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PRESS RELEASE
September 21, 2010
USC’s Neuroscience Pioneer Antonio Damasio to Receive Honda Prize 2010
for His Contributions to the Neurobiology of the Mind
The Honda Foundation, co-founded by Soichiro Honda and his younger brother Benjiro Honda andcurrently headed by Hiromori Kawashima, is pleased to announce that the Honda Prize*1 for the year 2010
will be awarded to Dr. Antonio Damasio, David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience and Director of theBrain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, U.S.A., for his pioneering efforts
and remarkable contributions in the world of neuroscience. Dr. Damasio will be the 31st laureate of theHonda Prize.
It can be said that the human brain is an ultimate example of ecotechnology*2. It can instantly makedecisions with a very small amount of energy, which would otherwise require several interlinked,
high-powered supercomputers. Brain research has advanced through a multitude of hypotheses and tests
but even with the edge of modern neuroscience, it is not yet possible to fully elucidate the relationships
between mind, brain, and body. There are still many missing or untested pieces in the puzzle.

Since the early years of his career Dr. Damasio has been contributing to those missing pieces. He focusedhis interest on the roles of emotions and feelings in human behavior, including consciousness anddecision-making. In his most influential Somatic Marker Hypothesis, he proposed that emotions andfeelings play a central role in decision-making via a mechanism he termed “somatic markers”. Somaticmarkers tag the images involved in the reasoning process with emotions related to past experiences, thus
conferring differential values upon those images. In other words, in its ultrafast and partly unconscious
computations, our brain uses somatic/emotional signals to make “intelligent” decisions that conform topreviously acquired knowledge.

Dr. Damasio first obtained the basis for this theory from his case studies of neurological patients withdamage in brain regions related to emotion, such as the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. He found thatthe patients had defects of judgment and inappropriate social behavior which were caused by their inability
to respond emotionally to the content of their thoughts. These early findings were later investigated withthe tools of cognitive neuroscience, including experimental functional brain imaging.

Dr. Damasio’s other work on the neural basis of the emotions led him to propose that the brain’s insula wasthe cortical platform for the processing of emotional feelings, a hypothesis that has been widely confirmed.
In turn, his work on feelings has been applied to the problem of how the self and the conscious mind areconstructed.
As the main route of inquiry into the human mind shifts from philosophy to science, Dr. Damasio’s
research stands at the forefront. It has inspired one neuroscientist after another, and created a new trend ofcross-disciplinary projects with scholars from philosophy, neuropsychology, cognitive science, psychiatry,biology, economics, education and the arts. These collaborative efforts are expected to have an impact inthe management of brain diseases such as depression and psychopathy, and in the elucidation of social
behaviors.

Dr. Damasio is married to his longtime collaborator, Dr. Hanna Damasio, who is a renowned specialist inbrain imaging.
Thanks to Dr. Damasio’s intellectual bravery and truly original thinking, we can now think of emotions
along the same lines with which we understand vision or audition, and thus reach a much deeper
understanding of the brain basis for mind and consciousness. Without a doubt such understanding is one ofthe vital steps toward a knowledge society. We believe Dr. Damasio’s achievements measure up to theideals of ecotechnology, and deserve the Honda Prize.
The 31st award ceremony for the Honda Prize will be held at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo on November 17th
2010. In addition to the prize diploma and medal, 10 million yen will be awarded to the laureate.

*1 Honda Prize: The Honda Prize was established in 1980 as the first international scientific award in Japan.
Since then, the Prize has been counted as one of the most important international awards by theInternational Congress of Distinguished Awards. The Prize has been awarded to some of the mostdistinguished scholars at work in the fields of biology and technology.
*2 Ecotechnology: The concept of Ecotechnology has been the Honda Foundation’s guiding principle since1979. The word was coined from the terms ecology and technology, where ecology connotes an entire global
system which includes human civilization. The concept of ecotechnology calls for the harmonious
development and use of technology with human beings and their environment.

For more details: Please visit http://www.hondafoundation.jp or call:
Honda Foundation at +81-3-3274-5125
Honda Motor’s Public Relations at +81-3-5412-1512

Curriculum Vitae for Dr. Antonio Damasio
David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience
Director, Brain and Creativity Institute
University of Southern CaliforniaBORN in Lisbon, Portugal ; U.S. citizen
DEGREES1969, MD, University of Lisbon Medical School, Portugal
1974, PhD, University of Lisbon, Portugal
APPOINTMENTS
2006 – Present
1975 – 2005
1989 – Present

University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, U.S. ; David
Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, and Director, Brain and Creativity
Institute
University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, U.S. ; Van Allen Distinguished
Professor
Adjunct Professor, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La
Jolla, CA, U.S.

PUBLICATIONS
Damasio is the author of over 350 scientific publications and of seven books, among them
Descartes’ Error, The Feeling of What Happens, and Looking for Spinoza.
His most recent book is Self Comes to Mind, which will be published this fall.
SELECTED HONORS
Academies 2009, Elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science; 2006, Electedto the Academy of Sciences, Lisbon; 2002, Elected to Bavarian Academy of Sciences; 1998,
Elected to the Association of American Physicians ; 1998, Elected to PermanentMembership, Belgium's Royal Society of Medicine ; 1997, Elected to the American Academyof Arts and Sciences ; 1995, Elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy ofSciences ; 1993, Elected to the European Academy of Arts and SciencesHonorary Degrees 2010, Doctor Honoris Causa (D. Phil. H.C.), University of Leiden; 2009,Doctor Honoris Causa (D. Merc. H.C.), University of Copenhagen (Copenhagen BusinessSchool); 2003, Doctor Honoris Causa (D. Phil. H.C.), University of Aveiro; 2002, Doctor
Honoris Causa (D. Phil. H.C.), University of AachenAwards2009, Richard Wollheim Prize, London; 2005,Prince of Asturias Award for Scientific andTechnical Research; 2004, Signoret Prize in Cognitive Neuroscience (shared with HannaDamasio); 2003, Nonino Prize; 2002, Named “Highly Cited Researcher” in Neuroscience bythe Institute for Scientific Information; 2000, The Reenpää Prize, Finland; 1997, PrixPlasticité Neuronale, Ipsen Foundation; 1995, Golden Brain Award (Berkeley); 1995, Orderof Santiago da Espada (Grand Oficial), Portugal; 1992, Pessoa Prize (shared with Hanna
Damasio)