Antonio Damasio’s research has served to lay the foundations of a neurological theory of emotions and has shown that emotions play a central role in decision-making and in social knowledge, focusing especially on diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. His work has had a great influence on the understanding of the neurological system, on which factors as important for the human being as memory and language depend.
Doctor of Medicine from the University of Lisbon, Damasio has created a laboratory for the investigation of perception at the University of Iowa, using both the method of injury and the functional image.
After a stay at the Aphasia Research Center in Boston, he returned to the Department of Neurology of the University Hospital of Lisbon and is currently a professor at the University of Southern California and director of the Institute for Neurological Study of Emotion, Decision-Making and Creativity. He was also a distinguished professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa, where he held the M.W.Allen chair, and a professor at the Salk Institute of La Jolla in California.
In addition to multiple research articles published in scientific journals, Damasio has written many acclaimed books such as “The Sensation of What Happens”, considered one of the ten best books of 2001 by The New York Times Book Review; “The error of Descartes” or “In search of Spinoza: neurology of emotion and feelings”, “And the brain created man”, among others.
One of the greatest experts in the relationships between human emotions, human reason and the biology that sustains both.
