the mapping onto the brain of our experiences was another aspect of this book that i sensed was well done. Later, he moved to the United States as a research fellow at the Aphasia Research Center in Boston. Damasio sees the patterns. i'm fascinated with all things being found out about neurological research. the book is very well organized although the technical terms used kept me from grasping more even as they added gravitas to the book's point of view. They were initially tripped, but ultimately not disappointed. Product details. Three stars only, not for the lack of ideas or content. Those tools do not exist. Important. If Dimasio's writing is any indication, his sex life must be as interesting as live coverage of C-span. A leading neuroscientist explores with authority, with imagination, and with unparalleled mastery how the brain constructs the mind and how the brain makes that mind conscious. Through evolution, such responses become more sophisticated and lead to the development of brains and neurons that can carry out such responses appropriately. Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain | Antonio Damasio | download | Z-Library. New this month: Scandal rocks an elite British boarding school in The Divines. Some of what he writes can be considered wishful thinking, because those stretches do not flesh out the bones with reference to peer-reviewed work. Damasio addresses the age-old philosophical question of where the self resides, and where it comes from. His view entails a radical change in the way the history of the conscious mind is viewed and … I think it encounters the usual limitations as a total philosophical or ontological theory, but it provides good explanations for some of the neuroscience, and certainly richer than behavioural accounts that would reduce to stimulus-response models and more subtle than functionalist accounts that would reduce conscious. You must have 2 or more positive feedbacks to bid; otherwise, unfortunately, I will cancel your bid.. You must pay within 48 hours of auction end. I thought that was such a profound and creative idea—that a stepping stone to human consciousness was the neuron’s imitation of a body cell’s inherent will to survive. And please, again, perceptual indulgence. convergence-divergence regions, consciousness being an evolutionary mechanism for life-regulation). Self Comes to Mind can be a challenging read for those, like myself, with a non-specialist interest in neurology but Dr. Damasio addresses technical issues discretely so that one could simply skip those sections; personally I read through them and benefitted from the effort. Welcome back. 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. ; Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, 2003, etc.) He is brilliant, but if you are unfamiliar with his work, I suggest either The Feeling of What Happens, or Looking for Spinoza. 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. Though it might be a weird choice, after reading it three times I think this is my favorite book. We do this by "mapping" our respective body states. There were quite a few. With vigor, Damasio attacks the mind-body problem (or more specifically the mind-brain problem) of consciousness. Edition 2007. A wonderful read, and a recommended one! I hate to sound infantile, but in a book about neural functions, a single diagram showing the location of the nucleus tractus solitarius might be a slight bit illuminating when your entire theory relies upon its placement in a nueral trinity of awareness. In Damasio's terminology, even single-celled organisms such as bacteria or amoebae have a minimal sense of self, working to preserve their internal integrity against foreign incursion. It is very well written, and is based in what we now know about the human brain, and how it works. It was fun to think of self the way Damasio theorizes. Antonio Damasio has spent the past thirty years researching and and revealing how the brain works. This one is repetitive and lacked scientific depth. by Pantheon, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. (1) It's unclear who the target audience is supposed to be. VERY simply put, he traces the origins of consciousness back to the will to live and to homeostasis, the balance of physical factors that enables an organism to live and reproduce. What makes the images, sounds, and smells arriving at our sense organs, compile a frame of 'experience' that one can be subjective about: that is, sensing our sensing, and being aware of our awareness. Sure, it has some good ideas, but the writing is killing it. s. i'm fascinated with all things being found out about neurological research. Antonio Damasio does an admirable job in hypothesizing neural/biological connections to the seemingly immeasurable existence of self and consciousness. Antonio Damasio has spent the past thirty years researching and and revealing how the brain works. The previous two books that I have read focused on feelings and the body. 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. in perceptual, resonant loops between the ed future are in play. I was disappointed in this book. 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. In making this argument, Damasio is clear that this tie of consciousness to our deepest body core is continually operative in our daily life (i.e., we moderns have not left our body behind in our evolutionary past). Searle tees up this sequence by observing that Hume's Enlightenment era view of the mind and consciousness was … Damasio is both eloquent and scholarly. There were definitely sentences that I got no more out of than "[Brain region] is connected to [brain region] and [brain region] via [brain chemical.]" To begin, when writing a book about how the integration of a multiplicity of sensual perceptions led to the developement of consciousness, please, for the love of pete, use a multiplicity of sensual indulgences to illustrate your point. Damasio is a brilliant cognitive scientist, and I think his other books have been wonderful. Stopped reading at chapter 4. A dark secret spans several... From one of the most significant neuroscientists at work today, a pathbreaking investigation of a question that has confounded philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists for centuries: how is consciousness created? Perhaps most importantly, the "core-self" can be defined by their being a self-known relationship between organism and "object". Even the simplest organisms, those without consciousness, minds, or even brains, have responses to outside stimuli that maintain their homeostasis to permit their continue. This is an exciting book by a wonderful thinker. Some good attempts to be faithful to the approach John Searle recommends in the philosophy of mind of seeing the mind and sense of self as coming primarily from the evolved brain. Download books for free. 'Will give pleasure to anyone interested in original thinking about the brain.Breathtakingly original' Financial Times. His view entails a radical change in the way the history of the conscious mind is viewed and … The critique of oneself by oneself is quite the irony and example of splendid recursive thinking that our brains think all the time. Our brain perceives in patterns. Damasio's case is compelling, lucid, and shrewd, but it won't satisfy anyone who thinks he has a soul. Besides the three traditional perspectives used to study the mind (the introspective, the behavioral, and the … In its current form, it's a mash up of a whole bunch of ideas/findings/reports that Damasio has accumulated in a lifetime, and it's just being dumped on you. i especially appreciated damasio's perspective that consciousness and self begin in the body and not in the mind. So, in Damasio's view the difference between mind and consciousness is all about the self. add in the concepts of self and of consciousness and i'm really a babe in the woods. Finally, with an enormous expansion of memory and neural integration processes, brains/minds were able to transcend the present and establish the "autobiographical self", with an accelerated capability of learning, future planning and decision making, and a dynamic self-ascribed identity of the organism based on rich and vivid emotionally-tagged memories of its own past experiences. This one is repetitive and lacked scientific depth. 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