Although the mechanisms are not yet understood, these regions are critical to self-awareness and complicated emotions. They are also much smaller in other animals. For example, the VMpo is about the size of a grain of sand in macaque monkeys and even smaller in lower-level animals. These findings are consistent with a growing consensus that our emotions are closely linked to areas of the brain that contain maps of the body, a view promoted by Dr. Antonio Damasio at the University of Iowa.116 They are also consistent with the view that a great deal of our thinking is directed toward our bodies:
...more
