Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio on the indispensable connection between emotions and value assessment and how these are necessary for decision making.

The full video is here.

Your Thoughts?

This is an addition to an earlier posting regarding the evolution of cognition and the role of sensorimotor activity and the function of something like ‘action representations’.

A useful distinction to begin to draw here may be that between ’sensation’ and ‘perception’.   I would like to offer that the first of these terms, sensation, refers to the operation of the sensorimotor system in relation to the environment, whereas the second term, perception, is a higher order process.  For example; there is a  part of the sensorimotor system associated with ’seeing’ which consists of the eyes and parts of the visual cortex, and also the motor mechanisms which focus the eye, saccade the eyeball in its socket, adjust the dilation of the pupil according to light levels (and the desirability of the object looked at), etc.  Together this combination of sensory and motor activity produce the sensation of seeing.  This is not the same as perception as I want to use the term however.  In order for the results of this sensational  seeing to be perceived there needs to be a further operation in which this sensorimotor activity is held as a representation and then made available to other, perhaps specially evolved, cognitive processes.  It is this secondary or  higher order processing of sensation and action that constitutes perception.  To paraphrase Antonio Damasio (2000),  sensation is what happens, perception is the feeling of what happens.

Nicholas Humphrey presents an interesting narrative description of this distinction in his essay ‘The Privatization of Sensation’ (2000).  He suggests that a simple organism, perhaps something like an amoeba, having only the simplest form of sensorimotor engagement with the world, is capable of sensation but not perception.  Such an organism, in the presence of a chemical salt would, he claims, react to that chemical according to the physiological inevitabilities of its embodiment.  The composition of its cell walls and its own internal chemistry would be affected by the saltiness of its environment and this affect would express itself in, for example, a characteristic wriggling.  Alternatively, if light of a particular wavelength, say a wavelength that would be visible to us as ‘red’,  were to fall across this creature another, very different, set of physiological changes would be initiated, perhaps noticeable as a different but equally characteristic wriggling.  Humphreys suggests that it would not be irrational to think of the first of these ameobic behaviours as ‘wriggling saltily’ and the second as ‘wriggling redly’.  Of course, this perception of different wrigglings as characteristic of different environmental stimuli would not be available to the organism itself since it does not have the necessary cognitive apparatus for this kind of secondary observation, (basically an apparatus in which this sensorimotor engagement was represented in some way).  If it were to evolve such a capacity however, then it would be able to not only actively participate in the production of sensation  but also to have perception of  this sensorimotor engagement.  It would not only be part of what happens it would also perceive the feeling of what happens.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Xc9KKuTurk

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DAMASIO, A. R. (2000) The feeling of what happens: body and emotion in the making of consciousness, London, Heinemann.

HUMPHREY, N. (2000) The privatization of sensation. IN HUBER, L. & HEYES, C. (Eds.) The Evolution of Cognition. Cambridge, MA, USA, MIT Press.

Where I ended the last posting (I hope) was where the evolving organism began to develop a central nervous system.  Here I want to pick up from this point to talk about how representation might operate within this developing CNS, and specifically what is represented.  Where I am going with this narrative is in the direction of an account of how these primary developments and mechanisms form the basis for the more complex processes we call ‘thought’.   I then want to suggest that the structure of that thought, the ‘poetics’ as I will be calling it, is grounded in the very basic processes indicated here.

In the last posting I talked about the relationship between moving and ‘thinking’, citing particularly Llinas claim that  ‘what we call thinking is the evolutionary internalisation of movement’, and relating this to the notion of representations and their role in the the life of an organism. An organism may evolve to a level of complexity where it is able not only able to respond reactively to its environment but, through the construction of internal representations of that world, can be proactive.  Such an organism can use representations as the basis for prediction about what might happen if it were to engage in certain actions, in a sense it can run small simulations of possible actions through its representation of the world and tailor its actions in the real world according to the results of these simulations.   Its ability to construct representations might even increase to a point where it is able to represent itself as a being in that world in a stable and consistant way.   Before we go there though it might be important to get a clearer sense of what these representation are and how they operate.

What is immediately obvious is that it is not the outside world (whatever that means) that is represented but the sensations or perceptions associated with that world.  To use the human organism as an example, we don’t ’see the world’, rather ’seeing’ is what we call the interaction between the world and the visual parts of our cognition.   Our eyes are not simply portholes which open out onto an unproblematically ‘visual’ world; the world is seen as it is because we have the kind of eyes we have, and to describe the world as being inherently visualisable, that it is visible because we can see it, is obviously tautological. It is also incorrect to assume that sense organs are simply passive instruments recording data in particular ways but otherwise not engaging or interacting with that data. Sensation and perception emerge not from the sensory organs themselves but from integrated functioning of the somatosensory system, which includes not only the sensory input but also the motor output. When we feel a surface as ‘rough’ not only are we not identifying a property sovereign to the surface, we are also not identifying the passive sensing of inert fingertips. Feeling a surface is experiencing the movements that the fingertips are making across that surface. It is feeling the movements of the skin as it catches and slips from one tiny indentation to another, and feeling the squeezing of the tissues as the pressure on the cells of that skin varies with changes in the texture of the surface. To take another example, seeing the edge of an object is not the transparent photographic recording of real edges in a naively real world, nor are edges an artefact of the sensitive cells in the retina on which the light falls. Seeing an edge involves the eye saccading back and forth across a few seconds of arc and this motion being coordinated with that pattern of changing light on the retina. Seeing involves this kind of combination of both sensory and motor information and it is this sensorimotor synthesis which forms the representations. In other words, cognitive representations are not pictures of the world, they are pictures of what happens in the sensorimotor system in relation to the world.  This concept that perception and action are intimately related in the formation of representations was well cover by the neurologist Roger Sperry.  He referred to the process which allows for the internalisation of movement as thought as ‘perception-action coupling’ (Sperry, 1952).  More recently, in his book ‘Motor Cognition: what actions tell the self’ (2006) Marc Jeannerod refers to this picturing of sensorimotor sytheses as ‘action representation’, and such representations form a significant part of his description of cognitive functioning.

