How the Brain

Creates the Mind

by Antonio R. Damasio

Philosophers, neuroscientists and laypeople have long wondered

how the conscious mind comes to be. A more complete understanding
of the workings of the brain ought to lead to an eventual solution

A
s the millennium draws to a close, it is apparent that one question towers above all others in

the life sciences: How does the set of processes we call mind emerge from the activity of

the organ we call brain? The question is hardly new. It has been formulated in one way

or another for centuries. Once it became possible to pose the question and not be

burned at the stake, it has been asked openly and insistently. Recently the question has preoccupied both

the experts neuroscientists, cognitive scientists and philosophers and others who wonder about the ori-

gin of the mind, specifically the conscious mind.

The question of consciousness now occupies center stage because biology in general and neuroscience in

particular have been so remarkably successful at unraveling a great many of lifes secrets. More may have

been learned about the brain and the mind in the 1990s the so-called decade of the brainthan during the

entire previous history of psychology and neuroscience. Elucidating the neurobiological basis of the con-

scious minda version of the classic mind-body problem has become almost a residual challenge.

Contemplation of the mind may induce timidity in the contemplator, especially when consciousness be-

comes the focus of the inquiry. Some thinkers, expert and amateur alike, believe the question may be unanswer-

able in principle. For others, the relentless and exponential increase in new knowledge may give rise to a vertigi-
SLIM FILMS

nous feeling that no problem can resist the assault of science if only the theory is right and the techniques are

powerful enough. The debate is intriguing and even unexpected, as no com- The multimedia mind-show
occurs constantly as the brain
parable doubts have been raised over the likelihood of explaining how the processes external and internal
sensory events. As the brain
brain is responsible for processes such as vision or memory, which are obvious answers the unasked question
of who is experiencing the mind-
components of the larger process of the conscious mind. show, the sense of self emerges.

112 Copyright 1999 Scientific American, Inc.

Copyright 1999 Scientific American, Inc.
 DIMITRY SCHIDLOVSKY; SOURCE: Tootell et al., Journal of Neuroscience, May 1988.
of all these data adds up to correlates of mental
states but nothing resembling an actual mental
state. For them, detailed observation of living
matter thus leads not to mind but simply to the
details of living matter. The understanding of
how living matter generates the sense of self that
is the hallmark of a conscious mind the sense
a that the images in my mind are mine and are
formed in my perspective is simply not possible.
The brains business This argument, though incorrect, tends to silence
is representing other most hopeful investigators of the conscious mind.
things. Studies with To the pessimists, the conscious-mind problem
macaques show a seems so intractable that it is not even possible to
remarkable fidelity explain why the mind is even about something
between a seen shape why mental processes represent internal states or
(a) and the shape of interactions with external objects. (Philosophers
the neural activity refer to this representational quality of the mind
pattern (b) in one of with the confusing term intentionality.) This ar-
the layers of the pri- gument is false.
mary visual cortex. The final negative contention is the reminder
that elucidating the emergence of the conscious
mind depends on the existence of that same con-
scious mind. Conducting an investigation with
the very instrument being investigated makes
both the definition of the problem and the ap-
proach to a solution especially complicated. Giv-
en the conflict between observer and observed,
we are told, the human intellect is unlikely to be
up to the task of comprehending how mind
b emerges from brain. This conflict is real, but the
notion that it is insurmountable is inaccurate.
In summary, the apparent uniqueness of the
I am firmly in the confident camp: a substantial conscious-mind problem and the difficulties that
explanation for the minds emergence from the complicate ways to get at that problem generate
brain will be produced and perhaps soon. The two effects: they frustrate those researchers com-
giddy feeling, however, is tempered by the ac- mitted to finding a solution and confirm the con-
knowledgment of some sobering difficulties. viction of others who intuitively believe that a so-
Nothing is more familiar than the mind. Yet lution is beyond our reach.
the pilgrim in search of the sources and mecha-
nisms behind the mind embarks on a journey Evaluating the Difficulties
into a strange and exotic landscape. In no particu-
lar order, what follows are the main problems fac-
ing those who seek the biological basis for the
conscious mind.
T hose who cite the inability of research on the
living matter of the brain to reveal the sub-
stance of mind assume that the current knowl-
The first quandary involves the perspective edge of that living matter is sufficient to make
one must adopt to study the conscious mind in such judgment final. This notion is entirely unac-
relation to the brain in which we believe it origi- ceptable. The current description of neurobiologi-
nates. Anyones body and brain are observable to cal phenomena is quite incomplete, any way you
third parties; the mind, though, is observable slice it. We have yet to resolve numerous details
only to its owner. Multiple individuals confront- about the function of neurons and circuits at the
ed with the same body or brain can make the molecular level; we do not yet grasp the behavior
same observations of that body or brain, but no of populations of neurons within a local brain re-
comparable direct third-person observation is gion; and our understanding of the large-scale
possible for anyones mind. The body and its systems made up of multiple brain regions is also
brain are public, exposed, external and unequiv- incomplete. We are barely beginning to address
ocally objective entities. The mind is a private, the fact that interactions among many noncon-
hidden, internal, unequivocally subjective entity. tiguous brain regions probably yield highly com-
How and where then does the dependence of a plex biological states that are vastly more than the
first-person mind on a third-person body occur sum of their parts.
precisely? Techniques used to study the brain in- In fact, the explanation of the physics related to
clude refined brain scans and the measurement of biological events is still incomplete. Consequent-
patterns of activity in the brains neurons. The ly, declaring the conscious-mind problem insolu-
naysayers argue that the exhaustive compilation ble because we have studied the brain to the hilt

