The quest to understand consciousness Antonio Damasio

here to talk about the vendor and the

mystery of conscious minds the wonder is

about the fact that we all woke up this

morning and we had with it the amazing

return of our conscious mind

we recovered minds with a complete sense

of self in the complete sense of our own

existence and we hardly ever pause to

consider this wonder we should in fact

because without having this possibility

of conscious Minds

we would have no knowledge whatsoever

about our humanity we would have no

knowledge whatsoever about the world we

would have no pains but also no Joy’s we

would have no access to love or to the

ability to create and of course scott

Fitzgerald said famously that he who

invented consciousness would have a lot

to be blamed for but he also forgot that

without consciousness you would have no

access to true happiness and even to the

possibility of transcendence so much for

the wonder now for the mystery this is a

mystery that has really been extremely

hard to elucidate all the way back into

early philosophy and certainly

throughout the history of neuroscience

this has been one mystery that has

always resisted elucidation has caused

major controversies and there actually

many people that think that we should

not even touch it we should just leave

it alone it’s not to be solved I don’t

believe that and I think the situation

is changing it would be ridiculous to

claim that we know how we make

consciousness in our in our brains but

we certainly can begin to approach the

question and we can begin to see the

shape of a solution and one more wonder

to celebrate is the fact that we have

imaging technologies that now allow us

to go inside the human brain and be able

to do for example what you’re seeing

right now these are images that come

from Hana DiMaggio’s lab and would show

you in a living brain the reconstruction

of that brain and this is a person who

is alive this is not a person that is

being studied at autopsy and even more

and this is something that one can be

really amazed about is what I’m going to

show you next which is going underneath

the surface of the brain and actually

looking in the living brain at real

connections real pathways so all of

those colored lines correspond to

bunches of axons the fibers that join

cell bodies to synapses and I’m sorry to

disappoint you they don’t come in color

but at any rate they are there the

colors are codes for the direction for

whether it is back to front or vice

versa

at any rate what is consciousness what

is a conscious mind and we could take a

very simple view and say well it is that

which we lose when we fall into deep

sleep without dreams or when we go under

anesthesia and it is what we regain when

we recover from sleep or from anesthesia

but what is exactly that stuff that we

lose under anesthesia or when we are in

deep dreamless sleep well first of all

it is a mind which is a flow of mental

images and of course consider images

that can be sensory patterns visuals

such as you are having right now in

relation to the stage and me or auditory

images as you’re having now in relation

to my to my words that flow of mental

images is mind but there is something

else that we are all experiencing in

this room we are not passive exhibitors

of visual or auditory or tactile images

we have selves we have Amy that is

automatically present in our minds right

now we own

mine’s and we have a sense that it’s

every one of us that is experiencing

this not the person who is sitting next

to you so in order to have a conscious

mind you have a self within the

conscious mind so a conscious mind is a

mind with the self in it the self

introduces a subjective perspective in

the mind and we are only fully conscious

when self comes to mind so what we need

to know to even address this mystery is

number one how Minds are put together in

the brain and number two how selves are

constructed now the first part the first

problem is relatively easy it’s not easy

at all but it is something that has been

approached gradually in your science and

it’s quite clear that in order to make

Minds we need to construct neural maps

so imagine a grid like the one I’m

showing you right now and now imagine

within that grid that two-dimensional

cheese imagine neurons and picture if

you will a billboard a digital billboard

where you have elements that can be

either lit or not and depending on how

you create the pattern of lighting or

not lighting the digital elements or for

that matter the neurons in the sheet

you’re going to be able to construct a

map this is of course a visual map that

I’m showing you but this applies to any

kind of map auditory for example in

relation to sound frequencies or to the

maps that we construct with our skin in

relation to an object that we palpate

now to bring home the point of how close

it is the relationship between the grid

of neurons and the topographical

arrangement of the activity of the

neurons and our mental experience I’m

going to tell you a personal story so if

I cover my left eye I’m talking about me

personally not all of you if I cover my

left eye I look at the grid pretty much

like the one I’m sure

everything is nice and fine and

perpendicular but some time ago I

