Antonio Damasio

(Lisbon, 1944)

Neuroscientist, researcher and professor. He studied medicine at the University of Lisbon and specialized in neurology before moving to the United States to work as a neuroscience researcher. Thanks to his contributions to the study of consciousness and brain processes linked to feelings and emotions, great mysteries in the study of the human mind, he has become one of the leading names in his field. It has important recognitions such as the Prince of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research (2015) or the Grawemeyer Award (2014), as well as honorary degrees from various universities around the world. He currently holds the David Dornsife Chair in Neurology, Philosophy and Psychology and directs the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California.

He is also the author of various popular scientific books and other more specialized ones that have allowed a wide dissemination of his discoveries, as well as the main unknowns that still govern neuroscience. Among his work, published in Spanish and Catalan by Destino and translated into more than thirty languages, stand out books that combine science and philosophy, such as “El error descartes” (1994), where he questions one of the great assumptions of Western thought. : the independent existence of the mind with respect to the body; and “The brain created man” (2010), where he reviews the evolution of the human mind and the origins of consciousness; or the collection of informative articles “Feeling and knowing. The path of consciousness” (2021).