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