The Neuro Times

Ah, I misunderstood the nature of Neurohistory. No...

2012-05-23T20:50:51.652-04:00

Ah, I misunderstood the nature of Neurohistory. Now you explain it, I recognize it as a close cousin of Neuropoetics, which is to literary criticism what Neurohistory is to history: codswollop. Well, there are some interesting things about the way the brain treats images & rhythm, but what I've seen is pretty shallow & mostly recasts older critical commonplaces in neurospeak.

I'll meet you half way. History of Modern Phys...

2012-05-21T13:17:00.270-04:00

I'll meet you half way. History of Modern Physics was specialized but it was still history and relied upon primary sources and historiography.

Neurohistory takes as its starting point contemporary 'facts' derived from contemporary neuroscience and then reconstructs them as primary sources that drive the historical narrative about what was possible. So in order to do history (according to this view) one must first do 'neuroscience' and treat as sacred that which neurosciences established after the fact.

(Curiously, no one calls for neuroscientists to become fully acquainted with the works of historians. I suppose that would require too much specialization, because well who has time to read books.)

What I lament here is that it is nearly impossible to even acquire broad understanding of a limited event like the "Crimean War." The idea that scholars will now tell us about the event in scientific terms, and that we are supposed to be fascinated by their narrative is the source of my lament.

Neurohistory's central conceit is that it can 'know' what happened by reference to various reductions, and that we can scale up from those neuroscientific facts to give us a picture of something as complex as, for example, the Enlightenment.

The mistake here is the way in which the word "Enlightenment" is made more concrete than it should be, and the idea that some fact of science can establish "Enlightenment". Putting it sharply - and paraphrasing Steven Shapin - there never was an Enlightenment and we need a book about it rather than a discussion of how coffee's chemistry created its pre-conditions.

Such activities remind me of neurologist-turned-historian Edwin Clarke's idea that we should all become "practical historians" and conduct the experiments as natural philosophers to see their meaning. The problem is that this idea of experience and empiricism rejects both von Ranke's belief in the primary sources of history and implies that anachronistic methods tell us something about the past. Now this isn't to say that there is no merit to the idea. Thor Heyerdahl's demonstration that a raft could leave South America and end up in Polynesia strikes me as a useful and important finding. But that is a far cry from the type of specialization we are describing with neurohistory, where the idea is that we find some gene or brain structure and project out of it possibilities. To me, that's objectionable because its self-fulfilling.

History of Modern Physics helped you, but isn'...

2012-05-21T12:45:12.320-04:00

History of Modern Physics helped you, but isn't it the sort of narrowly focused course you are lamenting here? I really think there has to be a limit to the amount of specialization we subject our undergrads to. Hardest course I ever took? 17th century British Poetry.

The British Medical Journal - while not 'crowd...

2012-05-10T08:41:02.552-04:00

The British Medical Journal - while not 'crowd-sourced' - runs a system of open peer-review. If you submit to them, then you'll know who has critiqued your work. Its very democratic. Similarly, there are journals in psychology that make their reviews open for the world to see, one the article is published. So these systems exist.

jgolden notes the difficulties and uncertainties of access and poverty in the digital age. Those are, of course, real. But it is not hard for me to imagine a new Carnegie coming along and building small digital libraries across the globe. It is also not hard for me to imagine that e-books will still have a higher use-value to people living in the Global South than the current publishing standard. My dad - if he was so inclined - could aim his book at a market in Africa.

The open-access model is the right model but we need to be wary of a consumerist model of knowledge production. I'm interested in making scholarly knowledge truly democratic. And I'm also willing to let people bootstrap to make a living - if they can - off of their ideas. What I fear about open-access is that it will come to function for a bean-counter's mentality and be used solely to establish academic standing. The open access model really needs to introduce differences from the standard journals to show both a real change in the culture of publishing but also to make an argument that the new standard is better.

The best way to do that is to make it possible for people to comment on articles, to draft replies, to analyze the sources people are using. If open-access journals push for these changes, then I think they will represent a positive evolution on the current system. The worst thing that could happen, however, would be to copy and paste the current world into the open access one.

I've seen the same thing in Vietnam. Clearly, ...

