Hanna Damasio

Last updated
Hanna Damasio
Born
Hanna Damasio

NationalityU.S. and Portuguese
Education
Spouse(s) Antonio Damasio
Awards
Scientific career
Fields Cognitive neuroscience
Institutions University of Southern California

Hanna Damasio is a scientist in the field of cognitive neuroscience. Using computerized tomography and magnetic resonance imaging, she has developed methods of investigating human brain structure and studied functions such as language, memory, and emotion, using both the lesion method and functional neuroimaging. She is currently a Dana Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Dana and David Dornsife Cognitive Neuroscience Imaging Center at the University of Southern California. [1]

Contents

Career and research

After obtaining a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Lisbon in 1969, Hanna Damasio began her career in academia as an instructor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa in 1976. She quickly climbed the academic ladder, becoming a professor in the Department of Neurology in 1985. In addition to academic appointments, Hanna Damasio was also employed as the Director of the Laboratory for Neuroimaging and Human Neuroanatomy at the University of Iowa from 1982 to 2004. She continues to serve as a distinguished adjunct professor at the University of Iowa. Currently, Hanna Damasio is a Dana Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Dana and David Dornsife Cognitive Neuroscience Imaging Center at the University of Southern California. [1]

Hanna Damasio utilizes brain imaging methods, such as computerized tomography and nuclear magnetic resonance, to enhance the diagnoses protocols for diseases that affect the brain. [1] Her current projects include: developing new techniques to investigate brain structure in vivo using magnetic resonance, developing new techniques to evaluate experimental results in positron emission tomography (PET), and investigating the neuroanatomical substrates of language, memory, emotion, and decision-making using the lesion method. [2] Her work has resulted in numerous scientific articles which appeared in leading journals. In 1989, she published "Lesion Analysis in Neuropsychology" (Oxford University Press), a classic textbook for which she received the Prize for Outstanding Book of the Year in Bio and Medical Sciences from the Association of American Publishers. Her continued interest in human neuroanatomy led her to develop the first atlas of the human brain based on computer tomography images: "Human Brain Anatomy in Computerized Images", also published by Oxford University Press. The book is a recognized reference now in its second edition. [1] [3] [4]

Honors and awards

Hanna Damasio was awarded the Pessoa Prize in 1992 for her significant contributions in science and literature. She was elected to the American Neurological Association in 1995 and recognized as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997. In 2004, she shared the Jean-Louis Signoret Prize in cognitive neuroscience for pioneering work in social cognition. In 2010, she was a co-recipient of the Cozzarelli Prize from the United States National Academy of Sciences, attributed to the best article in behavioral neuroscience published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2009. [1] In 2011, Hanna Damasio and her husband Antonio Damasio received honorary doctorate degrees from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland for their contributions in neurology. She also holds honorary doctorate degrees from, most recently, the Sorbonne (Université Paris Descartes), the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona), and the Universities of Lisbon and Aachen. [5]

Personal life

Hanna Damasio is married to Antonio Damasio, an internationally renowned neurologist and expert in the relationship between emotion and cognition, with whom she co-directs the Brain and Creativity Institute (BCI) at the University of Southern California. In her rare spare time she is a sculptor.

Quotes

Related Research Articles

Cognitive neuroscience Scientific field

Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental processes. It addresses the questions of how cognitive activities are affected or controlled by neural circuits in the brain. Cognitive neuroscience is a branch of both neuroscience and psychology, overlapping with disciplines such as behavioral neuroscience, cognitive psychology, physiological psychology and affective neuroscience. Cognitive neuroscience relies upon theories in cognitive science coupled with evidence from neurobiology, and computational modeling.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to neuroscience:

Neuropsychology Study of the brain related to specific psychological processes and behaviors

Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology. It is concerned with how a person's cognition and behavior are related to the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Professionals in this branch of psychology often focus on how injuries or illnesses of the brain affect cognitive and behavioral functions.

Cognitive neuropsychology is a branch of cognitive psychology that aims to understand how the structure and function of the brain relates to specific psychological processes. Cognitive psychology is the science that looks at how mental processes are responsible for our cognitive abilities to store and produce new memories, produce language, recognize people and objects, as well as our ability to reason and problem solve. Cognitive neuropsychology places a particular emphasis on studying the cognitive effects of brain injury or neurological illness with a view to inferring models of normal cognitive functioning. Evidence is based on case studies of individual brain damaged patients who show deficits in brain areas and from patients who exhibit double dissociations. Double dissociations involve two patients and two tasks. One patient is impaired at one task but normal on the other, while the other patient is normal on the first task and impaired on the other. For example, patient A would be poor at reading printed words while still being normal at understanding spoken words, while the patient B would be normal at understanding written words and be poor at understanding spoken words. Scientists can interpret this information to explain how there is a single cognitive module for word comprehension. From studies like these, researchers infer that different areas of the brain are highly specialised. Cognitive neuropsychology can be distinguished from cognitive neuroscience, which is also interested in brain damaged patients, but is particularly focused on uncovering the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive processes.

Functional neuroimaging

Functional neuroimaging is the use of neuroimaging technology to measure an aspect of brain function, often with a view to understanding the relationship between activity in certain brain areas and specific mental functions. It is primarily used as a research tool in cognitive neuroscience, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and social neuroscience.

