the brains in brain: the coevolution of localization and its images

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Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 17:380–392, 2008Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0964-704X print / 1744-5213 onlineDOI: 10.1080/09647040701423705

NJHN0964-704X1744-5213Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, Vol. 17, No. 3, May 2008: pp. 1–29Journal of the History of the Neurosciences

The Brains in Brain: The Coevolution of Localization and its Images

The Brains in Brain: Textual-Visual CoevolutionAlan G. Gross ALAN G. GROSS

Department of Communication Studies, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities,Minneapolis, MN, USA

Images of brain localization from Brain’s inception to the present are analyzed.Textual representations and their accompanying images are shown to coevolve; thatis, the technological and conceptual development of the research program of localiza-tion is shown to evolve simultaneously with the exploitation of visual resources thatsupport these developments. The semiotics of Peirce, the social semiotics of Kress andvan Leeuwen, and the insights of Gestalt psychology provide a critical vocabulary withwhich to describe and to analyze these visual resources. I conclude that brain imagesevolve in a manner that reflects the uniformity in measuring instruments and theincrease in their precision in the localization of brain functions; at the same time, theydraw attention away from a persistent constraint: the brain functions so preciselylocalized are just those that are not constitutive of our humanity.

Keywords brain, localization, semiotics, icon, index

Whoever would not remain in complete ignorance of the resources whichcause him to act; whoever would seize, at a single philosophical glance, thenature of man and animals, and their relations to external objects; whoeverwould establish, on the intellectual and moral functions, a solid doctrine ofmental diseases, of the general and governing influence of the brain in thestates of health and disease, should know that it is indispensable that the studyof the organization of the brain should march side by side with that of itsfunctions (Gall, 1835, cited in Young 1970, pp. 247–248).1

Introduction

Notoriously, Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828) did not follow through on his program oflinking brain activity to significant biological functions. Moreover, as Robert Young(1970) points out, neither did David Ferrier (1843–1924) who was one of the founders of

1Young’s quotation is from François Joseph Gall and J. C. Spurzheim, (1835) On the Functionsof the Brain and Each of its Parts: With Observations of the Possibility of Determining the Instincts,Propensities, and Talents, or the Moral and Intellectual Dispositions of Men and Animals, by theConfiguration of the Brain and Head, 6 vols., trans. Winslow Lewis, Jr., Boston, Marsh, Capen andLyon, II, pp. 45–46. This is a translation of Sur les functions du cerveau et sur chacune de sesparties. 6 vols. (Ballière, Paris, 1822–1825). It was published under the auspices of the BostonPhrenological Society. Gall’s first name is listed as François rather than Franz, his given name,because the publication is in French; apparently, it is not a translation of a German original.

Address correspondence to Alan G. Gross, Professor of Communication Studies, University ofMinnesota-Twin Cities, Ford Hall, Minneapolis, MN 55455 E-mail: [email protected]

The Brains in Brain: Textual-Visual Coevolution 381

Brain, an expressly locationalist journal. Nevertheless, Ferrier’s heirs have attainedheights of scientific rigor in localizing brain functions unimaginable to Gall’s contempo-raries. But although they studied the organ, really a complex of organs, most crucial tohuman evolution, they could not place the functions of that complex firmly its most tellingcontext, that of evolutionary theory. This is not to say that their achievements are less thanimpressive. Researchers have moved from probing the dead to probing the living; from ascalpel wielded in autopsy to a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scanninga living brain, a far more sensitive though uninvasive probe; from individual observationto controlled experiment; from tentative localization hypothesis to localization theory. It isthese achievements that I sample in the form of articles from Brain, a journal foundedspecifically to advance the locationist research program.2 My concern will not be theconceptual development of this research program in neuroscience. That will be assumed.My concern will be, rather, the development and deployment of visuals as elements in theconstruction and communication of the scientific meaning of that program.