114 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN December 1999 How the Brain Creates the Mind
Copyright 1999 Scientific American, Inc.
and have not found the mind is ludicrous. We the attempt defies Aristotles observation
have not yet fully studied either neurobiology or that human beings are infinitely curious
its related physics. For example, at the finest level about their own nature.
of description of mind, the swift construction,
manipulation and superposition of many sensory Reasons for Optimism
images might require explanation at the quantum
level. Incidentally, the notion of a possible role for
quantum physics in the elucidation of mind, an
idea usually associated with mathematical physi-
M y proposal for a solution to the co-
nundrum of the conscious mind re-
quires breaking the problem into two
cist Roger Penrose of the University of Oxford, is parts. The first concern is how we generate a
not an endorsement of his specific proposals, what I call a movie-in-the-brain. This
namely, that consciousness is based on quantum- movie is a metaphor for the integrated
level phenomena occurring in the microtubules and unified composite of diverse sensory
constituents of neurons and other cells. The images visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory
quantum level of operations might help explain and others that constitutes the multime-
how we have a mind, but I regard it as unneces- dia show we call mind. The second issue is
sary to explain how we know that we own that the self and how we automatically gener-
mind the issue I regard as most critical for a ate a sense of ownership for the movie-in-
comprehensive account of consciousness. the-brain. The two parts of the problem are
The strangeness of the conscious-mind prob- related, with the latter nested in the for-
lem mostly reflects ignorance, which limits the mer. Separating them is a useful research
imagination and has the curious effect of making strategy, as each requires its own solution. b
the possible seem impossible. Science-fiction Neuroscientists have been attempting
writer Arthur C. Clarke has said, Any sufficiently unwittingly to solve the movie-in-the-
advanced technology is indistinguishable from brain part of the conscious-mind problem
magic. The technology of the brain is so com- for most of the history of the field. The en-
plex as to appear magical, or at least unknow- deavor of mapping the brain regions in-
able. The appearance of a gulf between mental volved in constructing the movie began al-
states and physical/biological phenomena comes most a century and a half ago, when Paul
from the large disparity between two bodies of Broca and Carl Wernicke first suggested
knowledge the good understanding of mind we that different regions of the brain were in-
have achieved through centuries of introspection volved in processing different aspects of
and the efforts of cognitive science versus the in- language. More recently, thanks to the ad-
complete neural specification we have achieved vent of ever more sophisticated tools, the c
through the efforts of neuroscience. But there is no effort has begun to reap handsome rewards.
reason to expect that neurobiology cannot bridge Researchers can now directly record the
the gulf. Nothing indicates that we have reached activity of a single neuron or group of neu-
the edge of an abyss that would separate, in prin- rons and relate that activity to aspects of a
ciple, the mental from the neural. specific mental state, such as the percep-
Therefore, I contend that the biological process- tion of the color red or of a curved line.
es now presumed to correspond to mind process- Brain-imaging techniques such as PET
es in fact are mind processes and will be seen to be (positron emission tomography) scans
so when understood in sufficient detail. I am not and fMR (functional magnetic resonance)
denying the existence of the mind or saying that scans reveal how different brain regions in

