I was completely captivated by this book.
Antonio Damasio interprets the remarkable achievements of neuroscience within the broader context of evolutionary biology and cultural development.
― Yo-Yo Ma (cellist, Grammy Award winner)

Where does consciousness come from?
World-renowned scholar Antonio Damasio's "The Self Comes to the Mind" answers this question in the language of life.
His attempt to elucidate human consciousness from the deepest levels of life is surprisingly concrete.
It traces how the 'self-sense of life' evolves into consciousness through the complex interactions of emotion, body, and reason revealed in the brainstem, thalamus, and cerebral cortex, and explores the origin of consciousness in the process by which life recognizes itself.
As neuroscientist Park Moon-ho commented, “This book, which adds depth to neuroanatomy, can be called Antonio Damasio’s masterpiece.”

As the way we understand life changes, the way we teach people also changes.
Damasio's view of the mind not as a function of thought but as a process by which life feels itself, an evolutionary mechanism by which beings become aware of themselves, makes us reflect on what we have lost in today's education.
Consciousness originated as an impulse to maintain the body's balance, but in humans it was transformed into a sense of empathy, responsibility, and ethics.
This book, which documents the process by which humans have progressed from being mere "beings that sustain life" to beings that "care for" each other's lives, records the moment when science reclaims the language of philosophy by weaving life, self, and consciousness into a single, continuous narrative.

Consciousness is not simply an image in the mind.
Consciousness is about the contents of the mind, organized around the organism that produces and motivates those contents.
But consciousness is more than just the organized mind influenced by a living, active organism, in that it can be experienced by readers and authors alike whenever they want.
(…) The mind emerges simply by the presence and flow of organized images in the mental stream, but unless some supplementary process is added, the mind remains unconscious.
What is lacking in that unconscious mind is the self.
--- 「Part 1 Chapter 1.
From "Wake Up"

Behind the imperfect but wondrous structures that culture and civilization have built for humanity, the most fundamental debate we face remains the sustenance of life.
(…) Life and its essential conditions, that is, the unavoidable survival imperative and the complex management process to maintain the survival of one cell or trillions of cells, were the fundamental causes that led to the emergence and evolution of the brain, the most sophisticated management device created by evolution.
At the same time, this was also the root cause of a whole series of consequences, including the development of increasingly sophisticated brains as we lived in increasingly sophisticated bodies and in increasingly complex environments.
If we examine the full spectrum of brain function through the lens of the view that the brain exists to manage life within the body, the traditional categories of psychology—emotion, perception, memory, language, intelligence, and consciousness—will seem more natural and far less mysterious than they once did.
--- 「Part 1, Chapter 2.
From Life Sustaining to Biological Value, pp. 108-109)

Contrary to traditional views and common wisdom, I do not assume that the mind is formed solely in the cerebral cortex.
The first signs of the mind begin in the brainstem.
The idea that the mind's workings begin in the brainstem is so radical that it has yet to gain much public attention.
(…) The two nuclei in the brainstem, the nucleus accumbens and the nucleus accumbens, create the basic aspects of the mind that are expressed as the pain and pleasure we feel as we live.
--- 「Part 2, Chapter 3.
From “Map Making and Image Formation”

The fact that emotions are not learned but rather automated, predictable, and stable behavioral programs suggests that their origins lie in natural selection and the resulting genetic design.
These genetic instructions have been well preserved throughout evolution, leading the brain to be assembled in a specific and reliable way.
As a result, specific neural circuits process emotionally relevant stimuli, and emotionally triggering brain regions generate perfect emotional responses.
(…) We are able to regulate our emotional expressions to some extent based on the cultural influences and personal education we experience while growing up.
(…) it can be modulated, reveal distinct individual differences, and sometimes subtly reflect a particular social group to which one belongs.
--- 「Part 2, Chapter 5.
From “Emotions and Feelings”

The convergence-divergence zone theory framework posits two somewhat separate 'brain spaces' within the brain.
One is the space where an explicit map of objects and events is created when we perceive something, and where that map is reconstructed when we recall it.
(…) These two spaces refer to different periods of brain evolution.
One side is the early brain, which could elicit appropriate behavior based on inclinations alone, and the other side is the brain after the quality of behavior improved as maps evolved into images.
The two spaces are now seamlessly integrated.
--- 「Part 2, Chapter 6.
From “Structural Design of Memory”

The stage of consciousness is busy changing here and there, letting the imagination run wild.
Fragments of past lives flash through our memories, and even possibilities that may or may not happen in the future flow into our present experiences.
We live breathlessly, moving between the past and the future, between different times and places in life.
But amidst all that flow, the self, the central axis within me, never disappears from sight.
Even if we focus on a very distant event, our connection to the center is not lost.
The center of the self acts as an unshakable constant.
This is the essence of the expanded consciousness that represents the majestic achievement of the human brain and defines humanity.
For better or worse, the power of the brain that has brought humanity to its current level of civilization lies here.
This is the kind of consciousness that novels, films, and music express, and that philosophical thought praises.
--- 「Part 3, Chapter 7.
From “Observed Consciousness”

The process of building a conscious mind cannot be an easy task.
(…) The simplest level emerges from the part of the brain responsible for the organism (the ego).
In this early self, images representing relatively stable aspects of the body are gathered, resulting in a feeling of spontaneous emanation from the living body (primal feeling).
The second layer is formed by the relationship between the organism (represented by the ego) and specific parts of the brain that represent the object of perception.
As a result of these interactions, the core self emerges.
At the third level, various objects stored as past experiences or anticipated future appearances interact with the atomic self, generating various core self pulses.
The result formed in this way is the autobiographical self.
These three layers of self are created in separate workspaces, but they operate in a coordinated manner.
--- 「Part 3, Chapter 8.
From “Building a Conscious Mind”

The autobiographical self can be said to operate through two interlocking mechanisms.
The first mechanism is part of the core ego mechanism, which allows each electrical memory stack to be treated as an independent object and brought into consciousness within the pulse of the core ego.
The second mechanism is a brain-wide coordination that involves the following steps:
(1) Specific memory content is retrieved and unfolded in the form of images, (2) these images interact with the atomic self in an orderly manner, and (3) the result of the interaction remains consistent for a certain period of time.
The neural structures involved in the formation of the autobiographical self are distributed throughout the brainstem, thalamus, and cerebral cortex, similar to the structures that drive the core self.
--- 「Part 3, Chapter 9.
From "Autobiographical Self"

The process of organizing a show called consciousness is inevitably a large-scale collaborative effort, so singling out a specific production team alone is ineffective.
Given the autobiographical self aspect that characterizes human consciousness, consciousness could never have emerged without the robust development of convergent-divergent regions that drive the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of the cerebral cortex.
Likewise, autobiographical features could never have arisen if the brainstem had not contributed to the atomic ego, if the brainstem had not been intrinsically connected to the body itself, or if there had been no recursive integration at the forebrain level via the thalamus.
--- 「Part 3, Chapter 10.
From "Galmuri"

In fact, any attempt to systematically understand how dramatic human existence is and what rewards can be offered within it would have been possible only after human consciousness fully blossomed.
In other words, only after one has developed a mind capable of self-reflection and an autobiographical self capable of gathering fragments of knowledge.
Given the intellectual capabilities of early humans at the time, they too must have wondered one day where their place in the universe would be.
They too must have posed questions that still haunt us thousands of years later: “Where did we come from, and where are we going?”
That is precisely when the rebellious self truly matures.
Along with this, myths were created to explain the human condition and the ways of the world, and social norms and rules were solidified.

--- 「Part 4, Chapter 11.
From “Living with Consciousness”