ANTONIO DAMASIO
Photo: Luiz Carvalho Resources:
USC College of Letters, Arts and Science
The Kavli Symposia
Public Awareness Lecture:
"Emotion, Feeling and Self: A Neuroscience Framework"
The attempt to understand the phenomena of emotion, feeling and self are as old as philosophy and was part of the early history of the field that became neuroscience. Only recently, however, has the nature of these phenomena become more clear, in good part thanks to neuroscience research. I will review evidence to the effect that emotion and feeling are distinct aspects of a physiological cycle and that each aspect is supported by a distinct neural system with both cortical and subcortical components. I will also suggest that the contribution of the self depends, at its low levels, on the neural machinery used to process emotions and feelings.
