June 2013 Dialogues with António Damásio In reality, what I liked the most when maybe, I was around. . .
ten years old, was to build motors and play with things such as meccanos I really liked movies, still do, and I liked literature. To tell stories, through movies, or, perhaps, to tell stories through literature those where things that could have been perfectly possible to me, but it also would perfectly possible if I had. .
. become a philosopher and not properly a scientist. Perhaps one of the roots of this.
. . one of the roots of the answer resided in the fact that there were human issues that always interested me.
And for a long time I had no idea which was the best way of dealing with them professionally. I had teachers at the lyceum who were. .
. I had a great philosopher, I had a writer, people who were connected to the arts, and in which there was a continuity between a simple class at the lyceum for teenagers and what happened in the real university world of that time. Neuroscience today Neuroscience have, in fact, had a spectacular progress which is due in great part to the existence of new techniques for the study of the human nervous system, for the study of the human nervous system, and of the human nervous living system.
Until a relatively short time ago, it wasn't possible to directly study the brain on a living human being. And that which is taking place at this moment which is in fact new, isn't just to see the possibility of understanding how the brain works, in order to be able to better notice and diagnose and treat neurological and psychiatric diseases which, generally, are directly connected to the working of the brain, but also to be able to understand better what's happening to that which have been the products of human nature, which have been the products of the human brain, in terms of, for example, to the building of structures, for example, of ethics, to the creation of social structures, in general, politics, economics, and, then, the creation, evidently, of technique and science, and arts. Since the classics, such as music, or painting and sculpture, until the complex arts, such as, for example, theatre and movies, all those great human capacities and productivities, it has been possible to connect them to the brain's functioning, through this huge technical success that has been, which has been designing in the last two or three decades.
Homeostasis and life's maintenance What concerns me the most as a scientist, and as a neuroscientist in particular, is realizing the way in which great part of our human manifestations are connected to being alive, are connected to life in general and to the way they have been developing. And, at this moment, what seems to me more central is the process of life regulation. And something that's very important to stress is that it is not just a problem concerning human beings, it is not even a problem primarily in terms of the brain, it is a problem in terms of life in general.
And a problem which has to do with several living beings, that don't even have brains, but that nevertheless perform homeostasis. Therefore, homeostasis is deeper than the problem of the brain. Until a way of playing with this problem would be saying the brain is today's servant of homeostasis.
The complexity of social problems Whereas, for example, the biological processes are related to the genome, are arranged problems, sort of, they are in their corner, they are relatively simple, they have been tools of profound, enormous discoveries about this, and we partially know, not completely, but we sort of know how it works, in relation with the sociocultural regulation is a completely different story. There are constant unknown factors, and what's even more important Is that it is not an evolution that has finished. We are perfectly in flux, and one of the classic examples we have of that is what is going on with the social phenomena in any part of the world.
If we had this conversation a year ago, it wouldn't be possible to predict the demonstrations which are taking place in Brazil, across the country, the way they are happening. All of that is part of this sociocultural regulation which is taking place and we know how it is happening, to some extent, but what we don't know is how it is going to end. Brain and Creativity Institute The name of the institute in the University of Southern California is Brain and Creativity Institute, but the idea of creativity is a very big one, because creativity is a capacity that human beings possess and that in fact other beings lack.
It is a capacity that is connected, classically, historically, to the arts, and it's connected to the invention of social systems, the creation of justice structures, of political and economic structures. All of this is part of the human creation, And in our institute we are doing, for example, the. .
. two of the great pillars of the institute, in terms of investigation, are: investigations upon the brain and music, which is one of the most important aspects of the work, and another which is related to social structures and the way how we behave within those structures. For a more humanist science It's necessary to have some notion about what came before us, and it's necessary to have some notion about what has characterized the human beings before us.
Because this is the only way to drive the science that is being made in the best sense. Because is possible to make a kind science which is perfectly terrible, and it's possible to make a kind of science which doesn't have any type of worth for beyond the value of making technical pirouettes and the value of things that can be sold. There are also other values which are important, and is because of this that culture, in general, is important, and I think it's important for science in a very general way.
It is not. . .
I consider that is not advisable to be a great physician or chemist, if you don't know something about what human beings, and their culture, are. It makes no sense at all to try to understand economy or politics or the moral feelings if one has no idea how the people who came before us dealt with the same issues, because the issues were exactly the same. With differences of technique and degree, the problems were the same.