discovered that if I cover my left eye

instead what I get is this I look at the

grid and I see a warping at the edge of

my central left field

very odd I’ve analyzed this for a while

but some time ago

through the help of an ophthalmologist

colleague of mine

Carmen Polly food Vito who developed a

laser scanner of the retina I found out

the following if I scan my retina

through the horizontal plane that you

see there in the little corner what I

get is the following on the right side

my retina is perfectly symmetrical you

see the going down towards the fovea

where the optic nerve begins but on my

left retina there is a bump which is

marked there by the red arrow and it

corresponds to a little cyst that is

located below and that is exactly what

causes the warping of my visual image so

just think of this you have a grid of

neurons and now you have a plane

mechanical change in the position of the

grid and you get a warping of your

mental experience so this is how close

your mental experience and the activity

of the neurons in the retina which is a

part of the brain located in the eyeball

or for that matter a sheath of visual

cortex so from the retina you go on to

visual cortex and of course the brain

adds on a lot of information to what is

going on in the signals that come from

the retina and in that image there you

see a variety of islands of what I call

image making regions in the brain you

have the green for example that

corresponds to tactile information or

the blue that corresponds to auditory

information and something else that

happens is that those image-making

regions where you have the plotting of

all these neural maps can then provide

signals to this ocean of purple that you

see around which is Association cortex

where you can make records of what went

on in the

islands of image-making and the great

beauty is that you can then go from

memory out of those association cortices

and produce back images in the very same

regions that had perception so think

about how wonderfully convenient and

lazy that the brain is so it provides

certain areas for perception and image

making and those are exactly the same

that are going to be used for image

making when we recall information so so

far the mystery of the conscious mind is

diminishing a little bit because we have

a general sense of how we make these

images but what about the self the self

is really the elusive problem and for a

long time people did not even want to

touch it and because they say how can

you have this sort of reference point

this stability that is required to

maintain the continuity of cells day

after day and I thought about a solution

to this problem is the following we

generate brain maps of the body’s

interior and use them as the reference

for all other maps so let me tell you

just a little bit about how I came to

this I came to this because if you’re

going to have a reference that we know

as self than me the eye

in in our own processing we need to have

something that is stable something that

does not deviate much from day to day

well it so happens that we have a

singular body we have one body not two

not three and so that the beginning

there is just one reference point which

is the body but then of course the body

has many parts and things grow at

different rates and they have different

sizes in different people however not so

with the interior the things that have

to do with what is known as our internal

milieu for example the whole management

of the chemistry’s within our body are

in fact extremely maintained they have

today for one very good reason

if you

we ate too much in the parameters that

are close to the midline of that

life-permitting survival range you go

into disease or death so we have an

inbuilt system within our own lives

that ensures some kind of continuity I

like to call it an almost infinite

sameness from day to day because if you

don’t have that sameness physiologically

you’re going to be sick

or you’re going to die so that’s one

more element for this continuity and the

final thing is that there is a very

tight coupling between the regulation of

our body within the brain and the body

itself unlike any other coupling so for

example I’m making images of you but

there’s no physiological bond between

the images I have a view as an audience

and my brain however there is a closed

permanently permanently maintained bond

between the body regulating parts of my

brain and my own body so here’s how it

looks look at the region there there is

the brainstem in between the cerebral

cortex and the spinal cord and it is

within that region that I’m going to

highlight now that we have this housing

of all the life regulation devices of a

body this is so specific that for

example if you look at the part that is

colored in red in the upper part of the

brainstem if you damage that as a result

of a stroke for example what you get is

coma or vegetative state which in a

state of course in which your mind

disappears your consciousness disappears

and what happens then actually is that

you lose the grounding of the self you

have no longer access to any feeling of

your own existence and in fact there can

be images going on being formed in

several cortex except you don’t know

they’re there you you have in effect

