|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Media Contacts:
Pat JaCoby, (858) 534-7404 or Jan
Jennings, (858) 822-1684 Damasio will speak on Emotion, Social Behavior and Spinoza: The Brain Perspective at 7:30 p.m. in Mandeville Center at the University of California, San Diego. The event is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the UCSD Center for the Humanities as its first lecture on Science, Technology, and Values. Damasio, M.D., Ph.D., is the M.W. Van Allen Distinguished Professor and Head of Neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine and an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute. He is the author of Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (1994); The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (1999-2000), and his most recent book Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (2003). UCSD philosophy professor Georgios Anagnostopoulos, director of the Center for the Humanities, says one of the main objectives of the Center is to engage in a dialogue with investigators from non-humanist disciplines as well as the general public on important current issues. “In our first lecture on Science, Technology, and Values, Damasio, one of the foremost neurologists of our times, will focus on what contemporary neurobiology tells us about emotion and feeling, and how our knowledge about them contributes to our understanding of social behavior,” Anagnostopoulos says. Damasio adds that in his discussion he “will invoke the thinking of Spinoza who foreshadowed modern emotion studies and connected emotion to ethics.” In Damasio’s most recent book, Anagnostopoulos says the author “combines the latest advances in neuroscience with Spinoza’s meditation on the nature of the mind and its relation to the physical in a profound exploration of feelings and the role they play in decision-making.” In his research, Damasio has conducted pioneering studies of patients with focal brain damage. He has shown that reason and emotion are tightly linked in day-to-day decision-making and that the emotions reflect changes in the inner body. People with damage that destroys the link between reason and emotion show impaired rationality and reduced capacity to internalize social norms, thereby having considerable impact on their behavior. Anagnostopoulos says that Damasio’s work on the functioning of the brain, especially when congenital or acquired abnormalities are found, has had a major impact on the ongoing research on the brain and human behavior. The UCSD Center for the Humanities, a focal point for intellectual life on the UCSD campus, was established in 1996 to promote research and related activities in the humanities. It provides annual support for graduate student fellowships, faculty fellowships, distinguished visitors, interdisciplinary research, conferences, and community outreach. To UCSD’s established research and scientific disciplines, the Center for the Humanities adds a haven for scholarly reflection on the human condition, endeavoring to analyze concrete human problems and explore and project imaginative solutions. The aim of the Center’s lectures on Science, Technology, and Values is to address the ethical, social, legal, and political implications of the immense advances in science and technology in the recent past and those that will likely come in the near future. The lectures are made possible by a generous donation of a member of the San Diego community who wishes to remain anonymous. For information on the April
24 Damasio lecture or on the Center for the Humanities, call (858) 534-0999
or visit the Center’s website: http://dah.ucsd.edu/humctr.htm
|
  Copyright ©2001 Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Last modifed
|
New advances concerning
the brain basis of choice and decision-making – and the impact of
these developments in neuroscience on our conventional ideas of free will,
responsibility, and social behavior – will be explored April 24
by internationally recognized neuroscientist Dr. Antonio Damasio.