If I could speculate briefly on where this concept of action representation might show itself in modern human experience, it is possible that it is this kind of action representation which, when presented to consciousness, forms the basis of emotions such as fear, joy, anger, and love.  These feelings were described by William James as “the perception of bodily changes as they occur” (1950) and it seems likely that  these coordinated bodily changes are also action representations.  This idea that emotions can be understood as the conscious experiencing of sensorimotor schema has been revivified recently because of findings in neuroscience which lend support to this kind of process.  Antonio Damasio (1999)  has been particularly influential in this area, memorably referring to the way in which somatosensory activity becomes the representational content of human experience as ‘the feeling of what happens’.

This concept that perception and action are intimately related in the formation of representations was well cover by the neurologist Roger Sperry.  He referred to the process which allows for the internalisation of movement as thought as ‘perception-action coupling’ (Sperry, 1952).  More recently, in his book ‘Motor Cognition: what actions tell the self’ (2006) Marc Jeannerod refers to this picturing of sensorimotor sytheses as ‘action representation’, and such representations form a significant part of his description of cognitive functioning.

I think it is significant to note that there is some evidence that such representations not only instantiate the cognitive connection between perceiving and actual performed action,  they also persist when no actual action is carried out.  As Marc Jeannerod puts it, “(t)he core of motor cognition is the concept of action representation, the covert counterpart of any goal-directed action, executed or not” (Jeannerod, 2006: 165).

In other words the representation may not appear on the surface of the body at all, existing only in the form of simulated action within the cognitive system of the organism.  Complementary to this, representation may also occur in the absence of any immediate percepion; in a modern human sense we might call this ‘imagining’ or ‘remembering’.  This has been described as the cognitive system operating ‘off-line’ such that the input contributing to the sensorimotor synthesis comes not from the senses but from memory.  As  Diane Pecher and Rolf Zwaan express it in their introduction to Grounding Cognition (2005) “offline cognition occurs when sensorimotor functions are decoupled from the immediate environment” (2005:1).

This last point, that representations can exist within cognition in the absence of either sensory input or motor output is something I will be coming back to later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3w1vK8-H1s

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Damasio, Antonio R. (1999) The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness.  New York: Harcourt Brace.

James, W. (1950) What is an Emotion, in The Principles of Psychology, New York, Dover (first published 1890).

Jeannerod, M. (2006) Motor cognition: what actions tell the self. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Pecher, Diane  and Rolf A. Zwaan (eds.) (2005) The Role of Perception and Action in Memory, Language, and Thinking. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Sperry, R.W. (1952). Neurology and the mind-body problem. American Scientist, 40, 291-312.

Der Fühl-Sinn ist unser primärer Sinn. Sehen und Hören liefern uns wertvolle Informationen zur Orientierung im Raum. Doch sinnvolle Bewegung und Zielverfolgung ist nur möglich durch ein fühlendes Erkennen, was für uns und unseren Organismus im jeweiligen Moment wichtig ist.

Die Bedeutung des Fühl-Sinns bringt der Neurologe Antonio Damasio mit einem Buchtitel prägnant auf den Punkt: „Ich fühle, also bin ich.“

Um zu wissen, wer wir sind und um handlungsfähig zu sein, brauchen wir ein Gefühl für uns selbst. Gefühl ist dabei in einem doppeltem Sinne gemeint: als Körpergefühl und als Emotion.

NLP schult Sie darin,  Gefühle wahrzunehmen, um sie dann in reflektierte Handlungen umsetzen zu können.

¿Por qué muchas de las personas de más éxito en lo profesional suelen ser tan infelices en lo personal? ¿Por qué si en el trabajo todo va bien, en casa nada funciona? Son muchos los individuos con talento cuyas vidas son un desastre, como si fuera imposible conciliar el éxito profesional con la estampa de familia feliz.

El doctor Pablo Fernández-Berrocal, psicólogo y profesor de la Universidad de Málaga, reflexiona: “La sociedad ahora es más inteligente. El hombre ha logrado avances impensables, pero el desarrollo en la ciencia y la tecnología no han ido de la mano del emocional en el ser humano. La mejor muestra de este hecho es el sistema educativo que aún está centrado en aspectos cognitivos, y prácticamente no se estimulan las emociones o los sentimientos”.

En opinión de María Dolores Avia, catedrática de la Facultad de Psicología de la Universidad Complutense, lo que sucede es que la gente busca una receta y no existe. “Cumplir metas y planes no te hace realmente feliz. Una muestra es que los países con mayor PIB y con mayor calidad de vida tienen a veces las tasas de suicidio más altas. Por eso no se trata de priorizar lo material, se trata de dar más importancia otras cosas”, explica. Pero, ¿cuáles son estos otros aspectos?

Buscando la felicidad
Aunque las emociones y todo lo relacionado con la búsqueda de la felicidad y el bienestar son inherentes al ser humano, algunos lo consideran como cuestiones menores o cosas de mujeres. “Pues ellas son quienes menos necesitan estas cosas”, bromea en serio el Fernández-Berrocal. “La sociedad, las empresas y las organizaciones van a tender cada vez más a un modelo femenino, más suave, porque el estilo clásico, duro y agresivo, ya no funciona”.

Los investigadores, que antes medían el cociente intelectual (CI), se centran, desde hace aproximadamente 25 años, en las emociones. “Es que el CI mide la inteligencia clásica, el razonamiento, lo que se conoce en inglés como cold intelligent, mientras que la inteligencia emocional (IE) mide los sentimientos, las habilidades sociales y se conoce como hot intelligent”, explica Fernández-Berrocal.

La inteligencia emocional, que es la habilidad que tenemos para interactuar en sociedad y para reconocer nuestros sentimientos y los de los demás, ha despertado no sólo el interés de los entendidos, sino el de los ciudadanos de a pie. En Estados Unidos, por ejemplo, existen entrenadores personales para desarrollarla. El reto es aprender a identificar las emociones para mejorar las relaciones interpersonales y laborales. “La falta de tacto es un gran problema.

