António R. Damásio (b. 1944, Lisbon, Portugal) physician and neurologist, he is M.W. Van Allen Professor and Head of Neurology at the University of Iowa Medical Center. Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Besides being a well-known researcher in several areas of the neurosciences, he is a best-seller author of science books for the general public.

Damasio studied medicine at the University of Lisbon Medical School in Portugal, where he did also his medical residency rotation and completed his doctorate. Later, he moved to the United States as a research fellow at the Aphasia Research Center in Boston. His early work on cognitive neuroscience was done under the the supervision of Norman Geschwind .

As a researcher, Dr. Damasio's main interest is the neurobiology of the mind, especially neural systems which subserve memory, language, emotion, and decision-making. As a clinician, he and his collaborators study and treat the disorders of behavior and cognition, and movement disorders .

As a science writer, Damasio's books deal with the relationship between emotions and feelings, and what are their basis in the brain. His 1994 book, "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain," was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award . His second book, "The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness," was named as one of the ten best books of 2001 by The New York Times Book Review , a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, a Library Journal Best Book of the Year, and has eighteen foreign editions. Damasio's most recent book, "Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain," was published in 2002. In it, Damasio explores philosophy and its relations to neurobiology, suggesting that it might provide guidelines for human ethics.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, and European Academy of Arts and Sciences . Damasio has received many awards including the Kappers Neuroscience Medal, the Beaumont Medal from the American Medical Association and the Reenpaa Prize in Neuroscience. He is also in the editorial board of many of the most important journals in the field, Learning and Memory (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory); Journal of Neuroscience; Transactions of the Royal Society; Consciousness and Cognition; Neuroscience News; The Neuroscientist; Learning and Memory; Human Brain Mapping; European Neurology; Cognitive Brain Research; Cerebral Cortex; Brain and Cognition and Brain and Behavioral Sciences.

Prof. Damasio is married to Dr. Hanna Damasio , his colleague and co-author of several works.

Bibliography

• Descartes' Error : Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Pan Macmillan, April 1995, (ISBN 0380726475)
• The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, Harvest Books, October 2000 (ISBN 0156010755)
• Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, Harcourt, February 2003 (ISBN 0151005575)

See Also

• Cognitive neuropsychology
• Embodied philosophy
• Embodiment
• Emotion

External link

• Official Homepage. Dept. Neurology, University of Iowa Medical School.