HANNA DAMASIO
once we know what we need to know about biol- a normal, living person are engaged by a
ogy the mind ceases to exist. I simply believe that certain mental effort, such as relating a
the private, personal mind, precious and unique, word to an object or learning a particular d
indeed is biological and will one day be described face. Investigators can determine how
in terms both biological and mental. molecules within microscopic neuron circuits par- Neuroscience continues
The other main objection to an understanding ticipate in such diverse mental tasks, and they can to associate specific
of mind is that the real conflict between observer identify the genes necessary for the production brain structures with
and observed makes the human intellect unfit to and deployment of those molecules. specific tasks. Some
study itself. It is important, however, to point out Progress in this field has been swift ever since language regions are
that the brain and mind are not a monolith: they David H. Hubel and Torsten Wiesel of Harvard highlighted in a and b.
have multiple structural levels, and the highest of University provided the first clue for how brain Color-processing (red)
those levels creates instruments that permit the circuits represent the shape of a given object, by and face-processing
observation of the other levels. For example, lan- demonstrating that neurons in the primary visual ( green) regions are
guage endowed the mind with the power to cate- cortex were selectively tuned to respond to edges shown in c. Ones own
gorize and manipulate knowledge according to oriented in varied angles. Hubel and Margaret S. body sense depends on
logical principles, and that helps us classify obser- Livingstone, also at Harvard, later showed that the region shown in d.
vations as true or false. We should be modest other neurons in the primary visual cortex re-
about the likelihood of ever observing our entire spond selectively to color but not shape. And
nature. But declaring defeat before we even make Semir Zeki of University College London found

How the Brain Creates the Mind SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN December 1999 115
Copyright 1999 Scientific American, Inc.
 beyond properly working hippocampi and cere-
bral cortices. Certain processes must take place, at
the level of neurons and molecules, so that the
neural circuits are etched, so to speak, with the
impressions of a newly learned fact. This etching
depends on strengthening or weakening the con-
tacts between neurons, known as synapses. A
provocative recent finding by Eric R. Kandel of
Columbia University and Timothy P. Tully of
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is that etching the
impression requires the synthesis of fresh pro-
teins, which in turn rely on the engagement of
specific genes within the neurons charged with
supporting the consolidated memory.
These brief illustrations of progress could be ex-
panded with other revelations from the study of
language, emotion and decision making. Whatev-
er mental function we consider, it is possible to
identify distinct parts of the brain that contribute
to the production of a function by working in
concert; a close correspondence exists between
the appearance of a mental state or behavior and
the activity of selected brain regions. And that
correspondence can be established between a giv-
en macroscopically identifiable region (for exam-
ple, the primary visual cortex, a language-related
area or an emotion-related nucleus) and the micro-
scopic neuron circuits that constitute the region.
HANNA DAMASIO