Method

In establishing conceptual evolution, the focus on visuals as a unit of selection is notaccidental. For this purpose, scientific visuals avoid the deficiencies of text: unlike text,visuals facilitate comparisons by having definite borders and clearly differentiated compo-nents. From their study of the development over time of Weismann diagrams, Griesemerand Wimsatt conclude that the scientific diagrams “show a number of interesting patterns,including descent without modification, descent with modification, differential prolifera-tion, adaptive radiation, extinction, relict survival in a changed and specialized niche, andsuccessive simplification for efficient specialization to a simplified niche” (1989, p. 128).The visuals I examine illustrate the second of these patterns: descent with modification.Their source is Brain: six articles on localization selected at twenty-five-year intervals,starting with the initial year of publication.3 (A chronological list is available at the end ofthe paper.) Of course, the sample is too small. In Communicating Science, I and mycoauthors used a large sample to demonstrate trends in the development of the scientificarticle over time, and strongly to suggest that this development might be characterized asevolutionary in the strict sense. But six articles sampled over a century and a half can onlysuggest a plausible hypothesis. That is my current purpose.

When we analyze text, we have a set of descriptive tools with a long history to whichgenerations of linguists and rhetoricians have contributed. When we analyze visuals, wehave no such history but must instead forge our tools of de novo from the literature onsemiosis. Scientific visuals are systems of signs; they require semiotic analysis if we are tounderstand how they create and communicate meaning. To perform this analysis, I rely onthe insights of Peirce, Kress, and van Leeuwen. Peirce focuses on the ways any sign orsystem of signs creates meaning. Two of these are pertinent to my analysis: iconicity andindexicality. An icon is a sign that depicts. A photograph or a drawing of a brain is anicon. An index is a sign whose relation to its object is causal or indicative. The graphicrecords of electroencephalogram (EEG) or fMRI are indexical, causally linked tothe external world. In contrast, in such a graphic record, an arrow pointing, say, to theinitiation of the stimulus, though also indexical, is merely indicative. It is vital not to be

2Star (1989, p. 32, 49, 167) and Young (1970, p. 198, 238n) attest to the founding purpose ofthis journal.

3With the exception of 1953, in which no article on human localization appeared, 1952 wassubstituted.

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dogmatic about these category assignments. Variability is possible with a change in con-text. What is an icon in one context is an index in another. A photograph of a person maybe iconic of the person in the context of a photograph album; in a medical context, it maybe an index of one’s diseased condition. Variability is possible, even without a change incontext. An fMRI record is an icon in so far as it its shape mimics brain events. But it is anindex insofar as the visible tracks of these events point back to their cause.

Kress and van Leeuwen’s work supplements Peirce’s semiotics by adding a socialdimension. Photographs, diagrams, and graphs are the three most common types ofscientific visuals. Since all represent the external world, all are iconic; nevertheless, eachvaries in its relationship to that world, that is, in the degree to which viewers regard it asan accurate depiction. To use Kress and van Leeuwen’s term, icons vary in their modality.This variation is social, that is, it is a learned response that depends on the perspective of aparticular community of viewers. For example, scientific realism is different from itseveryday variety: the scientific community defines reality “on the basis of what things arelike generically or regularly.” This means that in science a diagram of the speech process“may be more real than the photograph [of people speaking] in the sense that [it reveals] atruth which represents more adequately what the speech process is really like” (Kress &van Leeuwen, 1996, pp. 163; emphasis in original). In addition to modality, Kress and vanLeeuwen are concerned with the internal order of visuals: the components of visuals maybe organized temporally or conceptually. For example, although the order of the compo-nents of a line graph is temporal, two line graphs may be contrasted to make a conceptualpoint concerning an underlying brain pathology. As our perception that such orders arepresent is clearly a learned response, this phenomenon also has a social aspect.

Gestalt psychology supplements Peirce and Kress and van Leeuwen by givingsubstance to another of their principles concerning the components of visuals: their vary-ing salience. This is “the degree to which an element draws attention to itself” (Kress andvan Leeuwen, 1996, p. 225), an effect realized by the visual patterns these componentsinvoluntarily form. Given the state of our knowledge of human perceptual and mentalprocesses, it would probably be best to regard the formation of these patterns, not as adirect manifestation of fundamental psychological forces with a physiological base but asa series of “opportunistic guides to the viewer as to what will afford desired visualinformation” (Hochberg, 1998, p. 291). Gestalt perception also has a social dimension.Faced with unfamiliar patterns, onlookers will continue to be puzzled. For example, theuntutored can discern no meaningful patterns in cloud and bubble chamber photographs.For such naïve onlookers, these photographs may as well be examples of abstract art(Galison, 1997).