Hay muchas personas que no saben reconocer cuál es el momento indicado para proponer un tema. Es muy importante saber reconocer la disposición del otro”, comenta Avia, autora del libro Optimismo Inteligente, junto a Carmelo Vázquez. Es que estas pequeñas cosas, que parecen triviales, son imprescindibles para lograr el éxito.

Entre los próximos 16 y 18 de septiembre se va a celebrar en Santander el II Congreso Internacional de Inteligencia Emocional, organizado por la Fundación Marcelino Botín. “España está entre los líderes de las investigaciones más rigurosas relacionadas con la IE”, explica Fernández-Berrocal, quien también es organizador del evento. Según adelanta, entre los principales temas que se discutirán están los nuevos sistemas de evaluación de IE. Además, se presentarán experiencias sobre cómo modificar la IE de grupos y organizaciones y cómo influye la cultura de la empresa en el desarrollo de estas habilidades.

El psicólogo subraya que aunque permanece la definición del siglo XX de que somos animales racionales, investigaciones recientes indican que tomamos decisiones a través de emociones y que no todo es frío y racional. El problema del equilibrio emocional tiene tanto impacto en la sociedad moderna que algunos estudiosos opinan que para 2025, la segunda causa de muerte podría ser la depresión. En sociedades casi perfectas, con un alto nivel de vida, las personas no llegan a ser felices ni a sentirse satisfechas por la frialdad en las relaciones sociales. El investigador destaca que todos tenemos un potencial que se puede desarrollar y, en la medida que lo hagamos, disfrutaremos de mejor salud física y mental, hábitos más saludables, mejores relaciones sociales y de pareja y estaremos más cerca de la felicidad. “Pero no hay una fórmula mágica ni un manual, depende de cada cual”, insiste Avia.

Un aprendizaje que requiere constancia
Lograr habilidades para relacionarse no es cosa de un día. “No se le puede dedicar un fin de semana, como si fueras a aprender un programa de computación. Es como aprender a tocar el piano”, compara Pablo Fernández-Berrocal, psicólogo y profesor de la Universidad de Málaga. Es consciente de que algunos libros de autoayuda, que trivializan la importancia de la IE y las relaciones sociales, han servido para subestimar las investigaciones sobre el tema. Dolores Avia, catedrática de la Facultad de Psicología de la Universidad Complutense, también coincide en que hay muchos prejuicios que son literatura basura.

Cree que existen publicaciones muy interesantes, aunque el público no las sabe distinguir: “Lo más importante es que logren aproximar al lector a estudios rigurosos, con un lenguaje accesible pero con profundidad”. Algunos libros que recomiendan estos profesionales son: El arte de la felicidad, del Dalai Lama; El error de Descartes, de Antonio Damasio; Las neuronas espejo, de Giacomo Rizzolatti; El corazón inteligente, de Juan A. López, y La ciencia del bienestar, de Carmelo Vázquez y Gonzalo Hervás, entre otros.

Vía | Expansión

I’ve been trying to write my “Charcoal Bridle” poem this week.   This has meant I’ve been thinking a lot about things non-verbal, since this (verbal and non-verbal understanding) is what the poem is circling around (like a drowned fly around a plughole, to nick a simile from someone.  Who?  I dunno.  Probably someone like Don Paterson, or the late great Michael Donaghy, whose The Shape of the Dance I read a few weeks ago in one sitting.)

Trying to write about it is -  inevitably – really bloody difficult, the chief difficulty being that every time I try (to write about it), I end up sounding like a terrible pastiche of Virginia Woolf.  For example, this from my notebook last Tuesday:

…to try and feel the green of the tree ahead of me, to be, soak up, soaked in, the sounds I hear, the haphazard music the world makes – those chords provided by wheel, brake and rail on entry to Euston, the Manchester train that time – where I hear that, see, feel that, maybe that is it……

Ye gods.  All those short, embedded clauses, separated by commas, consisting sometimes of merely verbs, the use of the infinitive, the generalising, beautiful yet ultimately meaningless statements about the world, juxtaposed with the particular as seen in the station name, the train route…how like a wave, the flap of a wave, for it was at Bourne where the leaden circles dissolved into the air…she would buy the flowers herself…

You see what I mean?  Don’t get me wrong.  I love Woolf.  Mrs Dalloway is one of my favourite books and has been ever since I studied it at ‘A’ level.  But she captured that strange rapture of non-verbal understanding so well that I think it’s become my default mode every time I try to think about it ( in words).  And this ensures that every time I try to get to the heart of the experience, I merely reach a representation of it in my head.

At times like this, I wish I’d read Philosophy at University instead of English.

Oh well.  To bolster me in my attempts, I am currently reading;

Jorie Graham, Swarm

Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza (and revisiting his The Feeling of What Happens)

and re-reading Don Paterson’s brilliant, brilliant essays in Poetry Review;  “The Lyric Principle: The Sense of Sound” (97:2, 56-72) and “The Lyric Principle: The Sound of Sense” (97:3, 54-70).

….and trying to remain hopeful.

Uma das grandes polémicas filosóficas foi a do inatismo das ideias. Não vai muito tempo, o ateu Bertrand Russell insultava Platão e Leibniz; Nietzsche dizia que Kant era estúpido; Locke afirmava que Descartes não estava totalmente certo, embora não o desmentisse em toda a linha e até entrasse em contradição em relação ao inatismo. A contradição ética de Espinosa ainda foi mais flagrante: ao mesmo tempo que adoptou a teoria de Hobbes no que respeita à valorização do poder absoluto político e terreno, com a consequente ausência do inatismo, considerava que o Bem consistia na união com o seu Deus panteísta; Espinosa foi ateu e panteísta ao mesmo tempo.

