Hanna Damasio is the Dana Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Dana and David Dornsife Cognitive Neuroscience Imaging Center at the University of Southern California. She is also an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. Damasio pioneered the use of brain imaging methods (such as computerized tomography and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging) in the study of brain lesions. This opened the way for the modern practice of the lesion method. Her detailed atlas of the human brain based on computerized images, Human Brain Anatomy in Computerized Images, is a standard reference in the field. That book, as well as her award-winning Lesion Analysis in Neuropsychology, are widely used by neurologists, neurosurgeons, neuroradiologists, psychiatrists, and neuroscientists. She is the author of numerous articles on the neural substrates of higher brain function using structural and functional MR techniques as well as fMRI.

Damasio received her M.D. from the University of Lisbon Medical School in 1969, and holds an Honorary Doctorate from both the University of Aachen and the University of Lisbon.