This page is incomplete. It displays memoes and/or notes.
One of the functions of pain is to focus attention to the body.
We are only subtly aware of a background feeling, but aware enough to be able to report instantly on its quality.
Damasio, Antonio R., "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain", Penguin Books, 1994, 150
…we are not aware of every part of our body, all of the time, because representations of external events…effectively distract us….But the fact that our focus of attention is usually elsewhere, where it is most needed for adaptive behavior, does not mean the body representation is absent, as you can easily confirm when t....
Damasio, Antonio R., "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain", Penguin Books, 1994, 152
…signals from the brain continue to flow to the body, some deliberately and some automatically, from brain quarters whose activities are never represented directly in consciousness. As a result, the body changes yet again, and the image you get of it changes accordingly. [The sense of self is the ongoing reading of bod....
Damasio, Antonio R., "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain", Penguin Books, 1994, 228
As far as the current moment is concerned, my idea is that images of body state are in the background, usually unattended but ready to spring forward. [Then pain is an instruction or at least a suggestion, that the body be attended to.]
Damasio, Antonio R., "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain", Penguin Books, 1994, 234
[Our sense of vision can be seen as a feeling, the feeling of seeing. This often has primacy over body awareness.] …if pain, discomfort, or emotion [a sensing of a bodily state] set in, attention can be focused instantly on body representations, and the body feeling moves out of the background and into center stage.....
Damasio, Antonio R., "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain", Penguin Books, 1994, 233
…it is apparent that emotion is played out under the control of both subcortical and neocortical structures. Second, and perhaps more important, feelings are just as cognitive as any other perceptual image, and just as dependent on cerebral-cortex processing as any other image….they are first and foremost about t....
Damasio, Antonio R., "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain", Penguin Books, 1994, 159
[If "Incognito" is right, that is, if only the most important brain processes are made visible to us, it emphasizes the perceived importance of responding to pain signals.]
Hangartner, Ross, "Personal note", Anon, 2015
[Evolutionarily, seeing, hearing, and touch became more the focus of attention.] … thus the perception of the body proper more often than not was left precisely where it did, and does, the best job: in the background.
Damasio, Antonio R., "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain", Penguin Books, 1994, 233
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