2012-05-10T06:24:58.677-04:00

I've seen the same thing in Vietnam. Clearly, this is a vision of the future. But I think Stephen is right to wonder about the role of editors & the editorial function -- are scholars going to be willing to submit to crowd-sourced "peer review"?

Intellectuals in the Global South are already thwa...

2012-05-09T18:50:33.877-04:00

Intellectuals in the Global South are already thwarting the antiquated system with open access publishing. I will never forget the afternoon I spent in an internet cafe near the main university in Madagascar. Students scanning website after website for books they could read online.

First, thanks to Stephen for organizing such a sti...

2012-05-09T16:08:07.216-04:00

First, thanks to Stephen for organizing such a stimulating workshop & to all the participants. From the perspective of someone outside the discipline(s) of History & indeed outside the Social Sciences, the scholarship on view was impressive: original, thoughtful & relevant. When the conference was over & I had finished up the final tasks of the semester (Grading!), I was casting about for a way to get a sense of perspective, or, to change metaphors, a way of digesting & understanding what I had heard over the course of the workshop. Experience has taught me to be sensitive to synchronicity, so when, standing in front of one of my bookshelves, my eye fell on Jerome Bruner's In Search of Mind: Essays in Autobiography (Harper & Row 1983), I pulled it off the shelf and began flipping through the pages. Honestly, I didn't remember much about the book, published in 1983, but I had clearly read it since I could see all my old underlinings & check marks, etc. I wandered off to a comfortable reading place & started at the beginning. I've recently been enjoying the genre of intellectual autobiography & that, perhaps, is what initially drew me again to this text, but as soon as I had read a few pages, I began to sense that Bruner's story was a perfect container for many of the papers & presentations & informal conversations I'd encountered over our weekend together.

I'm not going to try to summarize the book here, but I will note a few connections to work being done by conference participants. But first, a bit of an overview: Bruner's text takes the reader through the history of the psychological disciplines during the middle part of the 20th century, from the pre-WW II period dominated by "psychophysics" derived from Wundt & other German researchers, to the emergence of "cognitive psychology" in the 1970s. Bruner was an experimentalist and an applied psychologist in many respects but at the same time a deeply committed humanist who took Wittgenstein seriously. He also knew everyone who was worth knowing in the Human Sciences: Jakobson, Luria, Piaget, Levi-Strauss, M. Mead, Chomsky, as well as J. Robert Oppenheimer & a host of scientists & literary figures who remain relevant in 21st century intellectual life.

Bruner's project, as I understand it & as these "essays in autobiography" develop it, was, put very simply, to make the mind a respectable subject for psychological inquiry. In American psychology before the war & even in the decade after, taking that position was definitely swimming against the current. Reading this account, which takes one right up to the cusp of brain-imaging & the resulting reductionisms & materialisms it engendered, one is struck by the fact that technologies like fMRI did not so much establish a new way of thinking about cognition & consciousness as providing a convincing (if ersatz) "proof" of materialism.

I've gone on at some length without making any explicit connections to papers presented in our workshop -- perhaps I'll leave that for a follow-up post or something on my own blog. But I strongly urge you all to read Bruner's book: it provides an immense amount of context for the neurosciences in a very compact & convenient form. You can pick up a clean used copy on Amazon for under $5.

It's not just history. I recently read a revie...

2012-05-09T12:05:46.979-04:00

It's not just history. I recently read a review of a book in an (overpriced) academic journal & thought it would be worth having. When I check the price on Amazon, I reconsidered -- it was north of $90. The current system is not sustainable.

And now we are in the digital age: http://dp.la/wi...

2012-05-09T11:04:49.770-04:00

And now we are in the digital age: http://dp.la/wiki/Main_Page
The digital library of America and its European equivalent may change the world of scholarship, although problems of access--hardware and literacy and poverty--remain. (I just went to ta lecture on this--also saw great pictures and heard about the National Digital Library of Korea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Digital_Library_of_Korea)

But what about the special world of medical publishing?
Much will be available online and free because of funder demands and much will be costly as the Elsevier crowd will be selling knowledge at the highest of prices.

It is a lot to think about.

I'm inclined to agree with that comment, Raf. ...

2012-05-03T10:17:06.998-04:00

I'm inclined to agree with that comment, Raf. I believe it's not necessarily the fault of the US education system in itself, but due to other influences of the Western lifestyle - the media, technology, and weapons of mass distraction from the heart of issues.

this is of course true, but perhaps education stan...

