Antonio Damasio is a renowned neuroscientist whose groundbreaking research has illuminated the critical role of emotion in decision-making and consciousness, providing invaluable insights for fields from marketing to philosophy and psychology. After completing his neurological residency and doctorate in 1974 at the University of Lisbon Medical School, Antonio Damasio established a robust foundation in behavioral neurology, undertaking research under Norman Geschwind at the Aphasia Research Center in Boston. His early career focused on understanding brain functions related to language and symbolic faculties, as evidenced by his 1974 thesis, ‘Perturbações neurológicas da linguagem e de outras funções simbólicas.’ He later served for two decades as the chair of neurology at the University of Iowa, where his work began to illuminate the neural systems underpinning emotion, decision-making, memory, language, and consciousness. Damasio’s pivotal contribution, the somatic marker hypothesis, profoundly impacted contemporary scientific and philosophical discourse by demonstrating how emotions and their biological underpinnings significantly influence decision-making, often unconsciously.

In 2014, he received the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in Psychology. Expanding his influence beyond academia, Damasio was appointed a member of the Council of State of Portugal in 2017. His recent literary contributions further explore the intricate connections between life, feeling, and culture, with the publication of ‘The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures’ in 2018. Most recently, he released ‘Feeling and Knowing: Making Minds Conscious’ in 2021, continuing to provide invaluable insights into consciousness and its neural basis, impacting fields from marketing to philosophy and psychology.