Brains, Windows and Coordinate Systems (2014) (original) (raw)
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Neuroimaging. How to Question Scientific Images and Their Artistic Value
JOLMA, 2021
Unquestionable holders of aesthetic content, images have a well-known role even in conveying scientific knowledge. In the present work, we focus on the epistemological role of images within neuroscience. We first analyze the concepts of representation, similarity, and informativeness. Second, we discuss relevant case studies, i.e., images by functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and how the pictorial interventions commonly applied to them might have an impact on their informational content. Finally, we explore the notion of imagination as a relevant faculty for modelling neuroscientific theories and the concept of creativity as an instrument to aesthetically modify brain images. These manipulations enable images to achieve the scientific purpose, altering the relation of similarity between the image and the studied phenomenon. In conclusion, this process leads to rethinking the role of the neuroscientist as an active observer.
Introduction: Visual Images and Visualization in the Neurosciences
In the history of the neurosciences, physical images and cognitive visualization offer two frames of reference for thinking about the historical development of the field. The images of neurological illustration, for example, constitute a sourcebook on early medical theories. We can also identify a body of images that articulate how cultural beliefs influenced conclusions about behavior and learning as they relate to anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and our nervous system. More recently, the enthusiasm generated by brain imaging technologies has highlighted the role of visual images in our efforts to capture the form and function of the brain. In light of the many precursors that show our urge to know the brain has long had a visual component, it seems that the time is ripe to reexamine the historical role of visual images and visualization techniques in enhancing our understanding of the brain and human behavior. The eight articles that comprise this compendium offer a small step in this direction.
Consciousness without Bodies: Rethinking the Power of the Visualised Brain
World Futures, 2017
This article examines the possibility of the futuristic assumption that the human mind will converge with artificial intelligence technology to create an enhancement of consciousness. By studying how a correlation between consciousness and the brain is made through visual tools that are used in neuroscience, this article elaborates on how these findings affect research that is done in philosophy on the concept of consciousness. This article proposes a new approach on studying the brain, by examining it as a theoretical object, which gives every research field the possibility to argue over the truth in the images that are created of the brain.
Consciousness without Bodies: Rethinking the Power of the Visualized Brain
World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research, 2017
This article examines the possibility of the futuristic assumption that the human mind will converge with artificial intelligence technology to create an enhancement of consciousness. By studying how a correlation between consciousness and the brain is made through visual tools that are used in neuroscience, this article elaborates on how these findings affect research that is done in philosophy on the concept of consciousness. This article proposes a new approach on studying the brain, by examining it as a theoretical object, which gives every research field the possibility to argue over the truth in the images that are created of the brain.
This article examines visual practices inside the laboratory and in the arts, highlighting a problem of reductionism in the transformation from data to images and in the visual incarnation of the neuro-realism fallacy, that is the extreme images of brain scan. Neurosciences are not inherently reductionist. John R. Mallard’s work around data visualisation problems in the development of biomedical imaging shows how scientists themselves can be attentive to the construction of visual practices and their meaning. If neuro-realism is a fallacy within the neurosciences, are art-neuroscience collaborative projects reproducing this fallacy at visual level? The article analysis how neuroscience-art projects can enable us (or not) to foster and maintain a stereoscopic vision in the way in which we approach the conundrum of what it is like to be both a biological organism made up of molecules, neurons, cells, and an entity equipped with intentionality, desires, thoughts, values.
Are Neuroimages Like Photographs of the Brain?
Philosophy of Science, 2007
Images come in many varieties, but for evidential purposes, photographs are privileged. Recent advances in neuroimaging provide us with a new type of image that is used as scientific evidence. Brain images are epistemically compelling, in part because they are liable to be viewed as akin to photographs of brain activity. Here I consider features of photography that underlie the evidential status we accord it, and argue that neuroimaging diverges from photography in ways that seriously undermine the photographic analogy. While neuroimaging remains an important source of scientific evidence, proper interpretation of brain images is much more complex than it appears.