2012-04-25T05:35:03.665-04:00

this is of course true, but perhaps education standards in the US have already dropped to a level where the majority just dont get it

My cure for neuromania was when I first sat down t...

2012-04-23T16:10:48.967-04:00

My cure for neuromania was when I first sat down to analyze my own fMRI data.

But I think that after recovering from neuromania there is a real risk of falling prey to a less obvious but equally insidious disease, neuro-nihilism.

This is the view that neuroscience can't tell us anything interesting about ourselves & that our 'folk' understanding of the mind is sound, which is not true either.

If you had high math scores and came from a high i...

2012-04-12T06:57:20.231-04:00

If you had high math scores and came from a high income family (defined as being from a family in the top census quintile), then you had a 74% chance of completing a four year degree. But more importantly, if you were in the high income family, you had at least a 30% chance of holding a bachelors degree. That seems really important.

Does this read as 74% of students who scored high ...

2012-04-10T23:13:14.726-04:00

Does this read as 74% of students who scored high in 8th grade math, who were also from a high income family at that time, went on to complete a bachelor degree?

I found this chart to be interesting, however I do...

2012-04-10T22:02:24.069-04:00

I found this chart to be interesting, however I do not completely understand it. Is there a better explaination of the leveling of scores? What specifies as low, mid, high income? I tried a basic google search regarding it, but to no avail.

Lamentably, most of the people in my day-to-day li...

2012-03-04T15:51:55.323-05:00

Lamentably, most of the people in my day-to-day life have no interest whatsoever in how the brain works...

A good post. I too am a fan of the whole epigentic...

2012-02-19T08:50:36.903-05:00

A good post. I too am a fan of the whole epigentics area simply because it unites quite a lot of nature/nurture findings. Lamarckism is also finding its niche there.

As for the ultimate epigenetic influence, have a look at the Barker hypothesis (thin-fat bodies) and the Flemish/Netherlands studies of wartime famine effects: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18955703

I'm not saying I like it ;-)

2012-02-16T19:06:17.244-05:00

I'm not saying I like it ;-)

Pretty mundane and unoriginal. Nothing Hemingway d...

2012-02-15T12:30:31.749-05:00

Pretty mundane and unoriginal. Nothing Hemingway didn't say, and say a lot better. A sip of wine, really?

awesome p

2012-02-11T16:02:39.192-05:00

awesome

p

An accessible 'teaser' of Rosenberg's ...

2012-02-10T13:12:32.508-05:00

An accessible 'teaser' of Rosenberg's book can be found in an interview he gives here:

http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=4209

This was brought to my attention a while back by m...

2012-02-07T15:51:44.397-05:00

This was brought to my attention a while back by my tutor. What I find strange though is that some of the journals that I really rate as good journals aren't even on there!

Thanks for reading and the kind words. I’m delight...

2012-02-07T14:12:17.347-05:00

Thanks for reading and the kind words. I’m delighted you liked the post and the blog.

Best,
Darin

oh.

2012-02-06T04:29:49.200-05:00

oh.

socialism? a system where a bunch of slime bag ri...

2012-02-04T17:16:08.489-05:00

socialism?

a system where a bunch of slime bag rich people take complete control of the one thing that freedom should stand for: freedom from pain

think about it - pain - it's the universal leveler - the pain experienced by a Goldman Sachs CEO and the pain experienced by an illegal immigrant are indistinguishable

pain

we should all have the equal right to be free of pain

that's where your drugs ref comes in - how come i can not grow opium in my back yard so that i might treat pain without going through an insane system that channels not only my freedom but also a huge part of my money to a system imposed from above?

Socialism would be a system where if someone grows opium and i'm in pain then i have a right to some of that opium

capitalism would be a system where if someone grows opium and i'm in pain i can freely negotiate with that person for some opium for my pain

what we have is a system where the rich get to control everything as if it was socialism so that they get to control things like opium

by rich i mean middle class and up

you know - the dumb, selfish, cowardly lot that started off by killing off the natives for their land and ended up killing off the natives in other lands for their oil

ie you and me

socialism?

it has no meaning whatsoever except as a bogeyman used by other bogeymen to frighten children into going along with our incredibly mindless game

pop