'Breathtakingly original' Financial Times
From one of the most important neuroscientists at work today, a path-breaking investigation of a question that has confounded neurologists, philosophers, cognitive scientists and psychologists for centuries: how is consciousness created?
Antonio Damasio has spent the past thirty years studying and writing about how the brain operates, and his work has garnered acclaim for its singular melding of the scientific and the humanistic. In Self Comes to Mind, he goes against the long-standing idea that consciousness is somehow separate from the body, presenting compelling new scientific evidence that consciousness - what we think of as a mind with a self - is in fact a biological process created by a living organism. The result is a groundbreaking investigative journey into the neurobiological foundations of mind and self.
'Intriguing...introduces some novel ideas' New Scientist
'The marvel of reading Damasio's book is to be convinced one can follow the brain at work as it makes the private reality that is the deepest self' V. S. Naipaul
'Lucid, elegantly written, and punctuated by humor... This is an exciting book by a wonderful thinker' Siri Hustvedt