Self Comes to Mind Constructing the Conscious Brain [Paperback]

A leading neuroscientist explores with authority, with imagination, and with unparalleled mastery how the brain constructs the mind and how the brain makes that mind conscious.
 
Antonio Damasio has spent the past thirty years researching and and revealing how the brain works. Here, in his most ambitious and stunning work yet, he rejects the long-standing idea that consciousness is somehow separate from the body, and presents compelling new scientific evidence that posits an evolutionary perspective. His view entails a radical change in the way the history of the conscious mind is viewed and told, suggesting that the brain’s development of a human self is a challenge to nature’s indifference. This development helps to open the way for the appearance of culture, perhaps one of our most defining characteristics as thinking and self-aware beings.

“Self Comes to Mindis a Big Idea book penned by a luminous thinker. . . . [A] beautifully sprawling and marvelous work.” —The Dallas Morning News

“Will give pleasure to anyone interested in original thinking about the brain. . . . Breathtakingly original.” —Financial Times 
 
“Damasio introduces some novel ideas. . . . Intriguing.” —New Scientist

“Adventurous, courageous, and intelligent. Antonio Damasio is one of the leading workers in the field of consciousness research. . . . I have great admiration for this book and its author.” —John Searle,The New York Review of Books

“Damasio’s most  ambitious work yet. . . . A lucid and important work.” —Wired.com

“A very interesting book . . . cogent, painstaking, imaginative, knowledgeable, honest, and persuasive . . . Damasio’s quest is both thorough and comprehensive.” —New York Journal of Books

“Damasio’s contilß