The science of neuro-imaging can now make pictures that show the difference between your brain when you're happy and your brain when you're sad. The glucose and oxygen that fuel brain activity cell by cell light up in one pattern when your brain's in the grip of anger, in another when your brain is seized by fear. The mapping by magnetic scanners of the circuitry of emotion makes you wonder: are we approaching a neuro-mechanical understanding of emotions? a physiology of feelings?
Antonio Damasio is a humanist at the forefront of the research in brain behavior: the trick, he says, in all the unpacking of mental processes is to put it back together in human form. It's the difference, he says, between knowing how your brain listens to your favorite Bach or Mozart-and hearing the music. Or the difference in our appreciation of a biological mechanism and a human being. The neurologist and philosopher Antonio Damasio is this hour on The Connection. (Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
