beginnercognitive neurosciencehistorypioneer

Antonio Damasio

Revolutionized understanding of emotion's role in decision-making. His work with patient Phineas Gage's modern equivalent showed that emotion is essential to rational thought.

Antonio Damasio revolutionized cognitive science by demonstrating that emotion is essential to rational decision-making. His somatic marker hypothesis proposes that bodily feelings guide choices before conscious deliberation. Studies of patients with ventromedial prefrontal damage — including his famous patient Elliot — showed that pure reasoning without emotion leads to disastrous decisions.

“We are not thinking machines that feel; we are feeling machines that think.”

1944 — Present · Portuguese-American