According to Gestalt principles, our visual field organizes itself by segregating figurefrom ground and by grouping elements into patterns. The figure-ground principle meansthat we see objects automatically as shaped, framed against a shapeless background, onethat may, in fact, also have a shape, though we do not perceive it as such. When this back-ground does have a shape—as in the case of the cell structure of tables and the coordinatesof bar and line graphs—we can direct our attention alternately to these structures and tothe foreground of bars, data points, and lines of central tendency. When there are alterna-tive “foregrounds,” as in the case of lines of central tendency drawn through clusters ofdata points, we can direct our attention either to the lines or the points, placing one oranother in the foreground of our perception. Well-known optical illusions—such as thevase-woman’s profile and the young woman-old woman—depend on background andforeground continually changing places, continually being invested with and divested ofshape by directing our attention to one or another Gestalt configuration.


In the line graph, we see in operation Gestalt principles other than figure-ground:lines of central tendency are perceived as such according to the Gestalt principle of goodcontinuation; their data points form single perceptual units because of their proximity andsimilarity. At the same time, different sets of these points are separated visually bycontrast, the reverse of this last principle. In the bars of bar graphs, another Gestaltprinciple is instantiated: these are individuated according to the principle of enclosure.(Hochberg, 1998; Pinker, 1990). According to this classification, there are five Gestaltprinciples by which the patterns of scientific visuals are recognized: (1) figure-ground, (2)good continuation, (3) proximity, (4) similarity or contrast, (5) enclosure.

In my analysis, I will determine to what extent a visual is iconic or indexical. I will alsoconsider the modality of these visuals, that is, their relation to the reality that science aimsto reveal, the order of their components, whether temporal or conceptual, and their varyingsalience. As time passes, we will see in visual representations a movement from the iconicto the indexical. We will see a shift in modality away from the realism coincident witheveryday perception, an organizational preference for the conceptual over the temporal,and, as their most salient feature, the ever-increasing precision in the location of a causalnexus. In other words, we will see an evolution of the depiction of neurophysiology parallelto the evolution of the science. But in my analysis I hope to show not only that the coevolu-tion of neurophysiology and its depictions is a plausible hypothesis but that this coevolutionillustrates and elides the problem that Gall set and that Ferrier and his followers did notsolve; namely, the link between brain functions and the behavior that differentiates useven from our nearest living evolutionary relatives. Even within the current paradigm ofneurophysiology, a confusion persists between precision and accuracy. The precision ofthe data belies the inaccuracy with which they map functions onto the brain.

Early Brain Images: 1878–1952

In the earliest of the articles (Magnan, 1878/1879), we see a lithograph that I do not repro-duce: the figure of a left hemisphere with a tumor rendered salient as a dark shape againstthe pale ground of the brain. While the depiction is clearly iconic, its function in creatingscientific meaning is indexical. It is as a cause of behavioral impairments that it makes itsappearance. Unfortunately for the proponents of localization, the subject’s impairmentswere also on the left side of her body, the side opposite the one the tumor should haveaffected according to current theory. To Magnan, this anomaly is easily explained: “abenign, indolent tumor, developing very slowly” (p. 565)—too easily explained, perhaps,since localization in any case was bound to fail as a hypothesis. The effects observed—seizures and intellectual deterioration—are effects too heterogeneous and general to makelocalization plausible.

Whereas Magnan represents the brain by means of lithography, Bolton (1903),writing a quarter-century later, does so by photography (see Figure 1).4 With photography,modality is enhanced and, along with it, evidential value. We see, not an artist’s rendition,but an actual adult brain—presumably what our eyes would see, mediated only by thetechnology of the camera. Nevertheless, the real advance in evidential value, in modality,comes, not from photographic realism but from scientific realism: an accompanying dia-gram (see Figure 2), organized conceptually, maps the functional areas of the brain. It isthis diagram in fact that tells us how to see the photograph; it tells us what is salient.

4Photography was available to Magnan but not used by him. As a technology, it may have beenat a stage too primitive to capture the image he wanted.

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Only when we superimpose this map on Bolton’s photograph, as instructed (1903,p. 228), do we see the dramatic results that autopsy reveals: “the anterior center of associ-ation is both greatly wasted and acutely changed. The temporal and praecuneal centres ofassociation are acutely changed. The visual projection centre is intact. There is wasting ofthe marginal convolution and acute change of the callosal convolution” (p. 228).