Mas o problema já vinha de trás, dos gregos da escola Megárica e dos estóicos. Do epicurismo e do estoicismo surgiu a teoria da “tábua rasa” mais tarde adoptada pelos empiristas ingleses a partir de John Locke. Influenciado por este, Voltaire assumiu a mesma linha de pensamento. Com o positivismo, a luta contra o inatismo passou a ser feroz e atingiu o seu clímax com Karl Marx; pelo meio ficou o coitado do Darwin que nunca se assumiu publicamente como ateu.

A atitude mais moderada no meio desta controvérsia foi a de Leibniz que considerava que o inatismo era parcelar e diminuto, isto é, existem apenas pequenos resquícios de ideias inatas, e todas as outras são consequência da experiência. Mesmo assim, foi criticado pelos empiristas ingleses como Hume, Bentham e Stuart Mill (entre outros).

Entretanto, vão aparecendo notícias da ciência que nos dizem que Leibniz não estaria de todo errado, e que Platão viu aquilo que a alegada inteligência do Bertrand Russell não conseguiu ver: o cérebro humano processa a informação da realidade exterior independentemente do sentido da visão.

O cérebro de um cego de nascença separa os objectos concebidos através das ideias e conceitos que tem desses objectos (sem nunca os ter visto, naturalmente) por categorias específicas processadas em determinadas áreas do cérebro ― tal como o faz uma pessoa que não é cega, isto é, o funcionamento do cérebro humano é independente da sensação, ou melhor, o cérebro não necessita da sensação para a percepção.

Benedict Carey writes a good piece this morning on the role of instinct in saving soldier’s lives in combat.

Still, high-tech gear, while helping to reduce casualties, remains a mere supplement to the most sensitive detection system of all — the human brain. Troops on the ground, using only their senses and experience, are responsible for foiling many I.E.D. attacks, and, like Sergeant Tierney, they often cite a gut feeling or a hunch as their first clue…

“Not long ago people thought of emotions as old stuff, as just feelings — feelings that had little to do with rational decision making, or that got in the way of it,” said Dr. Antonio Damasio, director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. “Now that position has reversed. We understand emotions as practical action programs that work to solve a problem, often before we’re conscious of it. These processes are at work continually, in pilots, leaders of expeditions, parents, all of us.”

My colleague Manuel Castels is working closely with Dr. Damasio and tells me that our understanding of the brain’s role in creativity and survival is just in the early stages. Much more wonderful research will flow in the next few years.

My question is can instinct be taught or is it genetic?

“Den har aldrig levet, som klog på det er blevet, han først ej havde kær.” – N.F.S. Grundtvig

To commemorate a great Danish thinker within education – Knud Illeris – and his retirement from a position as a university professor at the Danish University of Pedagogy (DPU), the university created a small conference/ceremony about Knud Illeris and his thoughts. Here is a link to a speech given by Knud himself towards the end of the ceremony. I highly recommend listening to it. It highlights six major philosophical thoughts that influence a persons ability to learn. The six thinkers are N.F.S. Grundtvig, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Jean Lave and Antonio Damasio. Number seven for those who are counting, is of course Knud Illeris himself. And yes, it’s in English.

Be aware that the video is on DPU’s website and the link here will open the video in a media player on your computer.

Publicado en Historia y Vida en septiembre de 2007

La cultura occidental ha tendido a concebir las emociones como obstáculos para la acción inteligente desde los tiempos de los filósofos de la Grecia clásica, con Platón al frente. Nos han enseñado a ser muy lógicos, a tomar decisiones analizando minuciosamente cada opción de forma racional, a menospreciar la palabra sentimiento por considerarla una debilidad. ¿Cuántas veces nos engañamos a nosotros mismos justificando racionalmente lo que en verdad hacemos por motivos emocionales?

Imponer la razón sobre los sentimientos nos hace pensar que somos más maduros, pero en realidad el razonamiento siempre está tamizado por los sentimientos y éstos pueden modularse por la razón. Las emociones determinan la calidad de nuestra existencia porque se dan en las relaciones más importantes de la vida, las que realmente nos motivan: en el trabajo, con los amigos, en las relaciones más íntimas… La ciencia es la que se ha encargado de demostrar que nos equivocábamos al menospreciar las emociones. Gracias a la herencia de la teoría evolucionista y a los avances neurocientíficos de los últimos veinte años hemos comprendido los mecanismos emocionales y su importancia en el desarrollo de la personalidad del individuo.

Origen de las emociones

Si las emociones existen desde hace millones de años es simplemente porque han resultado útiles para la supervivencia de la especie. En su origen, eran respuestas instintivas ante situaciones peligrosas o bien beneficiosas (como la comida o el sexo) que aparecieron en animales invertebrados que no podían percibir de forma consciente los estímulos ambientales porque su cerebro no estaba suficientemente desarrollado. Estas respuestas emocionales vienen, por tanto, impresas en los genes, son universales. Así lo demostró Paul Ekman, profesor de psicología en la Universidad de California y uno de los mayores expertos en este tipo de temas. A lo largo de cuarenta años, Ekman ha estudiado la expresión facial de las emociones en lugares tan dispares como Papúa Nueva Guinea, Estados Unidos, la antigua Unión Soviética, Brasil o Japón. La conclusión, sugerida ya por Charles Darwin, es que las emociones básicas (alegría, tristeza, miedo, ira, sorpresa y asco) son comunes a la humanidad porque cumplen con una función adaptativa.

Emociones básicas

Con el tiempo y la evolución del cerebro en ambientes competitivos, las respuestas emocionales se tornaron más complejas para prepararnos a actuar rápidamente ante sucesos importantes en nuestra vida sin pensar en lo que hay que hacer. Por ejemplo, si vamos conduciendo por la ciudad y al llegar a un cruce vemos que un vehículo se nos abalanza, no perderemos tiempo en analizar qué debemos hacer para no tener un accidente; pisaremos el freno para no colisionar.

¿Emoción o sentimiento?

