Our NeuroSociety? Neurological Narratives and

Social Neuroscience

Our NeuroSociety?

• New Imaging Technologies• Possibilities of Cortical Plasticity• Medicalizing of behavior• Diagnostic Bracket Creep• Cosmetic

Psychopharmacology/Neurology• Neurological Narratives• Social Neuroscience

CT SCANNER

from Dumit, 2004

CT scan

PET Scan

MRI Scan (MagneticResonance Imaging)

From Dumit, 2004

PET (Positron Emission Tomography) Procedure Johns Hopkins U. Medical Center, 1995

Nancy Andreasen

(1984)Constance Perchura and

Joseph Martin (1991)

Jeffrey Schwartz, Brain Lock (1997)

Newsweek (1990)

Time (1992)

Class of SSRI:selective serotonin-reuptake-inhibitor

1993 and with a new

afterword,1997

PETER KRAMER“cosmetic psychopharmacology”“diagnostic bracket creep”

"Kids are different today," I hear every mother say,"Mother needs something today to calm her down."And 'though she's not really ill, there's a little yellow pillShe goes running for the shelter of her mother's little helper.And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day.-- "Mother's Little Helper," The Rolling Stones, 1966

Spectrum of Bi-Polar Disorder

NEW YORK TIMES, MARCH 22, 2005

JOHN GARTNER 2005

PETER WHYBROW2005

NEW MUSICAL ON BROADWAYabout bi-polar mother

Alexander Romanovich Luria 

(1902-1977)

1985

Temple Grandin (1947-

Her Squeeze Machine& her Books

Neurological Narratives and Neurological Novels

Vittorio Gallese

Giacomo Rizzolatti

Premotor cortex and the recognition of motor actions Giacomo Rizzolatti , Luciano Fadiga, Vittorio Gallese and Leonardo FogassiIstituto di Fisiologia Umana, Università di Parma, Parma, Italy

Cognitive Brain ResearchVolume 3, Issue 2, March 1996, Pages 131-141

Iacoboni and Dapretto Redgrave Nature Reviews Neuroscience 7, 942–951 (December 2006)

Mirror Neurons• First described in inferior frontal cortex in monkey• Fire not only when the monkey is moving his hand or its

mouth, but also when he sees someone else performing the same action.

• These neurons ‘mirror’ the behavior of the other animal/human, as though the observer were performing the action.

• Important for understanding the actions of other people, learning new skills by imitation.

• Some argue they are the basis for understanding emotions, and may be the neuronal substrate of empathy.

• Function according to a “Perception-Action Theory.”

With thanks toNouchine HadjikhaniMartinosSCAN 2007

Mirror Neurons - localization

STS - superior temporal sulcus

IPL - inferior parietal lobule

IFC - inferior frontal cortex

Nouchine HadjikhaniMartinosSCAN 2007

Implications of Mirror Neuron System Findings

• Neural mechanism for the notion of culture & social interaction: We imitate, and simulate others through our neural activity; our social responses are ‘hard-wired’ or built into the very structure of the brain.

• Automatic, direct process: our responses to others are not made through inferences, or through analogy, but immediate simulation.

First Issue of new Journal, Social Neuroscience, March 2006

Textbooks like this one began appearing in 2004 & 2005

“A “metaphorical body” helped build Barack Obama’s triumph so far, in George Lakoff’s scientific reading. That tall, supple, smiling Obama figure, standing tall, fires up good feelings through the “mirror neurons” in our brains. “Up and forward” is the effect we feel, as Lakoff puts it in conversation.

July 11, 2008Open Source, radio progam

“In this new account of personhood, psychiatry no longer distinguishes between organic and functional disorders. It no longer concerns itself with the mind or the psyche. Mind is simply what the brain, does. And mental pathology is simply the behavioral consequence of an identifiable, and potentially correctable, error or anomaly in some of those elements now identified as aspects of that organic brain. This is a shift in human ontology—in the kinds of persons we take ourselves to be.”

(Rose, Neurochemical Selves, p. 193).