Publication: Daedalus
Publication Date: 22-JUN-06
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Author: Damasio, Antonio ; Damasio, Hanna
Article Excerpt
We spend a good part of our lives attending to the sights and sounds of the world outside of us, oblivious to the fact that we (mentally speaking) exist in our bodies, and that our bodies exist in our minds. (1) This neglect is both good and bad: good when it allows us to let our own physical suffering go undetected, bad when it screens us from the biological roots of our selves. Be that as it may, the body does come to mind, in no uncertain terms, when injury or disease breaks down its integrity and causes pain. The body also comes to mind, somewhat less demandingly, in moments of joy, when physical lightness and ease of function inevitably make us aware of the body.
What we would like to address in this essay, however, is not the obvious fact that the state of our bodies can be conveyed to our minds, but rather the neurological mechanisms that enable this spectacular phenomenon. How can the body, with its myriad physical compartments and complicated operations, show up in our minds and be felt?
The most common perspective on this question assumes that there is a 'mind-body problem,' which is best resolved using the tools of analytic philosophy. Our perspective here, however, is more restricted, focusing instead on the biological scaffolding without which the body certainly cannot be present in the mind. We are convinced, incidentally, that this perspective and its facts are relevant to the mind-body problem and go a long way toward solving it. Elsewhere we have addressed the connection, (2) but here we simply wish to discuss the latest in the nuts and bolts of how the body comes to mind.
In attempting to answer this question, we will use, as a stepping stone, the same assumptions William James made when he tried to explain how we perceive our emotions, a process he thought required a mental representation of the body: perceptions, any perception, occur in the brain; and perceptions of the body include, of necessity, brain processes that depend on a particular object--the body-proper.
James, along with a host of contemporary physiologists, already knew for a fact that there were nerve pathways conducting impulses from the body to the brain. He also had an inkling, given the then-emerging evidence for brain specialization, that the parts of the brain related to bodily perception would be distinct from those linked to visual or auditory perceptions. Today, we have no reason to doubt James's conjecture, and plenty of evidence to show that his account is fundamentally correct.
We have, however, many new developments to report on this score. (3) First, we now know that the details of James's basic arrangement are far more intricate than what might have been imagined a century ago. For example, the body uses chemical signals as well as neural signals to communicate with the brain; and the range of information conveyed to the brain is wider than expected, from the concentration of chemical molecules to the contractions of muscles anywhere in the body.
Second, while the brain does represent, with fidelity, body states that are actually occurring, it can do far more than that: it can also modify the representation of an ongoing state, and, most dramatically, it can simulate body states before they occur or body states that do not occur at all.
Third, the new knowledge has profound implications for our understanding of consciousness and of social behavior.
In what follows, we will address each of these developments in order.
Let us begin by clarifying that whenever we use the term 'body,' we mean 'body-proper,' so as to leave aside the brain. The brain is also a part of the body, of course, but it happens to have a particular status: it...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.
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