Antonio Damasio ‘Self comes to mind: Constructing the conscious brain’
Wereldbibliotheek, 2010
'Self comes to mind'
Damasio's 'Self comes to mind' is an innovative book. De neurologist wrote schreef ook 'Descartes' error - Emotion, reason and the human brain' (1994), 'The feeling of what happens - Body and emotions in the making of consciousness' (1999) en 'Looking for Spinoza - Joy, sorrow and the feeling brain' (2003). 'Self comes to mind' is quite technical because it contents much of Damasio's own research from his neurological clinic. Based on his research he identifies very specific brain areas and their functions. Areas and functions that are specific for human beings. The areas of Coornherts 'spark of the divine light'; the conscious thinking of the human. Based on his research Damasio puts that there is more 'free will' than he had supposed before (see right site).
Although the book is quite technical, it can be read very well by someone who is not a neuroscientist when one leaves the technical names. The book can be related to Spinoza's early work 'Treatise on the improvement of the mind', in which Spinoza describes how he will make a life-journey to dicover the world and on what he will aim his attention most (our own nature as a human and of Nature, the whole world, just as much as is necessary). Damasio gives insight from the most recent developments in neuroscience (2010) in the impact and interaction of different brainparts. Anno 2013 this continues in neuroscience in the attention for the flexibility in human(s): besides 'we are our brain' (D. Swaab) stands 'We become our brains'.
Summary of 'Self comes to mind'
One can't really say there is a center in the brain. Not this or that center is the boss. There is a constant interplay going on in which the whole body plays a role. And through the body the environment. Connections with electric pulses are quickly made and coordinated.
Allready simple animals, even plants, strive for 'survival' of itself and/or of the species and do have systems for this, generally homeostatic systems. The brain-tame plays the head role in the homeostase. The systems can react in interaction with experiences with the environment. These systems work the way that there is a homeostatic benchmark together with a system which in case of too big a deviation, it makes the body to develop counter feedbacks. In simple animals this works automatically . This automatic reactions develop from young by the interaction of these systems with the environment. Specific knowledge about the environment is fixed in the animal connected to the homeostatic systems. Response patterns of animals and people are similar, also in facial expressions. Certain facial expressions of animals look alike those which belong to human emotions. Emotions can be considered as a component of the automatic pilot of people. What has been joined to positive emotions, one tends to look for; what has been connected to negative emotions one tends to avoid. (This is also to be found in the work of Spinoza).
In the course of the evolution one can see in certain animals already a certain beginning of what has been developed in people to a larger scale and complexity. Human beings fix experiences in autobiographical images. Beside the automatic response to external pivots people develop a system for it on the basis of the autobiographical data, that distinguishes itself so much of emotions that Damasio have a separate word: feelings. The difference with emotions is that feelings don't have to lead directly to action like is the case at emotions. They have a slower-working effect.
The fact that people developed those, did open a number of possibilities:
1 it enables to imagine oneself in another person:
2. people can as a result, because the autobiographical memory has developed more than animals, plan ahead for a longer period and are able to have more plans in interaction with others.
If one awakes, there is (excluding exceptions) consciousness. Is there a spot where the consciousness is located? A spot which coincides with the feeling to be his/hers own `I'? To his own stupefaction Damasio finds such a spot: in the posteromedial cortices (PMC). For someone who is not a neuroscientist such a denomination says little, but of importance is to understand where the spot has been located with respect to other brainfunctions. The brain exists of 1. the old brainparts, the senior is the brain-tame, therefore the spot where homeostatic processes have been localised and 2. the newer parts, the lord cortex, with to the front the prefrontal lobes.
In this specific area the thinking and planning is localised. Here many experiences are stored. In between are localised a number of intermediating functions, which form a in-between-station to the rest of the body. The PMC are localised in the middle of the passage areas of the brain near to the areas of older date, therefore nearer to the brain-tame then to the prefrontal cortex (the planning area).