Cuando apareció la consciencia, los seres vivos adaptaron sus conductas a una variedad de emociones. Podían percibir conscientemente los cambios físicos emocionales que se producían en su cuerpo, pero también desarrollaron una percepción global del mismo: el sentimiento. Tendemos a creer que el término emoción engloba una idea de sentimiento, en realidad son conceptos diferentes. En palabras del director del Instituto del Cerebro y la Creatividad de la Universidad de Southern California, el neurocientífico Antonio Damasio, “las emociones se representan en el teatro del cuerpo; los sentimientos se representan en el teatro de la mente”. Es decir, las emociones son acciones o movimientos que se hacen visibles a los demás porque se producen en la cara, en la voz, en determinadas conductas; los sentimientos, en cambio, son la propiedad más privada del organismo, invisibles para todos menos para su dueño.

Aunque pueda parecer extraño, los sentimientos no producen alteraciones en el cuerpo. En la historia evolutiva, primero es la emoción y después el sentimiento. Un ejemplo. Es de noche, caminamos solos y en medio de un oscuro callejón sin salida nos sorprende un extraño. Inmediatamente se producirán una serie de alteraciones en el cuerpo que nos producirán una sensación de miedo. Un interesante experimento de Paul Ekman demuestra esta teoría. Moviendo determinados músculos de la cara en una secuencia precisa, se dibujan en el rostro diferentes expresiones emocionales (existen más de 10.000) sin ser conscientes y se consigue experimentarlas de forma real: “Descubrí que cuando adoptaba determinadas expresiones me veía inundado por intensas sensaciones emocionales. La simple adopción de una expresión producía cambios en el sistema nervioso autónomo de las personas”.

Emoción vs. razón

El cerebro, cuando evolucionó, construyó las nuevas estructuras (el razonamiento) sobre las viejas (las emociones), manteniéndolas de forma independiente. Las emociones dirigen el pensamiento y la conducta hacia aquello que interesa y ayudan al razonamiento a planificar el futuro. Las emociones afectan a la atención, nos centran en pensamientos o actividades concretas, ya sean desagradables o placenteras, que se graban en nuestra memoria. Resulta sorprendente la capacidad que tenemos de recordar un episodio vivido en el pasado en función de las emociones que experimentamos. Hay gente que es capaz de evocar un gol marcado por su equipo de fútbol preferido hace veinte años como si fuese ayer. O de recordar con precisión dónde se encontraban y qué hacían cuando sucedió el atentado a las Torres Gemelas de Nueva York.

Junto con los efectos sobre la atención y la memoria, las emociones ejercen un fuerte poder sobre el análisis de las situaciones conflictivas y las decisiones que tomamos. No es cierto que cuando disponemos de tiempo e información suficientes recurramos al método pausado de razonar las cosas y que cuando tenemos prisa en llegar a una solución nos dejamos guiar por nuestras emociones. Diferentes partes del cerebro permiten que las emociones y los sentimientos penetren en el razonamiento, ayudando a la toma de decisiones: dos emociones compiten y gana la más fuerte. Si planificamos el momento en el que iremos a vivir con nuestra pareja, nos imaginamos la situación, adelantamos sentimientos, experimentamos emociones que nos permitirán decidir si queremos seguir adelante con nuestro plan o no.

Pero entonces, ¿para qué sirve la razón? Para cambiar nuestras emociones y las conductas que de ellas se deriva, sobre todo si son negativas o poco convenientes. Según Ignacio Morgado, catedrático de Psicobiología del Insituto de Neurociencia de la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, “el control emocional de los humanos puede lograrse de dos modos: o regulando la atención hacia lo que causa preocupación o haciendo algún cambio mental para tratar ver las cosas de otro modo”. Generar nuevas emociones incompatibles con las negativas es otra de las formas de afrontar un malestar cotidiano. Dicen que para superar una crisis amorosa lo mejor es suscitar un nuevo amor…

Inteligencia emocional y social

La capacidad de regular las emociones y los sentimientos es básica para la interacción social y la salud mental del individuo. Ésta es la principal característica de lo que el psicólogo y divulgador científico Daniel Goleman bautizó en los años 90 como “inteligencia emocional”. Los humanos, además, tenemos conocimiento de que las demás personas también tienen emociones y sentimientos como los nuestros; somos empáticos. Este conocimiento lo obtenemos mediante un mecanismo de estimulación, las neuronas espejo. Cuando observamos lo que hacen otras personas se activan en nuestro cerebro las mismas zonas que si fuésemos nosotros los que lo hiciéramos. En verdad, no hace falta observar, basta con imaginar que lo hacen. Pero aun podemos ir más allá: si por ejemplo nuestro hermano se ha caído y sufre un fuerte dolor en una pierna, no sólo sentiremos su emoción, sino que podemos ser capaces de sentir el dolor en nuestra propia pierna. La empatía es la base de la “inteligencia social”, definida recientemente por científicos como Morgado: “Una persona con inteligencia emocional es aquella que tiene capacidad para reconocer, expresar, regular, controlar y utilizar las emociones propias y ajenas para adaptarse a las situaciones, conseguir propósitos, tener éxito y/o encontrarse bien”.

CLASIFICACIÓN DE LAS EMOCIONES

El neurocientífico Antonio Damasio clasifica las emociones en tres categorías: emociones de fondo, emociones primarias y emociones sociales. Se les puede aplicar el principio de anidamiento: las primarias contienen a las de fondo y las sociales contienen a las primarias y a las de fondo a la vez.

Hay individuos mucho más observadores que otros que son capaces de detectar de forma precisa el estado de ánimo de alguien a quien acaba de conocer. Son las llamadas emociones de fondo, que no son especialmente visibles en nuestro comportamiento.

Alegría, tristeza, miedo, ira, sorpresa y asco son las seis emociones primarias o básicas, mucho más fáciles de definir y detectar que las de fondo porque se dan en seres humanos de todas las culturas y también en especies no humanas.

Las emociones sociales incluyen la simpatía, la turbación, la vergüenza, la culpabilidad, el orgullo, los celos, la envidia, la gratitud, la admiración, el desdén, etc. Al igual que las emociones básicas, son universales y no están confinadas únicamente al ser humano, aunque presentan una mayor variabilidad cultural.

