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Creates
the
Mind By Antonio R. Damasio
At the start of the new millennium, it is apparent that one question towers above all
others in life sciences: How does the set of processes we call I am firmly in the confident camp: a substantial explanation
mind emerge from the activity of the organ we call brain? The for the mind’s emergence from the brain will be produced and
question is hardly new. It has been formulated in one way or perhaps soon. The giddy feeling, however, is tempered by the
another for centuries. Once it became possible to pose the ques- acknowledgment of some sobering difficulties.
tion and not be burned at the stake, it has been asked openly Nothing is more familiar than the mind. Yet the pilgrim in
and insistently. Recently the question has preoccupied both the search of the sources and mechanisms behind the mind em-
experts— neuroscientists, cognitive scientists and philoso- barks on a journey into a strange and exotic landscape. In no
phers— and others who wonder about the origin of the mind, particular order, what follows are the main problems facing
specifically the conscious mind. those who seek the biological basis for the conscious mind.
The question of consciousness now occupies center stage The first quandary involves the perspective one must adopt
because biology in general and neuroscience in particular have to study the conscious mind in relation to the brain in which we
been so remarkably successful at unraveling a great many of believe it originates. Anyone’s body and brain are observable
life’s secrets. More may have been learned about the brain and to third parties; the mind, though, is observable only to its own-
the mind in the 1990s— the so-called decade of the brain— than er. Multiple individuals confronted with the same body or brain
during the entire previous history of psychology and neuro- can make the same observations of that body or brain, but no
science. Elucidating the neurobiological basis of the conscious comparable direct third-person observation is possible for any-
mind— a version of the classic mind-body problem— has be- one’s mind. The body and its brain are public, exposed, exter-
come almost a residual challenge. nal and unequivocally objective entities. The mind is a private,
Contemplation of the mind may induce timidity in the con- hidden, internal, unequivocally subjective entity.
templator, especially when consciousness becomes the focus of How and where then does the dependence of a first-person
the inquiry. Some thinkers, expert and amateur alike, believe mind on a third-person body occur precisely? Techniques used
the question may be unanswerable in principle. For others, the to study the brain include refined brain scans and the measure-
relentless and exponential increase in new knowledge may give ment of patterns of activity in the brain’s neurons. The naysay-
rise to a vertiginous feeling that no problem can resist the as- ers argue that the exhaustive compilation of all these data adds
sault of science if only the theory is right and the techniques are up to correlates of mental states but nothing resembling an ac-
powerful enough. The debate is intriguing and even unexpect- tual mental state. For them, detailed observation of living mat-
ed, as no comparable doubts have been raised over the likeli- ter thus leads not to mind but simply to the details of living mat-
hood of explaining how the brain is responsible for processes
SLIM FILMS
DIMITRY SCHIDLOVSKY; SOURCE: TOOTELL ET AL., IN JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE, MAY 1988 (left);
cal brain region; and our understanding mind problem mostly reflects ignorance,
of the large-scale systems made up of mul- which limits the imagination and has the
tiple brain regions is also incomplete. We curious effect of making the possible
are barely beginning to address the fact seem impossible. Science-fiction writer
that interactions among many noncon- Arthur C. Clarke has said, “Any suffi-
tiguous brain regions probably yield high- ciently advanced technology is indistin-
ly complex biological states that are vast- guishable from magic.” The “technolo-
ly more than the sum of their parts. gy” of the brain is so complex as to ap-
In fact, the explanation of the physics pear magical, or at least unknowable. The
related to biological events is still incom- appearance of a gulf between mental
plete. Consequently, declaring the con- states and physical/biological phenomena
scious-mind problem insoluble because comes from the large disparity between
HANNA DAMASIO (above and opposite page)
we have studied the brain to the hilt and two bodies of knowledge— the good un-
have not found the mind is ludicrous. We derstanding of mind we have achieved
have not yet fully studied either neurobi- through centuries of introspection and the
ology or its related physics. For example, efforts of cognitive science versus the in-
b at the finest level of description of mind, complete neural specification we have
the swift construction, manipulation and achieved through the efforts of neuro-
BRAIN’S BUSINESS is representing other things. superposition of many sensory images science. But there is no reason to expect
Studies with macaques show a remarkable
fidelity between a seen shape (a) and the shape might require explanation at the quantum that neurobiology cannot bridge the gulf.
