Antonio R. Damasio, MD, David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Professor of Psychology, Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC, is an expert on cognition and behavior with a special focus on emotion, decision-making and consciousness.

• The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures. Pantheon Books, New York, 2018. We invite you to read a review by Mark Solms, PhD, who will also present at the weekend conference.
• Also author of Descartes’ Error: 10th Anniversary Edition (2005), Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain (2003), The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (1999) 
• Recipient, Prince of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research (2005); Presidential Medal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (2006); Honorary Professorship by Southeast University in Nanjing, China (March 2005); Signoret Prize in Cognitive Neuroscience (2004); Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award, International Psychoanalytical Association (2004); Nonino Prize (2003)

"The advent of feelings was simultaneously the advent of the mind. Early organisms capable of feeling were, for the first time in evolution and unlike all other life forms, aware of some aspects of their own existence. Feelings paved the way for the establishment of higher levels of cognition and consciousness, culminating in the modern human mind. Accordingly, shedding light on the underpinnings of feeling is likely to provide insights into consciousness and the mind.  

"The elucidation of feeling states also has prominent biomedical relevance. Some of the most devastating medical and public health problems of our time—depression, substance addiction and intractable pain—are centered on pathologies of feeling. Depression alone is the leading cause of disease in the United States and the leading cause of non-infectious disease worldwide. The mechanism for these pathologies is not understood and the available therapies are widely regarded as unsatisfactory. Insight into the neurophysiology of feelings may lead to the development of more effective treatments for this class of disorders." 

Concluding remarks from "The nature of feelings: evolutionary and neurobiological origins," by Antonio Damasio and Gil B. Carvalho, in Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

This free public lecture is part of the International Joseph Sandler Research Conference. You may receive 1 CME/CE credit.