EL CEREBRO EMOCIONAL

La aparición de una emoción depende de una cadena de acontecimientos que empieza con la aparición de un estímulo (un objeto o situación presente o rememorada) que llega al cerebro a partir de la memoria. Una de las estructuras más importantes del cerebro emocional es la amígdala, un compacto conjunto de neuronas situada en cada uno de los lóbulos temporales. La corteza cerebral proporciona a la amígdala información visual, auditiva, táctil, etc., alertándole de la presencia en el entorno o en el cuerpo de cualquier cosa que pueda impresionarnos. Las neuronas ordenan entonces la producción de la reacción emocional utilizando como intermediarias otras regiones del cerebro, como el hipotálamo o el tronco del encéfalo. Las personas con lesiones en la amígdala son incapaces de desencadenar determinadas emociones (el miedo y la ira, principalmente) ni los sentimientos correspondientes. El estudio científico de las emociones ha progresado notablemente en los últimos años gracias a las nuevas técnicas de exploración, como la resonancia magnética funcional (RMF) y la tomografía por emisión de positrones (TEP).

PARA SABER MÁS

ENSAYO

DAMASIO, ANTONIO. En busca de Spinoza. Madrid: Crítica, 2005.

EKMAN, PAUL. ¿Qué dice ese gesto? Barcelona: RBA Libros, 2004.

GOLEMAN, DANIEL. Inteligencia social. Barcelona: Editorial Kairós, 2007.

MORGADO, IGNACIO. Emociones e inteligencia social. Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 2007.

Antonio Damasio, famoso neuroscienziato autore di una trilogia molto apprezzata sulla relazione tra mente, cervello e corpo, sta per pubblicare su PNAS una ricerca in cui viene evidenziato come assimilare informazioni che abbiano a che fare con questioni etiche richieda un tempo minimo di elaborazione da parte del cervello, valutabile in 6/8 secondi.

Da questo presupposto, fin dal titolo della fonte originale, “Tweet this: Rapid-fire media may confuse your moral compass” si è fatta un’arbitraria associazione con i digital media, in particolare con i servizi di microblogging come Twitter o addirittura con i social network come Facebook, imputando loro una certa “cecità morale”.

Nella fonte originale Manuel Castells, commentando i risultati della ricerca, dice:

he was less concerned about online social spaces, some of which can provide opportunities for reflection, than about “fast-moving television or virtual games.”[...]. In a media culture in which violence and suffering becomes an endless show, be it in fiction or in infotainment, indifference to the vision of human suffering gradually sets in

Lo stesso Damasio punta il dito contro i mass media, non citando i social media.

Vi è stata una forzatura nell’interpretazione della ricerca che dalla fonte primaria si è diffusa ed amplificata attraverso le fonti secondarie; qui in Italia si possono citare il blog di De Biase e soprattutto un articolo del Corriere della Sera online che interpreta in modo del tutto originale i risultati di Damasio.

Fuente: Kris Davos (Flickr)

Viene de la Parte 4

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Viene de la Parte 3

… Continua en la Parte 5

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Fuente: Fractal Recursions

La primera parte de este conjunto de interesantes leyes, se puede consultar aquí

(Esto no es pesimismo, sino realismo, una analogía ampliada de la segunda ley de la termodinámica.)

Por ejemplo:
Cerebro-Mente
Mente-Cuerpo
Emoción-Razón
Natural-Adquirido
Nosotros-Ellos
Recuerda siempre que es fácil estar en posesión de alguna explicación, pero extraordinariamente dificil conocer la verdad.


… Continúa en la Parte 3…

Fuente: The Edge

Fuente: Flickr, KrisDavos

¿Querés compartir y contribuir a difundir este artículo?

Leyendo El Error de Descartes de Antonio R. Damasio me he quedado perplejo. A finales del capítulo quinto Damasio nos habla del método de imagería neuroanatómica mediante el que el profesor Roger Tootell demostró en simios que, cuando estos veían determinadas formas geométricas sencillas, la actividad neural en  zonas concretas de la corteza vistual se organizaba topográficamente en unas formas que guardaban una similitud estructural más que notable con la forma percibida.

En la ilustración, en una de las capas de la corteza visual primaria (capa 4C) las neuronas realizan su actividad con una similitud estructural pasmosa con respecto al estímulo… ¿Nuestro cerebro “dibuja” lo que percibimos? Es decir, ¿no sólo interpreta lo percibido sino que lo “proyecta” realmente? ¿Nuestro cerebro tiene una “pantalla interna” como las cámaras de fotos digitales?

• Punset, Eduardo: Cara a cara con la vida, la mente y el Universo : conversaciones con los grandes científicos de nuestro tiempo. Barcelona : Destino, 2005

Eduardo Punset recoge las ideas y aportaciones de los mejores científicos de nuestro tiempo formando una perfecta introducción a la ciencia actual.

En las últimas décadas la ciencia ha dado pasos de gigante. Los científicos de la segunda mitad del siglo XX y los albores del XXI han alcanzado cotas inimaginables de conocimiento en muy poco tiempo. La evolución de las teorías y los conocimientos científicos han seguido en estos años un ritmo imparable y han hecho que nuestra visión de muchos aspectos del universo, la vida, la mente y la tecnología cambie radicalmente.

Eduardo Punset lleva años conversando con los grandes científicos de nuestro tiempo y en este libro recoge interesantes diálogos con estos sabios contemporáneos, desde Stephen Jay Gould a Steven Pinker, pasando por Sabater Pi, Jonathan Pincus, Lyn Margulis…

El libro repasa de forma clara, amena y rigurosa los grandes hallazgos y retos de la ciencia actual y responde a preguntas como:
. ¿Cómo se originó el universo?
. ¿Nos podemos fiar de las percepciones de nuestro cerebro?
. ¿Qué leyes rigen la evolución?
. ¿Cómo podemos definir la belleza?
. ¿Es posible romper las barreras del espacio y el tiempo?
. ¿Qué nos diferencia realmente de los animales?
. ¿Cómo actúan los virus?
. ¿Qué explica la agresividad?
. ¿Qué leyes rigen la vida?
. ¿Hasta dónde llegará el progreso tecnológico?