Moral pain and its causes We all know the classic diseases, and the classic neurological diseases are beginning to look like some kind of studied recitation. Of course, everyone talks about Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and autism, and all those things. .
. That's part of it, is almost like a prayer which people recite every time the human brain is mentioned. But there are pathologies that.
. . evidently, that precede the great social problems of nowadays, but which are possibly getting worse with social problems, which have to do with anything I could call "moral pain", in a very practical manner, of depression.
Of course, depression existed throughout history, but there are depressive syndromes that today appear in a very specific social context, because the way people live is completely different from ancient times. People, these days, in centers of great social development are not living in families, they are living alone, or are living in considerably smaller cores, and have problems that are related to the speed of life, which are related to the huge velocity and amount of communication which surrounds them, which is completely different from what life was like 100 years ago, or even 30 years ago. The way in which culture enters the brain is also different, the impact on the brain is completely different.
And all of this is a problem which will be studied, of course there are people who say things about that. There are the ones who say this is bad for our health, or that is good, but the truth is we don't know if it's good or bad. It's necessary to study, it's the best way.
Therefore, emotional problems related to the change of life are extremely important. Other problem of great importance, are the problems of drug addiction. It's a problem which is absolutely brain related, absolutely neurological, in the strict sense of the word, but which, at the same time, has to do with the society one lives in.
It's not possible to study it just by studying which neurotransmitters are involved, studying only the brain. It's necessary to study all of that, but within a social context. Potential and limits of therapy The way how can one intervene is extremely varied, and of course there are interventions for certain problems in which the pill can be exactly what it results on.
There are interventions in which we can combine a pharmacological intervention with an intervention which is related to an intelligent conversation. And also there are interventions which can have something to do with neurosurgery and which can have something to do with, for example, electrophysiological activity. All those interventions have a history already.
Of course, in the last 100 years, there were surgical interventions in the brain, there were pharmacological interventions, also there were interventions in the form of electrode implantation on the brain, which produce a certain result, and all of those came relatively too early, for the technique to be sufficiently rich and for the therapeutic indications to be accurate. Today, it's in fact possible to make extremely well controlled interventions, very limited, which can treat pain, for example, after the pain was completely untreated by medicines and all sorts of psychotherapies, is possible to have an intervention which can attenuate the pain. Today, it is also, in Parkinsonism patients, who are resistant to all drugs, it's possible to have electrode implantation which can solve Parkinsonism in a matter of minutes.
Of course, all those interventions are today possible, and in 10 years it will be possible to make them even better, with less risk, with less problems, in a much simpler way, but all of this has to happen in its own time. It's always necessary to bear in mind the complex total of what is a human being, and to bear in mind the problem very particularly, and, of course, different problems require different solutions. What is necessary is to know what is going to be the proper framework for a problem and, well, for example, to have a very precise view view of what a human being is and what are those various problems, some are extremely small, specific, and others are things of an extremely great dimension.
About the nature of emotions Feelings and emotions are in fact very basic, there's no doubt that they are, but what's impossible is to have applied logic and reason, if we also don't have the inclusion of emotions and feelings into the problem's solution. And, therefore, the issue is not black and white, emotions and feelings are very simple things, reason and knowledge are complicated and better things, and one choses itself to the other and it rejects itself, the other includes itself. It's all within the same problem and, once more, all of that is at the same biological root, which is the root of human life and basic behavior, which is completely oriented by something and for that only which is the "salvation of life".
This is the problem which all living beings have to confront, and the largest part of the living beings confronts this problem in an unconscious manner, and we, for better or for worse, deal with this problem in a conscious manner. At least sometimes. Emotion has its logic The more people understand how in their decisions, certain aspects weight in, the more it will be possible to have reasonable decisions.
In other words, a reasonable decision is not one made only with knowledge, it's a decision taken with other aspects in mind. Aspects which are, some, very personal, or aspects which are, let's say, of social affection. Think, for example, in the fact that we have very simple emotions such as fear, anger, nausea.
. . not nausea, disgust.
But we have, at the same time, extremely complex emotions such as pride, compassion, shame, embarrassment, admiration. The distance that exists between fear and admiration is something perfectly abyssal. Fear is something we share with the more simple creatures around us.