Figure 1. Photograph of the inner surface of the left hemisphere. From Bolton JS (1903): Thefunctions of the frontal lobes. Brain 26: 228.

Figure 2. Map of the inner surface of the left hemisphere. From Bolton JS (1903): The functions ofthe frontal lobes. Brain 26: 222.


Moreover, “the amount of cerebral wasting and the associated morbid changes inside thecranium . . . vary directly with the amount of dementia existing” (p. 237). As a conse-quence of mapping, then, the photograph of the brain becomes a photograph of the mind,iconic of mind. At the same time, it becomes the index of such heterogeneous behaviors ofthe “insane” as “absence of self-consciousness (as regards others),” “extreme vanity,”“callous and selfish behavior,” and “delusional states” (p. 238).

There is a problem, however, with the causal sequence implied. In Bolton’s map,Gestalts of enclosure and contrast give an unwarranted impression of firm borders.Moreover, as a consequence of the superimposition of the map onto the photograph, thisprecision is transferred to a causal nexus: the relation of these areas—and theirimpairment—to the heterogeneous behaviors Bolton characterizes as dementia. This samedifficulty is exhibited a quarter-century later in an autopsy of a patient who had hemichorea—random involuntary jerky motions in the distal parts of the limbs on one side of the body(Weil, 1928—figures not reproduced). But this particular medical researcher is willing toerr only on this side of caution. After analyzing his case and placing it in the context ofothers reported in the literature, Weil feels that “conclusions which state that the lesionwhich causes hemichorea must lie in a specific part of [the brain] are, at present at least,premature” (p. 45).

Writing a quarter-century later, Humphey and Zangwill (1952) exhibit a similarcaution. Like Magnan and Weil, Humphrey and Zangwill focus on an individual andproduce a case study. But there is also a distinct departure from previous studies in thesample: Humphrey and Zangwill’s focus is on a living subject. Furthermore, thatsubject—an officer suffering from a brain injury sustained on the front-lines in World WarI—has himself become a scientific instrument, cooperating with the researchers in theinvestigation of the causes of his own disability. He is asked, for example, to draw a mapof England from memory.

The most salient feature of the map, shown in Figure 3, is England’s west coast—itsleft side. It is entirely absent; a startling violation of the Gestalts of enclosure and continu-ity and a clear indication to the researchers of an impairment caused by a right-sidedoccipito-parietal brain injury. From the patient’s point of view, the drawing is iconic—heis drawing a map of England. From the point of view of the researchers, however, it isindexical. This indexicality is confirmed by EEG, a noninvasive technique that “showed agross focal anomaly in the right posterior parietal and posterior temporal regions”(Humphrey & Zangwill, 1952, p. 316). In effect, the patient’s pencil has functioned in amanner analogous to the recording pen of a scientific instrument: the map of England justis a map of his damaged brain. Still, it is only by means of an instrument that gives usuniform results, an instrument like the EEG, that we can reach conclusions that havescientific credibility.

Over time, the man’s behavioral deficit persisted, despite a general recovery sufficientto resume normal work. This pattern, Humphrey and Zangwill feel, impacts on a generalhypothesis of cerebral dominance; it “[suggests] that the shift in dominance for symbolicfunctions [from the left] to the right hemisphere did not convert the [right hemisphere] intothe major hemisphere for visual recognition and topographical skill” (1952, p. 313).

Later Brain Images: 1978–2003

By 1978, Ongerboer and Kuypers can attain an even greater degree of precision thanHumphrey and Zangwill. They focus on the late blink response in thirteen patients withWallenberg’s syndrome, caused by the occlusion of the posterior inferior cerebellar artery

386 Alan G. Gross

or one of its branches supplying the lower portion of the brain stem. In Type C cases—themost severe—“stimulation of the nerve on the affected side failed to elicit a bilateral latereflex response and stimulation of the nerve on the unaffected side only elicited a lateresponse on that side but not on the affected side” (p. 287). Figure 4 depicts these results,made visually clear by means of the Gestalts of continuity and contrast. It is this visualcontrast that is most salient.

In these graphs the first arrows in both sequences indicate the stimulus, while the sec-ond arrow in the first sequence indicates the late response; “mV” indicates the amplitudeof the response in millivolts, “ms” the time of the response in milliseconds. Although thegraph records brain events in their temporal order, the organization of the visual as awhole is conceptual: it counts as evidence of neuropathology.

