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The cover of Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

Antonio Damasio

What is consciousness, and how does a brain produce a mind that feels as if it belongs to someone?

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At a glance

Author
Antonio Damasio

Why read it

  • You will understand why consciousness is more than being awake: the contents of the mind are tied to an owner by felt links
  • You will see how the brain builds a sense of self from maps of the body, updated moment by moment
  • You will question why perceptual maps, which are physical events in the brain, should feel like anything at all

Who it is for

  • A reader curious how the brain creates a sense of self
  • A neuroscience or philosophy of mind student
  • Someone interested in how body feelings relate to thinking

Contents

  1. PART I Starting Over
  2. 1 Awakening
  3. Goals and Reasons
  4. Approaching the Problem
  5. The Self as Witness
  6. Overcoming a Misleading Intuition
  7. An Integrated Perspective
  8. The Framework
  9. A Preview of Main Ideas
  10. Life and the Conscious Mind
  11. 2 From Life Regulation to Biological Value
  12. The Implausibility of Reality
  13. Natural Will
  14. Staying Alive
  15. The Origins of Homeostasis
  16. Cells, Multicellular Organisms, and Engineered Machines
  17. Biological Value
  18. Biological Value in Whole Organisms
  19. The Success of Our Early Forerunners
  20. Developing Incentives
  21. Connecting Homeostasis, Value, and Consciousness
  22. PART II What’s in a Brain That a Mind Can Be?
  23. 3 Making Maps and Making Images
  24. Maps and Images
  25. Cutting Below the Surface
  26. Maps and Minds
  27. The Neurology of Mind
  28. The Beginnings of Mind
  29. Closer to the Making of Mind?
  30. 4 The Body in Mind
  31. The Topic of the Mind
  32. Body Mapping
  33. From Body to Brain
  34. Representing Quantities and Constructing Qualities
  35. Primordial Feelings
  36. Mapping Body States and Simulating Body States
  37. The Source of an Idea
  38. The Body-Minded Brain
  39. 5 Emotions and Feelings
  40. Situating Emotion and Feeling
  41. Defining Emotion and Feeling
  42. Triggering and Executing Emotions
  43. The Strange Case of William James
  44. Feelings of Emotion
  45. How Do We Feel an Emotion?
  46. The Timing of Emotions and Feelings
  47. The Varieties of Emotion
  48. Up and Down the Emotional Range
  49. An Aside on Admiration and Compassion
  50. 6 An Architecture for Memory
  51. Somehow, Somewhere
  52. The Nature of Memory Records
  53. Dispositions Came First, Maps Followed
  54. Memory at Work
  55. A Brief Aside on Kinds of Memory
  56. A Possible Solution to the Problem
  57. Convergence-Divergence Zones
  58. More on Convergence-Divergence Zones
  59. The Model at Work
  60. The How and Where of Perception and Recall

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