Neuroimaging and Critical Neurosciences
On the Human Self-Understanding in Times of Neuroculture
Brain research and neuroscience have repeatedly attracted great attention during the last 200 years. Especially technological innovations and new imaging methods have regularly kindled great expectations and opened up the prospect of putting questions about consciousness and human self-understanding on a scientific basis. Already at the end of the 19th century however, Emil du Bois-Reymond had famously declared the mind-brain problem to remain an irresolvable scientific mystery. A century later, the American President declared the 1990s the "decade of the brain“. New methods of neuroimaging ensured a new phase of great expectations as colorful pictures visualized the "brain at work". Since then, massive search efforts worldwide have generated enormous amounts of data on various aspects of the brain and its functioning, but so far du Bois-Reymond’s skepticism still holds: we do know far more about the brain today but the interaction and integration of mind, brain and body still escapes our understanding. The critical attitude questioning promises and results, seems to be all the more in place as the neurosciences have manifold effects in modern societies - from economy and advertising to dealing with psychiatric conditions and defending the legal system.
Wether brain research will ultimately succeed in redefining the human self in neuroscientific terms remains an open question, but already today a variety of social effects of this align of research have become apparent: We live in the age of neuroculture. Critical Neuroscience is the name of an initiative investigating neuroscience in its social-political context.
During my time in Montreal, I had the opportunity to work with the Critical Neuroscience Group (from which the article in the Handbook emerged), and, eventually more papers on neuroscientific research and its problematic public appreciation came together.
Publications:
Hagner M, Borck C. (Hg.) (2001) Mindful practices. On the neurosciences in the twentieth century [Special Issue]. Science in Context 14(4).
Borck C (2012) Toys are Us: Models and Metaphors in the Neurosciences. In: Suparna Choudhury and Jan Slaby (Eds.): Critical Neuroscience: A Handbook of the Social and Cultural Contexts of Neuroscience, London: Blackwell 2012, pp. 113-123.
Borck C (2014) Modelle der Gehirnfunktion. Skizzen zu einer Verlustgeschichte, In: Hermann Parzinger, Stefan Aue, Günter Stock (Hg.) ArteFakte: Wissen ist Kunst – Kunst ist Wissen. Reflexionen und Praktiken wissenschaftlich- künstlerischer Begegnungen, Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, S. 241-254.
Borck C (2007) Freiheit oder Forschung? Rezension von Michael Pauen: Was ist der Mensch. Der Streit um die Hirnforschung und ihre Konsequenzen. Literaturkritik 10 (2007)
Borck C (2018) Review of Francisco Ortega, Fernando Vidal: Mapping the Cerebral Subject, Social History of Medicine 31(4).
Borck C (2012) Animism in the Sciences Then and Now, e-flux journal #36 – 07/2012 Link
Borck C (2019) Der Neuro-Naturalismus und wie er in die Welt kam. Rezension von Alain Ehrenberg: Die Mechanik der Leidenschaften: Gehirn, Verhalten, Gesellschaft. Soziopolis 25.6.2019 Link
Borck C (2014) How to Do Voodoo with Functional Neuroimaging, EspacesTemps.net Link
Borck C (2011) Ikonen des Geistes und Voodoo mit Wissenschaft. In: Philipp Stoellger, Thomas Klie (Hgg.): Präsenz im Entzug: Ambivalenzen des Bildes, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, S. 447-474.
Borck C (2012) Nichts als bunter Bilderzauber? Zur Kontroverse um «Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience», Rheinsprung 11 – Zeitschrift für Bildkritik 4: 66-84.
Borck C (2016) Animating Brains, Medical History 60: 308-324.
Borck C (2016) How We May Think: Imaging and Writing Technologies Across the History of the Neurosciences, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 57: 112-120.
Borck C (2018) Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Kultur: Vom Neuroimaging über Critical Neuroscience zu Cultural Neuroscience und zurück zur Kritik. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 41(3): 328-257.