Brenda Milner British-Canadian neuroscientist and neuropsychologist

Brenda Milner is a British-Canadian neuropsychologist who has contributed extensively to the research literature on various topics in the field of clinical neuropsychology. Milner is a professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University and a professor of Psychology at the Montreal Neurological Institute. As of 2005, she holds more than 20 honorary degrees and continues to work in her nineties. Her current work covers many aspects of neuropsychology including her lifelong interest in the involvement of the temporal lobes in episodic memory. She is sometimes referred to as "the founder of neuropsychology" and has proven to be an essential key in its development. She received the Balzan Prize for Cognitive Neuroscience, in 2009, and the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, together with John O'Keefe, and Marcus E. Raichle, in 2014. She turned 100 in July 2018 and at the time was still overseeing the work of researchers.

Antonio Damasio Portuguese-American neuroscientist

Antonio Damasio is a Portuguese-American neuroscientist. He is currently the David Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience, as well as Professor of Psychology, Philosophy, and Neurology, at the University of Southern California, and, additionally, an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute. He was previously the chair of neurology at the University of Iowa for 20 years. Damasio heads the Brain and Creativity Institute, and has authored several books: his next to latest work, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (2010), explores the relationship between the brain and consciousness. Damasio's research in neuroscience has shown that emotions play a central role in social cognition and decision-making.

The first neuroimaging technique ever is the so-called 'human circulation balance' invented by Angelo Mosso in the 1880s and able to non-invasively measure the redistribution of blood during emotional and intellectual activity. Then, in the early 1900s, a technique called pneumoencephalography was set. This process involved draining the cerebrospinal fluid from around the brain and replacing it with air, altering the relative density of the brain and its surroundings, to cause it to show up better on an x-ray, and it was considered to be incredibly unsafe for patients. A form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) were developed in the 1970s and 1980s. The new MRI and CT technologies were considerably less harmful and are explained in greater detail below. Next came SPECT and PET scans, which allowed scientists to map brain function because, unlike MRI and CT, these scans could create more than just static images of the brain's structure. Learning from MRI, PET and SPECT scanning, scientists were able to develop functional MRI (fMRI) with abilities that opened the door to direct observation of cognitive activities.

Somatic marker hypothesis Hypothesis that emotional processes guide or bias decision-making

The somatic marker hypothesis, formulated by Antonio Damasio and associated researchers, proposes that emotional processes guide behavior, particularly decision-making.

Neuroimaging Set of techniques to measure and visualize aspects of the nervous system

Neuroimaging or brain imaging is the use of various techniques to either directly or indirectly image the structure, function, or pharmacology of the nervous system. It is a relatively new discipline within medicine, neuroscience, and psychology. Physicians who specialize in the performance and interpretation of neuroimaging in the clinical setting are neuroradiologists. Neuroimaging falls into two broad categories:

William Henry Oldendorf was an American neurologist, physician, researcher, medical pioneer, founding member of the American Society for Neuroimaging (ASN), and originator of the technique of computed tomography.

Behavioral neurology is a subspecialty of neurology that studies the impact of neurological damage and disease upon behavior, memory, and cognition, and the treatment thereof. Two fields associated with behavioral neurology are neuropsychiatry and neuropsychology. In the United States, 'Behavioral Neurology & Neuropsychiatry' has been recognized as a single subspecialty by the United Council for Neurologic Subspecialties (UCNS) since 2004.

Anna Christina Nobre Neuroscientist

Anna Christina Nobre, FBA, MAE, fNASc, known as Kia Nobre is a Brazilian and British cognitive neuroscientist working at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

Broadly defined, positive neuroscience is the study of what the brain does well. Instead of studying mental illness, positive neuroscientists focus on valued cognitive qualities that serve to enrich personal life and/or society. Topics in positive neuroscience overlap heavily with those of positive psychology, but use neuroimaging techniques to extend beyond the behavioral level and explain the neurobiology which underpins "positive" cognitive phenomena such as intelligence, creativity, optimism, and healthy aging.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to brain mapping:

Katya Rubia British neuroscentist

Katya Rubia is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre and Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, both part of the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London.

Neuromorality is an emerging field of neuroscience that studies the connection between morality and neuronal function. Scientists use fMRI and psychological assessment together to investigate the neural basis of moral cognition and behavior. Evidence shows that the central hub of morality is the prefrontal cortex guiding activity to other nodes of the neuromoral network. A spectrum of functional characteristics within this network to give rise to both altruistic and psychopathological behavior. Evidence from the investigation of neuromorality has applications in both clinical neuropsychiatry and forensic neuropsychiatry.

Kathryn Emma Watkins is an experimental psychologist in the Wellcome Trust centre for integrative neuroimaging at the University of Oxford and a tutorial fellow at St Anne's College, Oxford. Her research investigates the brain processes that underlie speech, language and development.

Richard Frackowiak Neuroimaging researcher (born 1950)

Richard Stanislaus Joseph Frackowiak, born 26 March 1950 in London, is a British and French neurologist and neuroscientist. He is best known for his role in the development of neuroimaging, as the founding director of the Functional Imaging Laboratory (FIL) at University College London (UCL) and as one of the initiators, in 2013, of the Human Brain Project (HBP), a ten-year European project coordinated by the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) with the goal of advancing knowledge in the fields of neuroscience, computing and brain-related medicine.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "USCDornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences". 2015. Retrieved November 20, 2015.
  2. Damasio, Hanna (2015). "Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on November 27, 2015. Retrieved November 20, 2015.
  3. Damasio, Hanna (2005). Human Brain Anatomy in Computerized Images. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0195165616.
  4. Damasio, Hanna; Damasio, Antonio (1989). Lesion Analysis in Neuropsychology. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0195039191.
  5. 1 2 3 Johnson, Pamela (2011). "Antonio and Hanna Damasio Honored" . Retrieved November 20, 2015.