Brains in scanners: An Umwelt of cognitive neuroscience
Semiotica, 2001
The last decades of the twentieth century have witnessed an amazing development in the methodologies and technologies available for the study of brain activity and functionality. Partly in parallel and partly intertwined with technological development, the relationship between the mind and the brain has again appeared on the philosophical and psychological agenda. In the newly (e)merging ®elds of mind-brain studies and cognitive neuroscience, examinations of the role and status of the subject are becoming relevant. To some extent current discussions mirror those taking place at the beginning of the century. The Baltic German biologist Jakob von UexkuÈ ll was one of the prominent participants in this earlier debate. This article uses UexkuÈ ll's notions of Umwelt and Umgebung to conceptualize phenomenological aspects of ethnographic material collected during recent ®eld work in a brain imaging community. Although UexkuÈ ll's cosmology may be outdated, his protosemiotic theory too facile, and his notion of Umwelt more applicable for lower animals than for humans, some of his phenomenological considerations appear very important for the contemporary debate of the mind-brain relationship. The analysis of the complicated interaction between experimenter, experimental subject, and brain-scanner suggests, however, that when studying a symbolic species like humans, the Umwelt-Umgebung distinction does not suce to grasp the total situation. This dichotomy, in the contemporary discussion often expressed as the dierence between a`®rst person' and a`third person' perspective, needs to be supplemented with a communicative second person perspective that connects and mediates between the two. The physical setting: Imagining brain activity Imagine yourself in a semi-dark room. Behind your back is a large window that opens up to another room. If you turn around, you can Semiotica 134±1/4 (2001), 747±765 0037±1998/01/0134 ± 0747 # Walter de Gruyter
The iconographic brain. A critical philosophical inquiry into (the resistance of) the image
Front. Hum. Neurosci., 15 May 2014 | doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00300
The brain image plays a central role in contemporary image culture and, in turn, (co)constructs contemporary forms of subjectivity. The central aim of this paper is to probe the unmistakably potent interpellative power of brain images by delving into the power of imaging and the power of the image itself. This is not without relevance for the neurosciences, inasmuch as these do not take place in a vacuum; hence the importance of inquiring into the status of the image within scientific culture and science itself. I will mount a critical philosophical investigation of the brain qua image, focusing on the issue of mapping the mental onto the brain and how, in turn, the brain image plays a pivotal role in processes of subjectivation. Hereto, I draw upon Science & Technology Studies, juxtaposed with culture and ideology critique and theories of image culture. The first section sets out from Althusser's concept of interpellation, linking ideology to subjectivity. Doing so allows to spell out the central question of the paper: what could serve as the basis for a critical approach, or, where can a locus of resistance be found? In the second section, drawing predominantly on Baudrillard, I delve into the dimension of virtuality as this is opened up by brain image culture. This leads to the question of whether the digital brain must be opposed to old analog psychology: is it the psyche which resists? This issue is taken up in the third section which, ultimately, concludes that the psychological is not the requisite locus of resistance. The fourth section proceeds to delineate how the brain image is constructed from what I call the data-gaze (the claim that brain data are always already visual). In the final section, I discuss how an engagement with theories of iconology affords a critical understanding of the interpellative force of the brain image, which culminates in the somewhat unexpected claim that the sought after resistance lies in the very status of the image itself.
THE PROBLEM OF IMAGES: A VIEW FROM THE BRAIN-BODY
Why do humans create images and what are their features that make them special? How are image-making and the use of images related? What is the purpose of images? The " problem of images " is addressed through the lens of contemporary neuroscience, arguing why and how neuroscience can investigate our relationship with art and aesthetics, framing this empirical approach as " experimental aesthetics. " Recent discoveries are presented that changed our ideas about perception, action, and cognition and the relationship among them, allowing a new look—complementary to the humanistic approach—at the problem of images. A new model of perception and cognition is proposed, called embodied simulation, which reveals the constitutive relationship between brain-body and the reception of human creative expressions.