- Índice del libro

- Web de Eduardo Punset

- Obras de Punset en las bibliotecas de la Universidad

Os sentimentos permitem-nos entrever o organismo em plena agitação biológica, vislumbrar alguns mecanismos da própria vida no desempenho das suas tarefas. Se não fora a possibilidade de sentir os estados do corpo, que estão inerentemente destinados a serem dolorosos ou aprazíveis, não haveria sofrimento ou felicidade, desejo ou misericórdia, tragédia ou glória na condição humana.

António R. Damásio, na Introdução a O Erro de Descartes - Emoção, Razão e Cérebro Humano, Publicações Europa-América

(Copyright © 2009)

The human mind comes to us in a plain wrapper without a users’ manual or even a Help button. Well-meaning others try to show us how it works, yet it takes a lifetime of experiential trial and error to figure out how to use even its most basic routines effectively. And on our deathbeds, many of us will regret we didn’t do more with it when we had the chance.

Which need not be the case any longer. Brain science is a booming industry, with research reports issued daily. Even 25 years ago, I had access to a journal on brain research that was issued every week in a volume half-an-inch thick. Which meant that knowledge about consciousness and the mind was beginning to spread among scientists trained to speak the specialized language of neuroscience. Popular books followed in the late 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Now the presses hardly stop rolling between books about the mind written in (more or less) everyday English.

Terminology about the brain can be daunting at first encounter, but after the reader becomes familiar with the brainstem, cerebellum, prefrontal cortex, motor areas, primary sensory processing areas, thalamus, hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, neurons, and neurotransmitters, along with other parts of the brain—that is after you get acquainted with the workings of your own mind—you find it is fascinating stuff and begin to catch on.

My blog is intended as a bridge between the technical literature and those who take using their minds seriously because they want to improve the richness of their experience and enjoyment of their own mental processes. To make headway in such endeavors, it is always best to touch base with the professionals responsible for our current understanding of mind and brain.

Visiting books on the mind and its brain is like taking a trip to a foreign land: you’ve got to learn new routes and place names, and pick up enough phrases to get by. If you want to do it thoroughly, it’s like learning a new language. If you just want the two-week tour, you can get along with a lesser commitment.

So here are a few suggestions about books you might want to read or delve into. They range from popular treatments to technical reference books, with a middle level of serious books about aspects of neuroscience, including, especially, consciousness. To different degrees, all are challenging, but that is always the price we must pay if we want to improve our understanding of ourselves and our world.

Caveat: This is by no means a complete list. These are books I have read, marked up, and am personally acquainted with. I welcome suggestions of other books to add to these few.

Popular Books About Mind and Brain

Carter, Rita. Mapping the Mind. University of California Press, 1999, 224 pages. Carter, a medical journalist, has produced a smart, coffee-table book about the mind, with, as you’d expect, glossy illustrations. The book is written from the popular angle of what people are likely to be interested in (an approach that sells books) rather than what scientists have to say about mind and brain. This is a good conversation piece, the kind of book I enjoy leafing through back to front.

Doidge, Norman, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. Viking, 2007, 427 pages. Doidge deals with the practical application of neuroscience to the lives of people with real problems. His book puts you on the forefront of human understanding right away, as seen through the eyes of selected beneficiaries of modern research. If you want to test the waters, this might be a good place to start.

Jourdain, Robert, Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination. Harper Collins, 1997, 377 pages. (Added to list March 6, 2009.) Where Daniel Levitin (see below) draws examples from jazz and popular music, Robert Jourdain works more within a classical frame of reference. A science writer, he is also a composer himself, and plays piano. Living in the two worlds of science and music, he is highly skilled and motivated in building bridges between the two. This book takes as much concentration as playing the violin; the understanding it provides is well worth the trouble. I am no musician but found this book fascinating because of the insights it provides on both ends of the bridge.

Lehrer, Jonah, Proust Was a Neuroscientist. Houghton Mifflin, 2007, 242 pages. This book deals not so much with the brain as with discovery, which is about bringing new information into consciousness. Lehrer contrasts the methods of artists and scientists, showing through specific examples how artists opened up new territory, and scientists subsequently fleshed out the details.

Levitin, Daniel, This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. Plume/Penguin, 2006, 322 pages. (Added to list Jan. 31, 2009.) I am neither a musician nor a scientist, but I love this book because of the insights it provides into one of humanity’s most compelling—and revealing—passions. You will learn a great deal about music, why you like it, and about the role it plays in your innermost being. Christof Koch (below) informs us about the visual brain; Daniel Levitin does something similar for the auditory brain (as does Robert Jourdain, see above).

Luria, A. R., The Mind of a Mnemonist. Translated from the Russian by Lynn Solataroff. Foreword by Jerome S. Bruner. Harvard University Press, 1968, 160 pages. This is the tale of a memory artist who could recall vast quantities of information with ease, and retain it for the rest of his life. Which might not appear to be a problem until you realize how cluttered his mind became because he had scant ability to generalize that information in the form of concepts requiring less storage space. Luria is one of the pioneers of research into the mind.

Ramachandran, V.S., and Sandra Blakeslee, Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind. Harper, Perennial, HarperCollins, 1998, 328 pages. This book of adventures is as exciting as those of Mr. Holmes. Not about crime, it is about disclosing the hidden and often surprising organization of the brain. This is as entertaining as learning can get.

Introductory Books About Mind and Brain

Damasio, Antonio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. Harcourt, A Harvest Book, 1999, 385 pages. This book explains in eloquent terms how consciousness extends the reach of the unconscious autonomic nervous system into the varied and unprecedented predicaments hominids got themselves into as they evolved into humans. It provides great insight into the workings of the mind.

