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List of contents
Table of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The Birth of the Live Brain, 1820-1920
2. Displaying Dynamic Brains: Illuminated Brain Models and the Enchanted Loom, 1928-1938
3. Demonstrating Brainwaves Beyond the Laboratory: EEG as White Magic and Dark Media, 1934-1941
4. Broadcasting Live Brains: The Brain on Television and as Television, 1949-1957
5. Interfacing the Real-Time Brain: EEG Feedback in Art and Science, 1964-1977
6. Synchronizing Two Dynamic Brains: Art-Science Experiments and Neuroscience in the Wild, 2013-2019
Conclusion
Bibliography
List of Sources of Figures
Index
About the author
Flora Lysen is Assistant Professor in the history of science and media and a member of the Science and Technology Studies research group (MUSTS) at Maastricht University. She studies how scientific concepts develop and circulate between different disciplinary domains and social spaces. Her work focuses on practices of imag(in)ing the body and the brain, in particular the interaction between technology and the senses.
Summary
Will we ever be able to see the brain at work? Could it be possible to observe thinking and feeling as if watching a live broadcast from within the human head? Brainmedia uncovers past and present examples of scientists and science educators who conceptualize and demonstrate the active human brain guided by new media technologies: from exhibitions of giant illuminated brain models and staged projections of brainwave recordings to live televised brain broadcasts, brains hooked up to computers and experiments with “brain-to-brain” synchronization.
Drawing on archival material, Brainmedia outlines a new history of “live brains,” arguing that practices of—and ideas about—mediation impacted the imagination of seeing the brain at work. By combining accounts of scientists examining brains in laboratories with examples of public demonstrations and exhibitions of brain research, Brainmedia casts new light on popularization practices, placing them at the heart of scientific work.
Foreword
This book demonstrates how, since the 1920s, fantasies and practices of seeing the ‘brain at work’ were and still are fundamentally impacted by the rise of new media technologies.
Additional text
With Brainmedia Flora Lysen offers fascinating insights on the interplay of technology and experience, mediation and presence, discourse and politics that go far beyond the history of neuroscience: In pursuit of a critical understanding of the phenomena, Flora Lysen engages with brain research as current predicament and provides her readers with an engaging media-philosophical perspective.