The graphs themselves are indexical; they give us a precise indication of thecause of the brain abnormality; an infarction depicted in the photograph on the nextpage (see Figure 5), made visually clear by means of the Gestalts of contrast andenclosure.

Figure 3. Map of England drawn from memory. From Humphrey ME, Zangwill OL (1952): Effectsof a right-sided occipito-parietal brain injury on a left-handed man. Brain 75: 319.


The photograph is iconic—indeed, its nature as evidence requires this iconicity. Itshows us an infarction that “involves mainly the spinal fifth nerve complex” (p. 289), anexact localization of the cause of the abnormality represented in the graphs. Moreover,this photograph forms, together with the graphs in Figure 4, a processural sequence withdiagnostic value: “the late blink reflex has value, because the results may provide theclinician with further information about the extent of the brain-stem lesion” (p. 292).

Although the photograph is iconic, it is iconic only in the interest of its indexicality,its revelation of a causal nexus. Analogously, the graphs are not merely indexical. Like thephotograph, they are both indexical and iconic, that is, their shape is homologous to itscausal nexus, electrical brain activity: the effect of the infarction is mirrored precisely inthe lack of effect the bottom two graphs depict. Most salient is the difference betweenthese and their upper counterparts, a salience that is, equally, visual and conceptual.

Although they depict the same thing, the graphs and photograph differ in their modal-ity. The photograph’s relationship to its object is direct: we see what the researchers saw.The graphs’ relationship to their object is indirect: we see what the researchers detected. Interms of science, however, each has equal ontological status. In fact, this equal footing isthe point of the science that depicts them as cause and effect.

Figure 4. Example of Type C abnormality of the late blink reflex. From Ongerboer de Visser BW,Kuypers HGJM (1978): Late blink reflect changes in lateral medullary lesions: An electrophysiolog-ical and anatomical study of Wallenberg’s syndrome. Brain 101: 289.

388 Alan G. Gross

Our final example comes from James et al. (2003). Central to the research program ofwhich this visual is a part is a woman, D. F., who, as a result of a brain injury, is incapableof discriminating even the simplest geometric forms, although she has a normal capacitywhen it comes to reaching for and grasping objects. In effect, she feels, but cannot seetheir shapes. On the basis of behavioral evidence alone, in 1992 and again in 1995,Goodale and Milner had conjectured “that the form-processing network of D. F.’s ventralsystem has been all but destroyed” (James et al., p. 2471), while the functions of her dorsalstream remained largely intact. James et al. submit this hypothesis to a rigorous test, anexperimental design comparing D. F.’s performance with that of normal subjects. If thishypothesis were confirmed, James et al. aver it would provide support for the idea thatdiscriminating and grasping are “served by separate cortical systems” (p. 2470).Furthermore, it would display “the powerful role fMRI can play in revealing the pattern ofspared and compromised functions in neurological patients” (p. 2470). James et al.’sFigure 6 dramatizes the fact that the dorsal system remains intact: a dramatization madeparticularly striking by the use of color, one that makes good cognitive use of the Gestaltof contrast.5

The Gestalt of enclosure is predominant in this figure. Enclosure differentiates eachcomponent visual from every other—model, fMRI image, graph, each displayed as on amuseum wall. At the same time, framing the whole indicates a single visual unit with asingle conceptual message: “D. F., like seven neurologically intact control participants,showed clear activation in the dorsal-stream action areas during reaching and grasping”(p. 2469). In its interactive entirety, the figure supports the claim that D. F.’s grasping andreaching are wholly normal. While her ventral stream is seriously impaired, her dorsal

5While current technology still does not permit me to reproduce this figure inexpensively incolor, the color version is readily available in academic libraries and on the Web. Fully tounderstand the points I am making, it must be consulted.

Figure 5. Cross-section through the medulla oblongata showing the unilateral infarction in the lat-eral part in a Type C case. From Ongerboer de Visser BW, Kuypers HGJM (1978): Late blink reflectchanges in lateral medullary lesions: An electrophysiological and anatomical study of Wallenberg’ssyndrome. Brain 101: 288.


