Critical Neuroscience: A Handbook of the Social and Cultural Contexts of Neuroscience

Critical Neuroscience: A Handbook of the Social and Cultural Contexts of Neuroscience brings together leading scholars in a collective effort to understand the impact of the intellectual, economic and political conditions on current views of the brain, and how these models may in turn impact society. The editors create an interdisciplinary forum, within which contributors engage in fruitful debate about the potential of tools, the complexities of data interpretation and the social, political and cultural context of neuroscience research.

Spanning such diverse fields as philosophy, anthropology, history of science and psychiatry, the book traces the history of contemporary models of the brain, and brings laboratory observations into the forefront of neuroscientific research. Contributions explore the problem spaces in which knowledge from neuroscience is called upon to classify ′kinds′ of people, and the ways in which these findings impact on society in a diverse range of settings. Together, they engage the social sciences and humanities with experimental neuroscience, and address fundamental questions of how to critique neuroscience in society.

With illuminating insights and deep scholarly rigour, Critical Neuroscience offers a comprehensive interdisciplinary perspective that aims to enrich our understanding of the brain as situated in the body and world, and neuroscience as embedded in a complex cultural context.

Credits vii

List of Illustrations viii

About the Editors x

List of Contributors xi

Preface xiii

Introduction: Critical Neuroscience Between Lifeworld and Laboratory 1
Suparna Choudhury and Jan Slaby

Part I Motivations and Foundations 27

1 Proposal for a Critical Neuroscience 29
Jan Slaby and Suparna Choudhury

2 The Need for a Critical Neuroscience: From Neuroideology to Neurotechnology 53
Steven Rose

3 Against First Nature: Critical Theory and Neuroscience 67
Martin Hartmann

4 Scanning the Lifeworld: Toward a Critical Neuroscience of Action and Interaction 85
Shaun Gallagher

Part II Histories of the Brain 111

5 Toys are Us: Models and Metaphors in Brain Research 113
Cornelius Borck

6 The Neuromance of Cerebral History 135
Max Stadler

7 Empathic Cruelty and the Origins of the Social Brain 159
Allan Young

Part III Neuroscience in Context: From Laboratory to Lifeworld 177

8 Disrupting Images: Neuroscientific Representations in the Lives of Psychiatric Patients 179
Simon Cohn

9 Critically Producing Brain Images of Mind 195
Joseph Dumit

10 Radical Reductions: Neurophysiology, Politics and Personhood in Russian Addiction Medicine 227
Eugene Raikhel

11 Delirious Brain Chemistry and Controlled Culture: Exploring the Contextual Mediation of Drug Effects 253
Nicolas Langlitz

Part IV Situating the brain: From Lifeworld back to Laboratory? 263

12 From Neuroimaging to Tea Leaves in the Bottom of a Cup 265
Amir Raz

13 The Salmon of Doubt: Six Months of Methodological Controversy within Social Neuroscience 273
Daniel S. Margulies

14 Cultural Neuroscience as Critical Neuroscience in Practice 287
Joan Y. Chiao and Bobby K. Cheon

Part V Beyond neural correlates: Ecological approaches to psychiatry 305

15 Re–Socializing Psychiatry: Critical Neuroscience and the Limits of Reductionism 307
Laurence J. Kirmayer and Ian Gold

16 Are Mental Illnesses Diseases of the Brain? 331
Thomas Fuchs

17 Are there Neural Correlates of Depression? 345
Fernando Vidal and Francisco Ortega

18 The Future of Critical Neuroscience 367
Laurence J. Kirmayer

Index 385

Suparna Choudhury is Junior Professor at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and the Berlin Institute for Mind and Brain, Humboldt University, Germany. Her research examines the emergence of the ′neurological adolescent′. She has also published on cultural neuroscience and topics at the intersection of neuroscience and society.

Jan Slaby is Junior Professor in Philosophy of Mind and Emotion at Free University Berlin, Germany. The author of a German–language book exploring the world–disclosing nature of human emotions, he has also been involved in research and teaching on the philosophy of psychiatry, with a particular focus on affective disorders and background feelings.