Most exciting is that these impressive advances

in the study of the brain are a mere beginning.
New analytical techniques continuously improve
the ability to study neural function at the molecu-
The sense of self has a that brain regions that received sensory informa- lar level and to investigate the highly complex
seat in the brains core. tion after the primary visual cortex did were spe- large-scale phenomena arising from the whole
Stripping away the cialized for the further processing of color or move- brain. Revelations from those two areas will make
external anatomy of a ment. These results provided a counterpart to ob- possible ever finer correspondences between brain
human brain shows a servations made in living neurological patients: states and mental states, between brain and mind.
number of deep-seated damage to distinct regions of the visual cortices in- As technology develops and the ingenuity of re-
regions responsible for terferes with color perception while leaving dis- searchers grows, the fine grain of physical struc-
homeostatic regulation, cernment of shape and movement intact. tures and biological activities that constitute the
emotion, wakefulness A large body of work, in fact, now points to the movie-in-the-brain will gradually come into focus.
and the sense of self. existence of a correspondence between the struc-
ture of an object as taken in by the eye and the Confronting the Self
pattern of neuron activity generated within the
visual cortex of the organism seeing that object
[see illustration on page 114].
Further remarkable progress involving aspects of
T he momentum of current research on cogni-
tive neuroscience, and the sheer accumula-
tion of powerful facts, may well convince many
the movie-in-the-brain has led to increased in- doubters that the neural basis for the movie-in-
sights related to mechanisms of learning and the-brain can be identified. But the skeptics will
memory. In rapid succession, research has revealed still find it difficult to accept that the second part
that the brain uses discrete systems for different of the conscious-mind problem the emergence
types of learning. The basal ganglia and cerebel- of a sense of self can be solved at all. Although I
lum are critical for the acquisition of skills, for ex- grant that solving this part of the problem is by no
ample, learning to ride a bicycle or play a musical means obvious, a possible solution has been pro-
instrument; the hippocampus is integral to the posed, and a hypothesis is being tested.
learning of facts pertaining to such entities as peo- The main ideas behind the hypothesis involve
ple, places or events. And once facts are learned, the unique representational ability of the brain.
the long-term memory of those facts relies on Cells in the kidney or liver perform their assigned
multicomponent brain systems, whose key parts functional roles and do not represent any other
are located in the vast brain expanses known as cells or functions. But brain cells, at every level of
cerebral cortices. the nervous system, represent entities or events
Moreover, the process by which newly learned occurring elsewhere in the organism. Brain cells
facts are consolidated in long-term memory goes are assigned by design to be about other things

116 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN December 1999 How the Brain Creates the Mind
Copyright 1999 Scientific American, Inc.
and other doings. They are born cartographers of ganism lacking it. A self-aware organism has an
the geography of an organism and of the events incentive to heed the alarm signals provided by The Author
that take place within that geography. The oft- the movie-in-the-brain (for instance, pain caused
quoted mystery of the intentional mind relative by a particular object) and plan the future avoid-
to the representation of external objects turns out ance of such an object. Evolution of self rewards
to be no mystery at all. The philosophical despair awareness, which is clearly a survival advantage.