Figure 6. Activation during reaching and grasping in D. F. and in normal control participants. (A)Activation for reaching and grasping (versus the intertribal interval, ITT) is shown in red andactivation for grasping versus reaching is shown in green [in hemisphere on the left, marked by anarrow] in the left hemisphere for D. F. (B) Activation for reaching and grasping and for graspingversus reaching is shown in the left hemisphere, based on the group data of seven participants ren-dered on a single participant’s pial surface. Note that the group activation is more robust than D. F.due to the greater statistical power of a larger sample size. (C) Reaching and grasping versus ITI)activation shown on a single slice through D. F.’s brain. The plane of the slice is indicated by theyellow line in A (halfway down and across the brain from left to right). (D) Grasping (versusreaching) activation in D. F.’s brain. (E) The average time course of activation for grasping andreaching trials in the anterior intraparietal area indicated in D. Note that the activation occurs afteran appropriate haemodynamic lag and shows no evidence of motion artifacts. From James, TW andothers (2003): Ventral occipital lesions impair object recognition but not object-directed grasping.Brain 126: 2473.

390 Alan G. Gross

stream is functionally intact.6 The modality of each component differs—gathered in onefigure are a computer reconstruction of the brain, a “surgical slice” through the brain, anda graphic representation of D. F.’s reaching and grasping response. Nevertheless, becauseeach of its components is on the same ontological plane, despite differences in modality,the figure as a whole embodies the causal nexus of the normal brain activity involved inreaching and grasping; it is, in other words, simultaneously, iconic and indexical.

Some Problems

Research programs, such as those of James et al., rely heavily for the precision theyachieve on MRI technology. This reliance leaves their mappings open to criticism. No onequestions the rough correlation between behavior and MRI readings, but some point outthat the blood flow we actually measure is far slower than neuronal activity (Dobbs,2005). These critics feel that the precision that MRI researchers exhibit does not match theaccuracy they can legitimately achieve with the technology on offer.

There is a second problem. Individual variation in brain localization undermines anygeneral conclusions based on an individual case, such as that of D .F. The language area,for example, shows considerable individual variability:

What has not been appreciated previously is the marked individual variabilityin the location of the mosaics essential to language. [. . .] This variability isquite marked in all areas except the most posterior portion of the inferior fron-tal gyrus. Even there, enough variability is present so that the classical Broca’sarea is occasionally not involved in language. This variability is probablythe explanation for the difficulty in determining the exact location of theWernicke language area from the extent of the temporoparietal lesionsproducing aphasia. [. . .] The Wernicke language area of the classical model isclearly an artifact of these essential areas in different patients, for rarely ifever are essential language areas found in an individual patient. Indeed, theentire extent of the classical Broca and Wernicke language areas is seldomessential for language in an individual patient. (Ojemann et al., 1989, p. 324)

There is a third problem. Research programs using brain scans have made the journeyto uniquely human behavior—the journey from brain to mind—difficult to imaginebecause they have persisted in presupposing that the cause of human behavior is whollyorganic. Whatever the differences between brain and mind, surely the most salient is thatmind is a product, not only of brain but also of an environmental complex—including lifeexperiences and the intersubjectivity of a particular life world. Despite this, neuroscien-tific researchers “share the Idea that the brain must be in some fundamental way theperson” (Dumit, 2004, p. 103; emphasis in original).

In the end, researchers are measuring only what they can measure: isolated brainfunctions and their behavioral correlates. But no one believes that the evolutionary signif-icance of the brain lies in the identification of these isolated functions. Although carefulresearchers, such as James et al., avoid assigning the higher level functions that constituteour humanity to specific areas of the brain—avoid creating a new phrenology—theirprogram holds little promise of giving us insight into that humanity.

6The more extensive “colored” areas in the brain image representing the control group data area statistical artifact.


Conclusion

In the century and a quarter since the founding of Brain, the means of investigating brainfunction and the means by which this function has been visualized have coevolved. Butthe causal arrow has pointed both ways: from conceptual development to visuals and fromvisuals to conceptual development. Speaking to historian Joseph Dumit, scientist MichaelTer-Pogossian says: “you select images that prove your case. However, the case is alsoproven, supposedly, in your text” (2004, p. 96; emphasis added). Dumit extends this com-ment to support Barthes’s thesis that “the image no longer illustrates the words; it is thewords which, structurally, are parasitic on the image”: PET scans (and of course fMRIscans) “participate in [a] reversal of veridictory authority” (Barthes, 1998, p. 14; cited inDumit, 2004, p.143). The excess of precision over accuracy simply overwhelms when it isgiven visual embodiments as striking as those of James et al.