lost consciousness when you have damage

to that red

section of the brainstem but if you

consider the green part of the brainstem

nothing like that happens it is that

specific so in that green component of

the brainstem if you damage it and often

it happens what you get is complete

paralysis but your conscious mind is

maintained you feel you know you have a

fully conscious mind that you can report

very indirectly this is a horrific

condition you don’t want to see it and

people are in fact imprisoned within

their own bodies but they do have a mind

there was a very interesting film one of

the rare good films done about the

situation like this by Julian Schnabel

some some years ago about a patient that

was in that condition so now I’m going

to show you a picture I promise not to

say anything about this except this is

to frighten you it’s just to tell you

that in that red section of the

brainstem there are to make it simple

all those little squares that correspond

to modules that actually make brain maps

of different aspects of our Interior

different aspects of our body they are

exquisitely topographic and they are

exclusively interconnected in a

recursive pattern and it is out of this

and out of this tight coupling between

the brainstem and the body that I

believe and I could be wrong but I don’t

think I am that you generate this

mapping of the body that provides the

grounding for the self and that comes in

the form of feelings primordial feelings

by the way so what is the picture that

we get here look at several cortex look

at brainstem look at body and you get a

picture in the interconnectivity in

which you have the brainstem providing

the grounding for the self in a very

tight interconnection with the body and

you have the several cortex providing

the great spectacle of our minds with

the profusion of images that are in fact

the contents of our minds and that we

normally pay most attention to as we

should because that’s really the film

that is rolling in our minds but look at

the the errors that not therefore looks

there there because there is this very

close interaction you cannot have a

conscious mind if you don’t have the

interaction between several cortex and

brainstem you cannot have a conscious

mind if you don’t have the interaction

between the brainstem and the body

another thing that is interesting is

that the brainstem that we have is

shared with a variety of other species

so throughout vertebrates the design of

the brainstem is very similar to ours

which is one of the reasons why I think

those other species have conscious Minds

like we do except that they’re not as

rich as ours because they don’t have a

cerebral cortex like we do that’s where

the difference is and I strongly

disagree with the idea that

consciousness should be considered as

the great product of the cerebral cortex

only the wealth of our minds is not the

very fact that we have a self that we

can refer to our own existence and that

we have any sense of a person now there

are three levels of self to consider the

proto the core and the autobiographical

the first two are shared with many many

other species and they are really coming

out largely of the brainstem and

whatever there is of cortex in those

species it’s the autobiographical self

which some species have I think

cetaceans and primates have also an

autobiographical self to a certain

degree and everybody’s dogs at home have

an autobiographical self to a certain

degree but the novelty is here the

autobiographical self is built on the

basis of past memories and memories of

the plants that we have made it’s the

lift past and the anticipated future and

the autobiographical self has prompted

extended memory reasoning imagination

creativity and language and out of that

came the instruments of culture

religions

justice trade the arts science

technology and it is within that

sure that we really can get and this is

the novelty something that is not

entirely set by our biology it is

developed in the cultures it developed

in collectives of human beings and this

is of course the culture where we have

developed something that I like to call

socio-cultural regulation and finally

you could rightly ask why care about

this why care if it is the brain stem of

the several cortex and how this is made

three reasons first curiosity primates

are extremely curious and humans most of

all and if we are interested for example

in the fact that anti-gravity spooling

galaxies away from the earth why should

we not be interested in what is going on

inside of human beings second

understanding society and culture we

should look at how society and culture

in this socio-cultural regulation are a

work in progress

and finally medicine let’s not forget

that some of the worst diseases of

humankind are diseases such as

depression Alzheimer’s disease drug

addiction think of strokes that can

devastate your mind or render you

unconscious

you have no prayer of understanding how

the treating those diseases effectively

and in a non serendipitous way if you do

not know how this works

so that’s a very good reason beyond

curiosity to justify what we’re doing

and to justify having some interest in

what is going on in our brains thank you

for your attention