Descartes' Error

{{short description|1994 book by António Damásio}}

{{Infobox book|

| name = Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

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| image = Descartes' Error (Paperback Cover).jpg

| caption = The original paperback edition

| author = António Damásio

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| language = English

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| published = 1994

| pages = 312

| isbn = 978-0-399-13894-2

}}

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain is a 1994 book by neuroscientist António Damásio describing the physiology of rational thought and decision, and how the faculties could have evolved through Darwinian natural selection.{{sfn|Marg|1995}} Damásio refers to René Descartes' separation of the mind from the body (the mind/body dualism) as an error because reasoning requires the guidance of emotions and feelings conveyed from the body.{{sfn|Hyyppä|1996}}{{sfn|Hughes|Harding|2014}} Written for the layperson, Damásio uses the dramatic 1848 railroad accident case of Phineas Gage as a reference for incorporating data from multiple modern clinical cases, enumerating damaging cognitive effects when feelings and reasoning become anatomically decoupled.{{sfn|Hughes|Harding|2014}} The book provides an analysis of diverse clinical data contrasting a wide range of emotional changes following frontal lobe damage{{sfn|Panksepp|1998|p=388}} as well as lower (medulla) and anterior areas of the brain such as the anterior cingulate. Among his experimental evidence and testable hypotheses, Damásio presents the "somatic marker hypothesis", a proposed mechanism by which emotions guide (or bias) behavior and decision-making, and positing that rationality requires emotional input. He argues that René Descartes' "error" was the dualist separation of mind and body, rationality and emotion.