Koch, Christof, The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach. Foreword by Francis Crick. Roberts and Company, 2004, 429 pages. Koch’s true quest is for visual consciousness, because that is the sensory modality he is most familiar with. If he hadn’t limited his topic, the book would have been three times as long. As it is, it’s a wonderful book, showing not only how the visual mind works (which we are all interested in), but how scientists have figured that out.

Konner, Melvin, The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit. Henry Holt, A Holt Paperback, 2002, 540 pages. This book has more information per page than most books you will read, all presented with a poetic flair. If you are versed in genetics, physiology, neuroscience, and philosophy, the words will flow into your mind. If you are not a polymath, you’re in for rough sledding through beautiful terrain.

LeDoux, Joseph, The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. Simon and Schuster Paperback, 1996, 384 pages. LeDoux writes clearly about research into the brain without getting overly-technical. He truly wants to find out what is going on during the experience of emotions, and uses a variety of avenues to reach that understanding. He focuses on fear and anxiety because that has been his research specialty. He has a way of making the reader feel she is on the leading edge of getting to know the emotional centers of the brain and how they work.

LeDoux, Joseph, Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are. Viking, 2002, 406 pages. The wiring of the brain is just a metaphor; LeDoux takes the reader beyond art to an actual understanding of how neural connections are made, what they accomplish, and why they are significant to you and me. On the way, you learn a great deal about how thoughts can make things happen through the agency of consciousness.

Technical Reference Books on Neuroscience

Gazzaniga, Michael S., Editor-in-Chief, The New Cognitive Neurosciences. The MIT Press, 2000, 1419 pages. Here displayed in full view is the broad array of modern research on the brain written by those in the know—the researchers themselves. This book is more for scientists than laypersons. But because everything is laid out in detail in one place, this is my favorite among the books listed here. A great book for browsing, I regard it as an explore-it-yourself book on any aspect of consciousness.

Kandel, Eric R., James H. Schwartz, and Thomas M. Jessell, Editors, Principles of Neural Science. McGraw-Hill, 2000, 1414 pages. College texts have come a long way since I was in school. This book excels in its organization, clear illustrations, and concise text. If I could redo my education, this is where I would start. This tome is more about the underpinnings of consciousness and behavior than about consciousness itself. In effect, it provides a prologue to the understanding of consciousness. It leads up to and ends on this note: “We are optimistic that future cognitive neural scientists will identify the neurons involved and characterize the mechanisms by which consciousness is produced.”

¦

Neuroscience is expanding massively. There is much fear that this will somehow herald a new social determinism, an anti-progressive agenda where people are marked out as winners and losers by the kind of brains they possess. The comparison case is genetics (although obviously neuroscience is not separate from genetics). After the genome was mapped, all sorts of anti-progressive implications floated around for a while – refusing life insurance to people with ‘bad’ genetic profiles and so on.

Does neuroscience have anti-progressive implications? I’m going to argue in as far as the facts are so far in, no, not at all - quite the opposite.

First, let’s define progressives along with my Chief Executive as: ‘enthusiastic believers in the capacity of human beings to collaborate to achieve qualitative advances in individual and social welfare.’ I would argue that the three major paradigm-busting discoveries of neuroscience are consonant with progressivism thus defined.

1) That many of our decisions are not made self-consciously (within our conscious control) but are made by our brains for us. There is a wealth of research on this now, but the seminal studies were carried out by Benjamin Libet. The basic idea is that we think we decide on an action but in fact our brains have already embarked on executing it before we become aware of the action taking place.

2) That the production of neural pathways (neurogenesis) is possible in adult humans and that neurogenesis is developmentally retarded by the wrong kind of environments. These two discoveries were made by Elizabeth Gould in the course of her work on the relation between neurogenesis and environment/experience. To be fair, these findings are not rock solid yet. The experiments have only been carried out on higher mammalian brains rather than human ones, but nevertheless, the findings look liklely to be true.

3) That decision-making cannot be funded by reason alone. Rather, the emotions are central to the making of decisions, as well as to following social conventions, possessing a sense of personal future and acting on moral principles. The work here that is important is by Antonio Damasio who studied the way brain lesions that knocked out emotional responses also impaired the ability of subjects to make plain old rational decisions (like where to go on holiday, or where to go shopping).

1) Might be thought to imply anti-progressive characteristics. Why? Well if our unconscious/semi-conscious decision-making processes are fixed then we are in trouble. This is because useful as these processes are, they are often simplistic and crude. But in fact, these processes are not fixed but are responsive to training. We can reflect on our unconsicous prejudices and reconfigure the processes involved.

2) Gives the lie to the idea that our brains fix our abilities completely from an early age (they do to a certain extent, but only a certain extent). It also reinforces the progressive point that material and social well-being when missing really do disadvantage children and young people.

3) Corrects the somewhat fuzzy but popular idea that if our minds are our brains then emotions and feelings somehow drop out of the picture (that we – that is, the agents who make decisions – are somehow purely self-interested rational creatures only concerned to maximize our own utility, possessed of nothing more than mechanical and cold reasoning powers).

So there’s my pitch for the idea that the three major discoveries of neuroscience can go hand in hand with progressivism. The century of the brain can very well be the century of real social progress also.

Antonio Damasio

His contributions to the Philosophy of Embodiment are most accessible in his two bestsellers Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain, and The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness.

Contrary to the disembodied dichotomy envisioned by philosopher René Descartes between the mind and the body, Damásio argues throughout his work that the body is the genesis of thought. Central to his argument is a collapse of the classical distinction between reason and emotion. Utilizing his expertise in neuroscience, he argues instead that reason and emotion fundamentally depend upon one another.

Damásio is also well known for proposing what he calls the Somatic-marker Hypothesis, which proposes how emotional processes guide action-oriented decision-making. The hypothesis addresses how decisions and mentality are structured through bodily action.

If you’re in London on December 11th, you’ll be able to catch Damásio at Tate Modern, where he’ll be giving a talk titled, “Embodiment: Body, Mind and Medicine”.