“Brains are by no means the only game in town; bacteria and plants of course flourish quite well without, and will probably outlive humans. But our ancestors took a different route, building bigger and more complex brains. Within such brains neurons communicate with each other by myriad connections. These fluctuating patterns can form representations of both the external world and the body state of the organism that owns them. Such brains enable their possessors to learn and remember, to recognise the present in the context of the immediate past and the imminent future. To Damasio this means that they are, or possess, selves. In animals with big brains, emotions – mere bodily responses – become translated into feelings, and with feelings, a mind – “a subtle flowing combination of actual images and recalled images in ever-changing proportions” – emerges from the brain. Many large-brained creatures thus have minds, however alien they may be to our own. But consciousness emerges only when – to quote the book’s title – self comes to mind, so that in key brain regions, the representational maps of sensory experience intersect with the encoded experiences of past that self provides. This, enabled by the evolution of language, makes possible autobiographical memory – the narrative of our lives that we humans all possess and which is the basis for consciousness.”
—Steven Rose summarises and reviews Damasio’s latest theory on consciousness and self - Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain by Antonio Damasio - review | Books | The Guardian