The effects of the systematic bias that such a reversal creates, however, need not bedeleterious. Since the bias of precision over accuracy, introduced by current depictions ofbrain activity, is systematic, its effects are predicable, a predictability that can further theprogress of the science: “any adaptation can be made to malfunction under the appropriatecircumstances. [. . .] In fact, the use of experimental conditions to cause malfunctions isone of the most powerful tools for discovering how a system functions” (Griesemer &Wimsatt, 1989, p. 101). Of course, only to the extent that neuroscientists are conscious ofthe reversal of veridical authority will they be able to make productive use of thepersistent tension between precision and accuracy.

Articles Discussed Listed in Chronological Order

Magnan DR (1878/1879): General paralysis and cerebral tumour, with atrophy of the ascendingparietal convolution of the left hemisphere—no paralysis on the right side—convulsions on theleft. Brain 1: 561–565.

Bolton JS (1903): The functions of the frontal lobes. Brain 26: 215–241.Weil A (1928): A contribution to the pathology of hemichorea. Brain 51: 36–45.Humphrey ME, Zangwill OL (1952): Effects of a right-sided occipito-parietal brain injury on a

left-handed man. Brain 75: 312–324.Ongerboer de Visser BW, Kuypers HGJM (1978): Late blink reflect changes in lateral medullary

lesions: An electrophysiological and anatomical study of Wallenberg’s syndrome. Brain 101:285–294.

Ojemann G, Ojemann J, Berger M (1989): Corical language localization in left, dominanthemisphere: An electrical stimulation mapping investigation in 117 patients. J. Neurosurg 71:316–326.

James TW et al. (2003): Ventral occipital lesions impair object recognition but not object-directedgrasping. Brain 126: 2463–2475.

References

Bolton JS (1903): The functions of the frontal lobes. Brain 26: 215–241.Dobbs D (2005): Fact or phrenology? Scientific American Mind 16: 24–32.Dumit J (2004): Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity. Princeton, Princeton

University Press.Galison P (1997): Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics. Chicago, University Press.Griesemer JR, Wimsatt, WC (1989): Picturing Weismannism: A case study of conceptual evolution.

In: Ruse M, ed., What the Philosophy of Biology Is. Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers,pp. 75–138.

392 Alan G. Gross

Gross AG, Harmon JE, Reidy M (2002): Communicating Science: The Scientific Article from the17th Century to the Present. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Hochberg J (1998): Gestalt theory and its legacy: Organization in eye and brain, in attention andmental representation. In: Hochberg J, ed., Perception and Cognition at Century’s End. SanDiego, Academy Press.

Humphrey ME, Zangwill OL (1952): Effects of a right-sided occipito-parietal brain injury on aleft-handed man. Brain 75: 312–324.

James TW et al. (2003): Ventral occipital lesions impair object recognition but not object-directedgrasping. Brain 126: 2463–2475.

Kress G, van Leeuwen T (1996): Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London,Routledge.

Magnan DR (1878/1879): General paralysis and cerebral tumour, with atrophy of the ascendingparietal convolution of the left hemisphere—No paralysis on the right side—Convulsions on theleft. Brain 1: 561–565.

Ojemann G, Ojemann J, Berger M (1989): Corical language localization in left, dominanthemisphere: An electrical stimulation mapping investigation in 117 patients. J. Neurosurg 71:316–326.

Ongerboer de Visser BW, Kuypers HGJM (1978): Late blink reflect changes in lateral medullarylesions: An electrophysiological and anatomical study of Wallenberg’s syndrome. Brain 101:285–294.

Pinker S (1990): A theory of graph comprehension. In: Freedle R, ed., Artificial Intelligence and theFuture of Testing. Hillsdale, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 73–126.

Star SL (1989): Regions of the Mind: Brain Research and the Quest for Scientific Certainty.Stanford, Stanford University Press.

Weil A (1928): A contribution to the pathology of hemichorea. Brain 51: 36–45.Young RM (1970): Mind, Brain, and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century: Cerebral Localization

and its Biological Context. Oxford, Clarendon Press.

the brains in brain: the coevolution of localization and its images

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