Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

By: Antonio Damasio  

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Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5

Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)

Customer Review: 4 out of 5
Well done - Dr. Damasio's Descartes' Error is a very readable and important contribution to our understanding of how our brain and body work on concert. Written in language accessible to the layman, Damasio provides compelling ideas of the importance of emotion and feeling in the functioning of the human brain. His effective use of diagrams to illustrate the "topography" of the brain and seemingly endless numbers of interfaces add to the books value. I selected this title as part of a study on the neurological basis of decision-making and, as the study has evolved, the role of emotion in intellectual processes. This book provided excellent insights, and I'll keep close-by for reference. Very well-done and highly recommended.

Customer Review: 4 out of 5
Pulls a lot of loose ends together - This is a classic summary of the thinking process that takes us from the old dualist theory to the brain-integrated-with-mind view. It also ventures into newer areas such as the role of emotion in thought. The book also explores the very current topics of self and consciousness. The focus by topic seems somewhat imbalanced and the illustrations are not clear in either composition or printing.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Excellent read on the neurobiology of reason and emotion - Antonio Damasio's book sheds light on the age old belief that "sound decisions [come] from a cool head." The book is very well written, but may be a challenge for those who have had little or no prior introduction to neuroscience. It is a fascinating read, in which one discovers something more about the brain - how it is organize, or how it possibly processes information within - on almost every page.

With regards to elements of organization and style, the book is very well written. The book is broken up into three parts. The first part essentially contains lots of observations; the second part comprises of Damasio's careful development of his somatic-marker hypothesis; the third and final part is full of experimental evidence for the validity of the somatic-marker hypothesis. Throughout the book, Damasio often breaks out into little asides which tie in interesting bits of neuroscience, history, or biology into the topic of conversation. Additionally, Damasio constantly relates ideas to other fields - for example, he ties in the story of Tristan and Isolde when discussing bonding (and love) as they relate to biological regulation.

Without revealing too much about the conclusions/theories drawn about emotion and its interplay with reason, I found it captivating to learn so much about how the brain is hypothesized to make decisions and reason. Damasio takes the time and effort to pull readers through the process of scientific inquiry which begins with initial observations of patients - actually, with the absurd story of Phineas Gage - all the way to a fully formulated and tested hypothesis. I was actually very happy to see that Damasio painstakingly took the effort to guide readers through all the thoughts and clues he had as he developed his hypotheses on the neurobiology of the interaction between reason and emotion. After putting down the book, it is odd to reflect upon how we "normals" are constantly using somatic markers (something like a gut feeling, which we may not even be consciously aware of) to filter our choices and bias/guide us in the decision making and reasoning process.

Additionally, one of the best parts of the book was Damasio's description of an experiment developed by a postdoctoral student of his, Antoine Bechara, in attempting to better study the somatic marker hypothesis. The experiment involves a neatly designed gambling game in which subjects have nothing more than "intuition" or "gut feelings" to guide them in making choices. The setup and results of this experiment are extremely interesting - the difference in how normal people and those with frontal lobe damage make choices is extremely clear in this experiment. It is almost unbelievable that while those who suffer from frontal lobe damage (to specific parts, such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortices) fully understand punishment and reward, their ability to act using knowledge they have and knowledge about future outcomes is extremely impaired. Studying the processes that cease to properly function in these people reveals a significant amount about how "normals" process information and make rational, reasonable choices.

Sifting through some of the other reviews, I noticed that there is one aspect that few, if any, have touched upon about the book that sprung out at me. A lot of the findings in this book, and in neuroscience in general, come from studying those who have damaged brains - in some cases, people were born with disorders/dysfunctions, while in other cases, it was the result of an accident or an operation. A sad but accurate remark by Damasio, that society takes pity on those who have suffered physical injury to their brain, but has no consideration for those who suffer from "behavioral problems," underscores the tragedy of the lives of the many patients that have contributed to the findings in this book. It may be worth rethinking how we approach people who suffer from behavioral problems - it is possible that they aren't suffering from a lack of willpower, but are making involuntary choices that negatively impact them and those around them.

