Ayub K. Ommaya - The Role of Emotions in Consciousness

The Role of Emotions in Consciousness

Dr. Ommaya focused much of his career on the study of consciousness, the brain, and mind. This interest derived from his reading of Pennfield’s work on surgical treatment of epilepsy. His work in traumatic brain injury was influenced by his interest in how consciousness is altered and how it recovers after traumatic injury. Key to his observations is the role of the limbic system and emotion as foundational for consciousness.29 In his view, emotion is the trigger to action and other aspects of rationality are tools to justify action. Dr. Ommaya saw consciousness as an emergent property of the evolution of neural structures. Consciousness is the result of evolutionary forces directed to improving the efficiency of mental function. The reintegration of thought and action after traumatic injury provided the experimental context for Dr. Ommaya's thoughts.

It is popularly assumed that emotion disrupts cognition. However, neurophysiology and Dr. Ommaya's TBI research emphasizes its fundamental inseparability. Dr. Ommaya defined four steps in the evolution of consciousness. 1) reflex and avoidance reactions; 2) sensory inputs merged with multisensory neurons in the mesencephalon; 3) interactions formed between sensory and limbic systems and memory; and 4) reinforcement of thalamic neural centers which relays information between sensory and motor centers. Dr. Ommaya discussed how the limbic system and emotion motivates action and focuses attention.