ingredient of minds. But the flexibility and creativity of the human mind do not emerge from images alone. They require images to create a protagonist, a self capable of reflection. Once self comes to mind, the devices of reward and punishment, drives and motivations, and emotions, which have been present all along in at earlier evolutionary stages, can be controlled by an autobiographical self, capable of personal reflection and deliberation. The reflective self becomes a rebellious apprentice to nature's indifferent sorcerer. It uses expanded memory, language, and reasoning to create the very possibility of culture.

This book is a pioneering synthesis of the author's original work over 30 years that attempts to explain how we became fully human--a work that, like Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, will be read for generations.

The Barnes & Noble Review

Antonio Damasio has a remarkable scientific imagination and an admirable literary style. The combination makes for fascinating reading. From the clinical data and the neuropsychological experimental work that has gathered both pace and precision in recent years, he draws compelling insights, forming a map of possibilities about the nature of that ultimate mystery, consciousness. He writes with such flair and confidence that it is almost as if he makes the mystery dissolve into knowledge before our eyes.

PART I STARTING OVER

1 Awakening 3

Goals and Reasons

Approaching the Problem

The Self as Witness

Overcoming a Misleading Intuition

An Integrated Perspective

The Framework

A Preview of Main Ideas

Life and the Conscious Mind

2 From Life Regulation to Biological Value 31

The Implausibility of Reality

Natural Will

Staying Alive

The Origins of Homeostasis

Cells, Multicellular Organisms, and Engineered Machines

Biological Value

Biological Value in Whole Organisms

The Success of Our Early Forerunners

Developing Incentives

Connecting Homeostasis, Value, and Consciousness

PART II WHAT'S IN A BRAIN THAT A MIND CAN BE?

3 Making Maps and Making Images 63

Maps and Images

Cutting Below the Surface

Maps and Minds

The Neurology of Mind

The Beginnings of Mind

Closer to the Making of Mind?

4 The Body in Mind 89

The Topic of the Mind

Body Mapping

From Body to Brain

Representing Quantities and Constructing Qualities

Primordial Feelings

Mapping Body States and Simulating Body States

The Source of an Idea

The Body-Minded Brain

5 Emotions and Feelings 108

Situating Emotion and Feeling

Defining Emotion and Feeling

Triggering and Executing Emotions

The Strange Case of William James

Feelings of Emotion

How Do We Feel an Emotion?

The Timing of Emotions and Feelings

The Varieties of Emotion

Up and Down the Emotional Range

An Aside on Admiration and Compassion

6 An Architecture for Memory 130

Somehow, Somewhere

The Nature of Memory Records

Dispositions Came First, Maps Followed

Memory at Work

A Brief Aside on Kinds of Memory

A Possible Solution to the Problem

More on Convergence-Divergence Zones

The Model at Work

The How and Where of Perception and Recall

PART III BEING CONSCIOUS

7 Consciousness Observed 157

Defining Consciousness

Breaking Consciousness Apart

Removing the Self and Keeping a Mind

Completing a Working Definition

Kinds of Consciousness

Human and Nonhuman Consciousness

What Consciousness is Not

The Freudian Unconscious

8 Building a Conscious Mind 180

A Working Hypothesis

Approaching the Conscious Brain

Previewing the Conscious Mind

The Ingredients of a Conscious Mind

The Protoself

Constructing the Core Self

The Core Self State

Touring the Brain as It Constructs a Conscious Mind

9 The Autobiographical Self 210

Memory Made Conscious

Constructing the Autobiographical Self

The Issue of Coordination

The Coordinators

A Possible Role for the Posteromedial Cortices

The PMCs at Work

Other Considerations on the Posteromedial Cortices

A Closing Note on the Pathologies of Consciousness

10 Putting It Together 241

By Way of Summary

The Neurology of Consciousness

The Anatomical Bottleneck Behind the Conscious Mind

From the Ensemble Work of Large Anatomical Divisions to the Work of Neurons

When We Feel Our Perceptions

Qualia I

Qualia II

Qualia and Self

Unfinished Business

PART IV LONG AFTER CONSCIOUSNESS

11 Living with Consciousness 267

Why Consciousness Prevailed

Self and the Issue of Control

An Aside on the Unconscious

A Note on the Genomic Unconscious

The Feeling of Conscious Will

Educating the Cognitive Unconscious

Brain and Justice

Nature and Culture

Self Comes to Mind

The Consequences of a Reflective Self

Appendix 299

Notes 319

Acknowledgments 343

Index 345