I Feel, Therefore I Am: Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio on Consciousness and How the Feeling-Tone of the Body Underscores the Symphony of the Mind

Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (2012), Damasio shows how images, both abstract and concrete, are “the main currency of our minds.”14 In this, he associates images and minded awareness. Mind is more than the ability to think in words; it is also the ability to imagine and create images of all kinds in tandem with bodily knowled

“you, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules”.

Decades of neurological research has shown that the mind and body are intimately intertwined: we learn through our whole sensory apparatus, a sculptor can project her mind into her fingertips, we feel our emotions coursing through our whole physical being, mental stress can cause diabetes, the beat of our hearts and the sweat on our palms are part

As a psychologically experienced entity, awareness can feel very substantial, the very substance of our existence. Yet unlike water, the fluid of neural network activity does not have mass. It is in a sense, insubstantial as a physical entity.

The brain is a material network of neurons, synapses and biochemicals. The mind is a flow of subjective experiences, such as pain, pleasure, anger and love.