of the neural activity pattern (b) in one of the level. Incidentally, the notion of a possi- Nothing indicates that we have reached
layers of the primary visual cortex. ble role for quantum physics in the eluci- the edge of an abyss that would separate,
in principle, the mental from the neural. and others— that constitutes the multi- gaged by a certain mental effort, such as
Therefore, I contend that the biologi- media show we call mind. The second is- relating a word to an object or learning a
cal processes now presumed to corre- sue is the “self” and how we automati- particular face. Investigators can deter-
spond to mind processes in fact are mind cally generate a sense of ownership for the mine how molecules within microscopic
processes and will be seen to be so when movie-in-the-brain. The two parts of the neuron circuits participate in such diverse
understood in sufficient detail. I am not problem are related, with the latter nest- mental tasks, and they can identify the
denying the existence of the mind or say- ed in the former. Separating them is a use- genes necessary for the production and
ing that once we know what we need to ful research strategy, as each requires its deployment of those molecules.
know about biology the mind ceases to own solution. Progress in this field has been swift
exist. I simply believe that the private, per- Neuroscientists have been attempting ever since David H. Hubel and Torsten
sonal mind, precious and unique, indeed unwittingly to solve the movie-in-the- Wiesel of Harvard University provided
is biological and will one day be described brain part of the conscious-mind problem the first clue for how brain circuits repre-
in terms both biological and mental. for most of the history of the field. The en- sent the shape of a given object, by
The other main objection to an un- deavor of mapping the brain regions in- demonstrating that neurons in the prima-
derstanding of mind is that the real con- volved in constructing the movie began ry visual cortex were selectively tuned to
flict between observer and observed almost a century and a half ago, when respond to edges oriented in varied an-
makes the human intellect unfit to study Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke first sug- gles. Hubel and Margaret S. Livingstone,
itself. It is important, however, to point gested that different regions of the brain also at Harvard, later showed that other
out that the brain and mind are not a were involved in processing different as- neurons in the primary visual cortex re-
monolith: they have multiple structural pects of language. More recently, thanks spond selectively to color but not shape.
levels, and the highest of those levels cre- to the advent of ever more sophisticated And Semir Zeki of University College
ates instruments that permit the observa- tools, the effort has begun to reap hand- London found that brain regions that re-
tion of the other levels. For example, lan- some rewards. ceived sensory information after the pri-
guage endowed the mind with the power Researchers can now directly record mary visual cortex did were specialized
to categorize and manipulate knowledge the activity of a single neuron or group of for the further processing of color or
according to logical principles, and that neurons and relate that activity to aspects movement. These results provided a coun-
helps us classify observations as true or of a specific mental state, such as the per- terpart to observations made in living neu-
false. We should be modest about the ception of the color red or of a curved rological patients: damage to distinct re-
likelihood of ever observing our entire na- line. Brain-imaging techniques such as gions of the visual cortices interferes with
ture. But declaring defeat before we even PET (positron emission tomography) color perception while leaving discern-
make the attempt defies Aristotle’s obser- scans and fMR (functional magnetic res- ment of shape and movement intact.
vation that human beings are infinitely onance) scans reveal how different brain A large body of work, in fact, now
curious about their own nature. regions in a normal, living person are en- points to the existence of a correspon-
Reasons for Optimism ANTONIO R. DAMASIO is M. W. Van Allen Distinguished Professor and head of the department
THE AUTHOR
MY PROPOSAL for a solution to the co- of neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine and adjunct professor at the Salk
nundrum of the conscious mind requires Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego. He was born in Portugal and received his M.D.
breaking the problem into two parts. The and Ph.D. from the University of Lisbon. With his wife, Hanna, Damasio created a facility at
first concern is how we generate what I Iowa dedicated to the investigation of neurological disorders of mind and behavior. A mem-
call a “movie-in-the-brain.” This “movie” ber of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American
is a metaphor for the integrated and uni- Academy of Arts and Sciences, Damasio is the author of Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason,
fied composite of diverse sensory im- and the Human Brain (1994), The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Mak-
ages— visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory ing of Consciousness (1999) and Looking for Spinoza (forthcoming).
is no separate spectator for the movie-in- out the traditional dualistic separations of
the-brain. The idea of spectator is con- body/brain, body/mind and brain/mind. MORE TO E XPLORE
structed within the movie, and no ghost- Some observers may fear that by pin- Eye, Brain, and Vision. David H. Hubel. Scientific
ly homunculus haunts the theater. Objec- ning down its physical structure some- American Library (W. H. Freeman), 1988.
tive brain processes knit the subjectivity thing as precious and dignified as the hu- The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul:
A Philosophical Journey into the Brain.
of the conscious mind out of the cloth of man mind may be downgraded or vanish Paul M. Churchland. MIT Press, 1995.
sensory mapping. And because the most entirely. But explaining the origins and Consciousness Explained. Daniel C. Dennett.
fundamental sensory mapping pertains to workings of the mind in biological tissue Little, Brown, 1996.
body states and is imaged as feelings, the will not do away with the mind, and the The Feeling of What Happens: Body and
sense of self in the act of knowing emerges awe we have for it can be extended to the Emotion in the Making of Consciousness.
HANNA DAMASIO