Book António Damásio

António Damásio is a Portuguese neuroscientist whose research changed how the world thinks about emotion, reason and the human mind. He holds the David Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience at the University of Southern California, where he is also a professor of psychology, philosophy and neurology and leads the Brain and Creativity Institute, and he is an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute. Before USC he spent two decades chairing neurology at the University of Iowa. Trained in medicine at the University of Lisbon, he developed the somatic marker hypothesis, the idea that feelings and their bodily signals help steer our decisions and underpin social thinking. His books reached far beyond the lab, notably Descartes' Error (1994) and Looking for Spinoza (2003). His honors include the Pessoa Prize (1992), the Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research (2005), the Honda Prize (2010) and a Grawemeyer Award (2014), along with honorary doctorates from Leiden, KU Leuven and RWTH Aachen and fellowship in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. On stage, Damásio makes brain science vivid, connecting consciousness, creativity and decision-making to everyday life and leadership.