REMI BENALI Gamma Liaison Network

that surrounds this intentionality hurdle allud- With the movie metaphor in mind, if you will,
ed to earlier why mental states represent internal my solution to the conscious-mind problem is
emotions or interactions with external objects that the sense of self in the act of knowing
lifts with the consideration of the brain in a Dar- emerges within the movie. Self-awareness is actu-
winian context: evolution has crafted a brain that ally part of the movie and thus creates, within
is in the business of directly representing the or- the same frame, the seen and the seer, the
ganism and indirectly representing whatever the thought and the thinker. There is no separate
organism interacts with. spectator for the movie-in-the-brain. The idea of
The brains natural intentionality then takes us spectator is constructed within the movie, and ANTONIO R. DAMASIO
to another established fact: the brain possesses de- no ghostly homunculus haunts the theater. Ob- is M. W. Van Allen Distin-
vices within its structure that are designed to man- jective brain processes knit the subjectivity of the guished Professor and
age the life of the organism in such a way that the conscious mind out of the cloth of sensory map- head of the department
internal chemical balances indispensable for sur- ping. And because the most fundamental sensory of neurology at the Uni-
vival are maintained at all times. These devices are mapping pertains to body states and is imaged as versity of Iowa College of
neither hypothetical nor abstract; they are located feelings, the sense of self in the act of knowing Medicine and adjunct
in the brains core, the brain stem and hypothala- emerges as a special kind of feeling the feeling professor at the Salk In-
mus. The brain devices that regulate life also repre- of what happens in an organism caught in the stitute for Biological
sent, of necessity, the constantly changing states act of interacting with an object. Studies in San Diego. He
of the organism as they occur. In other words, the was born in Portugal and
brain has a natural means to represent the struc- The Future received his M.D. and
ture and state of the whole living organism. Ph.D. from the University
But how is it possible to move from such a bio-
logical self to the sense of ownership of ones
thoughts, the sense that ones thoughts are con-
I would be foolish to make predictions about
what can and cannot be discovered or about
when something might be discovered and the
of Lisbon. With his wife,
Hanna, Damasio created
a facility at Iowa dedicat-
structed in ones own perspective, without falling route of a discovery. Nevertheless, it is probably ed to the investigation of
into the trap of invoking an all-knowing ho- safe to say that by 2050 sufficient knowledge of neurological disorders of
munculus who interprets ones reality? How is it biological phenomena will have wiped out the mind and behavior. A
possible to know about self and surroundings? I traditional dualistic separations of body/brain, member of the Institute
have argued in my book The Feeling of What Hap- body/mind and brain/mind. of Medicine of the Na-
pens that the biological foundation for the sense Some observers may fear that by pinning down tional Academy of Sci-
of self can be found in those brain devices that its physical structure something as precious and ences and of the Ameri-
represent, moment by moment, the continuity of dignified as the human mind may be downgrad- can Academy of Arts and
the same individual organism. ed or vanish entirely. But explaining the origins Sciences, Damasio is the
Simply put, my hypothesis suggests that the and workings of the mind in biological tissue will author of the 1994 book
brain uses structures designed to map both the not do away with the mind, and the awe we have Descartes Error: Emo-
organism and external objects to create a fresh, for it can be extended to the amazing microstruc- tion, Reason, and the Hu-
second-order representation. This representation ture of the organism and to the immensely com- man Brain and of the
indicates that the organism, as mapped in the plex functions that allow such a microstructure to new book The Feeling of
brain, is involved in interacting with an object, generate the mind. By understanding the mind at a What Happens.
also mapped in the brain. The second-order rep- deeper level, we will see it as natures most complex
resentation is no abstraction; it occurs in neural set of biological phenomena rather than as a mys-
structures such as the thalamus and the cingulate tery with an unknown nature. The mind will sur-
cortices. vive explanation, just as a roses perfume, its molec-
Such newly minted knowledge adds important ular structure deduced, will still smell as sweet. SA
information to the evolving mental process. Speci-
fically, it presents within the mental process the
information that the organism is the owner of the Further Information
mental process. It volunteers an answer to a ques-
tion never posed: To whom is this happening? The EYE, BRAIN, AND VISION. DAVID H. HUBEL. Scientific American Library (W. H. Free-
sense of a self in the act of knowing is thus creat- man), 1988.
ed, and that forms the basis for the first-person THE REDISCOVERY OF THE MIND. John R. Searle. MIT Press, 1992.
BRIGHT AIR, BRILLIANT FIRE: ON THE MATTER OF THE MIND. Gerald M. Edelman. Basic
perspective that characterizes the conscious mind.
Books, 1993.
Again from an evolutionary perspective, the THE ENGINE OF REASON, THE SEAT OF THE SOUL: A PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNEY INTO THE
imperative for a sense of self becomes clear. As BRAIN. Paul M. Churchland. MIT Press, 1995.
Willy Lomans wife says in Arthur Millers Death THE FEELING OF WHAT HAPPENS: BODY AND EMOTION IN THE MAKING OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
of a Salesman: Attention must be paid! Imagine Antonio R. Damasio. Harcourt Brace, 1999.
a self-aware organism versus the same type of or-

How the Brain Creates the Mind SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN December 1999 117
Copyright 1999 Scientific American, Inc.