Lastly, a final aspect of the book that readers should watch for is that many of the sections get intricately detailed and complex. I found it helpful to keep in mind the chapter or section heading that I was reading within to keep things in context. It is quite possible that for a better understanding of some of sections, readers may find it beneficial to stop and consult the web or other sources to gain a background on the material in discussion before reading further. That really shouldn't be too much of a damper - even though the material in the book is extremely dense, it makes for an excellent second read!

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Very valuable book - Valuable and worth to read book that presents an interesting point of view on connection between brain and body processes, interconnection between thoughts and feelings. Some parts in the book relatively heavy because of unfamiliar for average person terminology and concepts but there are a lot examples inside that helps to understand information very clearly. As a manager and MBA student I found this book very useful and helpful in my soft skills improvement.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Unifying brain thinkers - Cartesian Dualism, the separation of the physical mind (brain) and the
spiritual mind (soul), pervades our thinking about the nature of thought.
Although Descartes certainly did not originate the idea of some
non-material part of us that somehow oversees and controls our brains,
this notion he promoted lingers even among many hard-core materialists,
fogging up our view of the way the brain really works.
Antonio Damasio, in his excellent book, Descartes' Error, takes out a
giant fan and successfully clears this fog. The book is entertaining and
not highly technical, however it is a serious, well though-out exposition
on the biology of thought that ought to be read by every neuroscientist,
mind-philosopher, neurologist, psychiatrist, psychologist, cognitive
scientist, and AI researcher.

The divisions between these categories of people interested in brains are,
to a large extent, artifacts of a long history of dualistic thinking that
has separated the thought-stuff (Descartes' "res cogitans") from the
squishy, wet, tangible body-stuff ("res extensa"). Damasio tackles this
and a number of other common dualisms, such as reason/emotion,
left-brain/right-brain, analytical/subjective,
brain-controller/body-slave.
Over 100 years ago, the psychologist-philosopher, Williams James realized
the importance of signals from the body in producing emotions:
"What kind of emotion of fear would be felt if the feeling neither of
quickened heart-beat nor of shallow breathing...were present, it is
quite impossible for me to think. (p. 129) "
This under-appreciated concept is greatly strengthened by Damasio's
Somatic Marker Hypothesis, which asserts the importance of a continuous
dialog between the brain and the body. Being a true experimentalist,
Damasio describes how people are emotionally impaired when they are
lacking some component of the systems by which somatic markers are created
in the body and read by the brain. What's more interesting, neurological
cases are described in which this emotional impairment results in serious
problems in the domain of reasoning, planning, and decision-making. Thus,
the emotional, subjective, feeling aspect of our thought processes is
legitimized as having a material substrate, and being a crucial part of
what has traditionally been a separate discipline, that of logic and
rational thought.

"The mind is embodied in the full sense of the term, not just embrained." (p. 118)

Also greatly under-appreciated by neuroscientists and many AI researchers
(but not in this book) is the fact that perception is an active process of
interaction between our brain, our body, and the environment.
"Perceiving is as much about acting on the environment as it is about receiving
signals from it." (p. 225)

In a field where everyone is talking about representations in the brain,
as if memories are written down somewhere in our synapses, we need more
theories that emphasize the dynamic, evanescent nature of thought and
recall. Damasio's "dispositional representations" fit the bill:
"A dispositional representation is a dormant _firing potentiality_ which comes to life when neurons fire, with a particular pattern, at certain rates, for a certain amount of time, and toward a particular target which
happens to be another ensemble of neurons." (p. 103)
I would add, and
Damasio would probably agree, that the "target" keeps moving, e.g., out
into the periphery to the muscles and glands, providing those somatic
markers, and providing a means by which the dispositional representation
can affect the outside world, and thereby have meaning. When we know a
lot more about how neural activity flows across the synaptic landscape, we
may someday be able to see the quasi-static substrate of these dispositional
representations. In the mean time, we must be satisfied rolling the ball
down the ever-changing hillside and watching where is goes.

The book covers a monumental range of topics, even including the
biological substrates of the self and of free will. My only complaint is
a lack of levity. Although warmly written in the first person, including
personal opinions, feelings, and anecdotes, there is no joking around or
silliness here.

By clearly describing numerous examples and theories that support
plausible mechanisms by which brain, body, and environment interact to
produce a unified thinking, feeling, reasoning whole, Damasio contributes
something for all of us, and does much to break down the arbitrary
barriers between our various brain disciplines.

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