The compassion reaction, this is something we will find in a few non-human species, but not necessarily, for example, in reptiles. But to have a compassion reaction, for example, towards someone, who lost his job, or with someone who's been humiliated in public, this is something which is strictly a human development, and it's a human development which at that moment has already, also, a biological root. The culture of speed It's impossible to have a deep view of the human behavior problems which doesn't include great part of the information which comes to us from classic culture.
It's necessary for the interpretation to not exclude this classic capacity capacity and not tend to simplify, which is something that often happens, because culture, with the great speed which we have nowadays, many times rejects the possibility of looking for classic data, because it seems like a waste of time, but it isn't. The scientific administration system of scientific publication, which has much to do with those problems we discussed earlier, which are society's problems at the moment and the problems of how to transmit information. And one of those problems have to do with the idea of speed and the idea of size reduction.
Today, there are scientific articles which have to fit in 1000 words, or 3000 words. Of course there are certain circumstances in which is in fact possible to give testimony of the result, but it makes you do certain things which are wrong, for example, it makes you not do the complete quotation of what came before us, many times makes you. .
. not do the history of what came before us, and all of that are disadvantages for culture. This is an approach which.
. . Is a problem which doesn't come only from scientists, but which comes often in the shape of how the media itself approach those issues.
As it's known, there's a tendency from part of a careless journalism to come up with headlines, news for newspapers, it sounds good, it reads better and simplifies wrongly. And is that oversimplification which leads to a throwback by part of the public which is more literate and which doesn't like to see things which are complex being treated in an oversimplified manner. Memory, imagination, creativity Memory is absolutely indispensable, and imagery memory is absolutely indispensable for creativity to exist.
Of course all living beings have, even very living beings, have a memory capacity. And in the memory capacity, the simplest example, is to find stimulus, which can be positive or negative, and being able to recognize, in a situation, in the following moment, that a certain positive thing can be searched and a negative thing should be avoided. This is the most classic memory example, but of course this doesn't have to be visually represented.
Now, what we said when we spoke of memory, in relation to human beings, and when we talk of memory in relation to, for example, creativity, in relation to art, has much to do with the capacity of representing memories, and what in fact distinguishes human memory is being able to make a. . .
to create a memory, which can be retrieved, which can be accessed, in a visual manner, either in an imagery sound manner or an imagery visual manner. Great part of our present world is ruled by visual or sound memories. Of course there are many others, for example, memories of smell, memories of touch.
But the memories which in fact rule our culture are visual and sound memories. And these memories appear as a complete figuration, and it's very important to think, when you think of sound images, to think that images are, in fact, possible in all the senses we have, that images are not just visual. Many times the word image gives the automatic idea of visual image.
But that is not in fact, it doesn't correspond, in reality. . .
Images are representations, Now, the possibility of recovering images and the possibility of manipulating images, which are the main source of creative execution and the manipulating here has much to do. . .
Movie metaphors help a lot because, in terms of sound as in terms of visuals, what happens with the images is that they can be cut to pieces, and, therefore, what is being said when we talk about editing, it's exactly that, the possibility of taking and image and leading it forward or backward, in the case of visual image, and cut it to pieces, assembling them differently in time. And that is, truly, the fundamental base of artistic creation, either of the creation that happens to the writer, or the creation of the playwright, or the creation of the cinematographer, or the creation of the composer, who's in the back creating images that take place in time and are connected in a very. .
. gentle, very subtle manner, or in an abrupt manner, a manner in which everything is, in fact, cut to pieces. Therefore, creativity, memory and imagination are interconnected capacities without which it's not possible, in fact, to conceive new models, to conceive new realizations, either from the social viewpoint, either from the classic arts viewpoint, or invention, for example, philosophical.
All of them are connected to this imagination. Hanna Turns out that Hanna, my wife, hates to talk in public and, therefore, it is me who always do the talking, and she doesn't like to speak in public. But the work, in great part, is made together, and she has a huge influence in what I do and even in what I say.
But what she doesn't like is to appear in public. But, for example, all the images I show, in books or in lectures, are all made by her, and are part of a work which was, in fact, made together. And she has a huge influence in the choice of themes, in the choice of presentation, and, in a general way, in terms of order.
Gives me a great pleasure to have intelligent people around us, and people who can contribute with ideas and reflections. The books are written, generally, for me, for me to discuss with myself and to. .
. to open this discussion so that others can also dialogue with me and with the book.
