63
" This finding means that while the neurons themselves work to convey peripheral signals to the central nervous system, they do not do so alone. On the contrary, they are assisted; they are modulated directly by molecules circulating in the blood. The signals that, for example, help generate the pain from a wound are conveyed to precisely such dorsal root ganglia.20 Given the arrangement I just described, the signals are thus not “purely” neural. The body has its say on the process, directly, via influential chemical molecules circulating in the blood. The same influence can be exerted higher up in the system, at the level of the brain stem and the cerebral cortices. The denuding of the blood-brain barrier is one mechanism for blending body and brain. In fact, permeability may turn out to be a fairly general feature of peripheral ganglia.21 These facts need to be factored in the scholarship of feelings. "
― António R. Damásio , The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures
64
" The new internal world is a world dominated by the body frame, by the location and state of the sensory portals within that frame, and by the voluntary musculature. The sensory portals sit and wait within the body frame and contribute importantly to the information generated by the maps of the outside world. They clearly indicate to the organism’s mind the locations, within the organism, of the sources of images currently being generated. This is necessary for the construction of an overall organism image, which, as we shall see, is a critical step in the generation of subjectivity. "
― António R. Damásio , The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures
68
" Why was having images so important? What did having images really accomplish? The presence of images meant that each organism could create internal representations based on its ongoing sensory descriptions of both external and internal events. Those representations, generated within the organism’s nervous system but with the cooperation of the body proper, made a world of difference to the particular organism in which such processes took place. Those representations, which were accessible only to the particular organism, were able, for example, to guide movement of a limb or of the whole with precision. Image-guided movements—guided by visual, sound, or tactile images—were more beneficial for the organism, more likely to produce advantageous results. Homeostasis was improved accordingly and with it survival. "
― António R. Damásio , The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures
72
" A disponibilidade generalizada de comunicação abundante e quase instantânea de informação pública e pessoal, um óbvio benefício reduz, paradoxalmente, o tempo necessário para a reflexão sobre essa mesma informação. A gestão do fluxo de conhecimento disponível obriga, frequentemente, a uma rápida classificação de factos como sendo bons ou maus, agradáveis ou não. Isto contribui, porventura, para um aumento de opiniões polarizadas quanto a acontecimentos sociais e políticos. A exaustão provocada pelo excesso de factos recomenda uma fuga para as crenças e as opiniões predefinidas, em geral as do grupo a que o indivíduo pertence. "
― António R. Damásio , The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures
74
" As nervous systems developed, they acquired an elaborate network of peripheral probes—the peripheral nerves that are distributed to every parcel of the body’s interior and to its entire surface, as well as to specialized sensory devices that enable seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting. Nervous systems also acquired an elaborate collection of aggregated central processors in the central nervous system, conventionally called the brain.10 The latter includes (1) the spinal cord; (2) the brain stem and the closely related hypothalamus; (3) the cerebellum; (4) a number of large nuclei located above brain-stem level—in the thalamus, basal ganglia, and basal forebrain; and (5) the cerebral cortex, the most modern and sophisticated component of the system. These central processors manage learning and memory storage of signals of every possible sort and also manage the integration of these signals; they coordinate the execution of complex responses to inner states and incoming stimuli—a critical operation that includes drives, motivations, and emotions proper; and they manage the process of image manipulation that we otherwise know as thinking, imagining, reasoning, and decision making. Last, they manage the conversion of images and of their sequences into symbols and eventually into languages—coded sounds and gestures whose combinations can signify any object, quality, or action, and whose linkage is governed by a set of rules called grammar. Equipped with language, organisms can generate continuous translations of nonverbal to verbal items and build dual-track narratives of such items. "
― António R. Damásio , The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures
76
" A universalidade e a espantosa durabilidade da música parecem provir desta capacidade fascinante de se adequar a qualquer estado de espírito ou circunstância, em qualquer ponto do Globo, no amor e na guerra, envolvendo indivíduos solitários, pequenos grupos, ou congregações vasas que de súbito ficam mais coesas graças ao poder da música. A música serve todos os senhores, tão discretamente como um mordomo do velho mundo, ou tão ruidosamente como uma banda de heavy metal. "
― António R. Damásio , The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures
78
" The codes represent, in non-explicit form, the actual content of images and their sequences and are stored in both cerebral hemispheres, in association cortices of the occipital, temporal, parietal, and frontal regions. These regions are interconnected, via two-way hierarchical circuits of neural cables, with the collection of “early sensory cortices” where the explicit images are first assembled. During the process of recall, we end up reconstructing a more or less faithful approximation of the original image, using reverse neural pathways, which operate from code-holding regions and produce effects within the explicit image-making regions, essentially where the images were first assembled. We have called this process retroactivation.7 "
― António R. Damásio , The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures
80
" But the extraordinary complexity of a living organism, the human variety being the best example, could only have come to be with the help of the supporting, coordinating, and controlling devices of the nervous system. All these systems are entirely part of the body that they serve. In and of themselves, they, too, are made up of living cells, like all the rest. Their cells also require regular nourishment to preserve their integrity, and they, too, are at risk of disease and death, just like any other cell in the body. "
― António R. Damásio , The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures
