Neuronal Fantasies dan Reading Neuroscience

THE ATOMIZED BODY

J

ust like the first theories in physics viewed atoms as
independent and surrounded by a void, our bodies'
microscopic constituents are often portrayed as disconnected from the body as a unified organism, and from
its cultural and social contexts.

THE CULTU RA L LIFE OF STE M CELLS, GENES AN D NEU RONS

In Tbe Atomized Body the authors examine the relations
between culture, society and bioscientific research and
show how our bodies' singularized particles indeed still are
socially and culturally embedded. In today's medicine, the
biosciences are entangled with state power, commercialism, and cultural ideas and expectations, as well as with
the hopes and fears of individuals. Therefore, biomedicine
and biotechnology also reshape our perceptions of selfhood and life.
From multidisciplinary perspectives, including visual
studies, theology, and edmology, this volume discusses the
biosciences and dle atomized body in their social, cultural

and philosophical contexts.

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THE ATOM IZED BODY

_, tlu thinking oftboug/m, Collected pnpers: Collected mlt)'s. 1929-1968 (Ann Arbor:
Hutchinson 197 I).
Sahlins, Marshall, 'Two or th ree th ings that I know about culru re' ,fotlmal a/lilt Ropt!
J111lhropologicnI11lStitU/(, 513 ( 1999). 399-42.1.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy & Margaret Lock, 'The mindful body: A prolegomenon for
future work in medical anthropology', Mediar! Alllbropology Qunrur/y, III (1987),
6-4 1.

Segal, Daniel A. & Sylvia J. Yanagisako. UmolYlppillg tbe Sacml Bll1Idle: Reflections 011
tilt DisciplillingoJAlltllIvpolog), (Durham, NC: Duke, 200S)·
Shockley, Kevin, Daniel C. Richardson & Rick Dale. 'Conversation and coordinativc:

Topics ill CogniliveScimce. 112 (2009), 305-319·
Sbwc:dcr, Richard A" 'Amhropology's disenchamment widl [he cognitive revolution',

CHAPTER

6

Neuronal fantasies
Reading neuroscience with Schreber

structures' ,

Tapia ill CogniriveSci/'1Jce, 4/3 (20n), 354- 61.

Sociery for Social Neurosci ence, A1ission Sttlumem, available at dmp:lIs4Sn.orgldrupall>. acesd.~
April 2012.
Varda, Francisco J., Evan TIlompson & Eleanor Rosch, llu ~ mbodie
mind. Coglitv~
scimce aud IwnulIl experience (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991).
\'Vhilehcad, Charles, 'The culture ready brain', Social Cognitive alld Affictive Nelll'oscience, 512-J (2010), 168-79·

\Xfundt, \'Vilhclm, Elemmlt' der ViilkerpsJcbologie. Grmullinien elntr PSJ'cbologischen
ElltllJicklullgsgesclJicbu der 114emchhdt (Leipzig: Alfred Kroner Verlag, 191 J).
Young, Allan, 'Emparhic crudty and the origins of the social brain', in Suparna Choudhury & Jan Slaby (cds.), Criricnl Neuroscienu: II hrl1ldboo/..· ofthe social a1ld CtllwlYll
(Ollto.:u afnmroscima (London: \'Viler-Blackwell, 20 11), 159-76.

Max Liljefors

On 31 Occober 1894, the prominenr German neuIoanacomist Paul
Emil Flechsig delivered his inaugural lecrure as Rector Magnificus of
the Universiry of Leipzig. The lecture was titled 'Gehirn IlI1d Seele'
['Brain and Sou!'] and was subsequently published as a book of [he
same name (Flechsig 2010/1894). In it Flechsig declares early on that
ti,e brain is the organ of the soul, and goes on to prophesize that the
meticulous study of the brain's neuronal layout will ultimately solve
the conundrum of the soul. By this time Flechsig was already a notable
representative for the burgeoning science of neuroanatomy, mainly
thanks to his discovery in 1872 of [he process of myelination-the
development of an insulacing sheath of myelin around the neurons in
the brain, necessary for their proper functioning . The srudy of myelination formed the basis of Flechsig's scientific career, and spurred him
on in his endeavour to map the biological foundation of mental phenomena. Three decades after his appointment as Rector Magnificus,

Flechsig assened in his autobiography, My Myelogenetic Bmin Science
with fill Autobiogmphictl! Introduction, published two years before his
death in 1929, that his foremost task had always been to uncover the
relations between the brain and the soul (Lathane 199z: 204).
Today Flechsig is renowned primarily because of a patient under
his care at the psychiatric clinic in Leipzig, [he German judge Daniel
Paul Schreber. Schreber's autobiographical book Memoirs o/My Nervo/IS
Illness, composed during a several-year-long period of psychotic paranoia and published in 1903, is among the most commented-upon texes
in psychiatric history (Schreber 2000). Its repute stems mainly from
Sigmund Freud's case-study ofSchreber, which was based solely on the
Memoh:s--Freud never mer Schreber in person-and in which Freud

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THE ATOMIZED BODY

NEURONAL FANTASIES

advances essential pam of his theory on paranoia (Freud 2003). In the
present essay, I will tead Schreber's Memoin in the light of contem-

science as progressingfioom the brain to the mind, with anomer account,

porary neuroscience, or ramer, in the light of how neuroscience-ics

findings, prospects, and implications-is presented tOday in popular
scientific accounts aimed at the general reader. I will use Schreber and
Flechsig as kinds of dramatized tableaux vivants from the early days of
the neurological study of the brain, tableaux in which certain motifs
and issues are brought out that I think still pertain in neuroscience
tOday. I will argue that it is ptecisely the relation between Gehim llIld
Seele, or, as the dichotOmy tends to be rephrased, between brain and
mind, that is at stake in the popular discourse of neuroscience tOday.
Or put differently, I think that in the rhetOric and aesthetics of popular science, with irs inclination to conjure up whar is called, in science
fiction studies, a 'sense of wonder', a more serious matter is secrecly

played out; namely the difficulry of reconciling the first-person perspective of subjectivity-the 'I'-with the grey materiality of the brain.
I will argue that Schreber in his delusions confronted tha t difficulty
in a less convoluted, more head-on manner than popular science is
given to doing now.

The science writet Rita Carter begins her recent book, Mapping the
Brain (201O), about the current state of neuroscience, by saying, 'The
Decade of the Brain may be over but the Decade of the Mind is about
to begin' (ibid. vii). Her formulation refers to the former US ptesident
George W. Bush's designation of the 1990S as 'the Decade of the Brain',
and Caner asserrs that since then , neuroscience has progressed from

trying to localize the places of mental faculties in the brain to being able
[0 identifY, predicr, and produce mental contcntfrom irs neuronal basis:
1he norian of identifYing the neural impulses that give rise to
'higher' faculties, such as altruism, empathy, or morality; of using
brain scans to detect lying, or of feeding the elecuical ourpur from
someone's head inm a compurer and then watching the visual contem of thar person's mind pop up on a screen seemed like science
fiction. Today we can do all this. (Carter 2010: vi-vii)

which sees a movement in the opposite direction. In his book on Schreber and Flechsig, the psychiatrist Zvi Lothane comments on the odd
coincidence that Paul Flechsig, himself the son of a Protestant minister,
first came across myelin when he dissected the brain of a five-year-old
boy with the unusual name of Martin Luthet. And when Flechsig gave

his lecture as Rector Magnificus, the inaugural ceremony had to be
moved to the university church of St Paul's, due to renovations. Thus
Flechsig delivered his speech abour the brain being the foundation of
the soul from next to a Christian altar, the site of the Eucharistic mystery (Lothane 1992: 213), an apt illustration of the rise of neuroanatomy in the latter half of the nineteenth century-with pioneers such
as Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramon Y Cajal-as a discipline that
challenged religious as well as psychological approaches to the human
psyche. In 1877 Flechsig was appointed professor of psychiatry in
Leipzig and subsequently became the director of the new Hospital for
Psychiatric and Nervous Disorders attached to rhe university, where he

would later treat Schreber. The appointment to this prestigious position
of a neuroanatomist who lacked any practical experience of psychiatry
was, as Flechsig himself comments in his memoirs, a highly controver-

sial decision, and an indication of the rapidly growing status of brain
localization (Lothane 1992: 204-5). Lotllane concludes, 'It was a sign
of the times: in one fell swoop, through Flechsig's nomination, the tradition of the soul ended and the reign of the brain began' (ibid. 205).
Carter and Flechsig thus describe neuroscience as developing in diametrically opposire directions. To Caner, who aims ar communicating

the findings of neuroscience to a lay audience, the movement goes from

brain to mind: brain localization promises a deeper understanding of
the human mind, and therefore a road to human self-Imowledge-in
shon, she sees science uncovering the essence of the T. Lothane sees
insread a movemenr from mind to brain. He is critical of whar he caBs

the 'brain mythology' of Flechsig's neuroanatomical regime, and goes
so far as to consider ir a major faeror in Schreber's sufferings. Lothane

argues that any strictly neurological explanation of the psyche amounts
to bioiogistic reductionism and implies an alienation of the experiencing

My own take on the brain-mind issue is that of a cultural scientist with
a penchant for images. I am interested in what brain science and brain
visualizations are understood to mean in different contexts. From mat
perspective, it is revealing to juxtapose Carter's description of neuro-

'44

subject. Hence both writets portray neuroscience as leading the human
subject in diametrically opposite directions-to ultimate self-knowledge,

or to complete estrangement of self. In the following I will explore tl,is
opposition further, showing that Schreber's delusional imagination
145

THE ATOMIZED BODY

NEURONAL FANTASIES

in a certain sense uncovers precisely the traumatic dimension of the

carefully composed . The book announces clearly CO the reader-or
the onlooker- that it is intended co be consumed by looking rather
than by reading. Indeed, the preface assures readers that if they skip
the somewhat complicated passages on methodology, they will noc be
missing much anyway (ibid. I I). SO, just as the knowledge production

biologization of the mind that the rhetoric and aesthetics of popular
science tend co gloss over. In the end, however, I will propose that what
is ultimately at stake in neufoscientific discourse is not so much the

validity of personal subjectivity as the validity of the collective, societal
realm of institutional mandates, rights, and obligations.

A neuronal saga about the mind

in neuroscience today is very much linked

[Q

brain visualizations, the

message sent co the general reader by this publication is brought home
through its resplendent imagery more than through its texts. As Lehrer
asserts in the foreword, the pictures' 'empirical power is entwined with

Neurobiologist Carl Schoonover's Portraits of the Mind (2010) is a
recent work of popular science about the brain and brain imaging. A
coffee-cable book, it is filled with pictures of the brain, from Cajal's

their visual majesty' (ibid. 7).
The texts that accompany the images basically serve as extended
captions. In the main, they explain briefly how the pictures were

exquisite ink drawings of neurons observed through an optical micro-

produced, with a summary by the contributing scientists of what the
pictures say about the brain-mind relation. However, even if rhey are

scope at the turn of the last century, to coday's computer-generated,
colour-saturated maps of neuronal pathways, produced using fMRl
and other high-tech medical imaging instruments. Schoonover's book
has received end1usiastic reviews, and I will use it here as an example
of how neuroscience is often presented co sociery at large, namely as a
lavishly illustrated saga of the quest for the secrets of the mind.
The tiele alone flags Schoonover's intentions. The book aims not only
to

show state of the an visualizations of the brain, but also to present

pOrtraits of humans. A portrait is supposed co depict a person, and co
reveal something of the inner individualiry of that person, not merely
his or her oucer appearance. Police mug shots or biometric facial recognition patterns are not considered portraits, precisely because they

kept short and simple, the texts are far from unimportant: they guide
the reader co a specific understand ing of the pictures, whose motifs
in themselves can be as enigmatic as they arc visually specmcuiar. The

central message here is quite unequivocal: you are your brain. The book
is scattered with sentences that emphasize the conflation ofhrain and

mind, of neuronal and mental processes. Francis Crick, the 1962 Nobel
prize winner for the co-discovery of the DNA molecule structure, is
quoted saying. 'You, your joys and sorrows, your memories and your
ambitions. YOllr sense of personal identily and free will, are in fact no

aim only to identify the person in question using his outer features,

more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their
associated molecules' (ibid. 200). In another passage, worth quoting
in length, the neuroscientists Remigijus Lape, David Colquhoun, and

while leaving questions of personality and subjectivity aside. With

Lucia Silviioui offer an account of the electric currents of rhe brain,

its title. Schoonover's book positions itself instead in the tradition of
ponraiture, a genre which has always been (Orn between the wish to

which are replete with anthropomorphisms:

idealize through beauty and the desire to unmask by peering through
the surface, a tension inescapably framed by the fact of mortality. The
claim that neuroimaging portrays the mind, not merely depicts the
brain-in rhe book's foreword. the science writer John Lehrer asserts

that brain pictures invoke the same twinge of recognition in the beholder
as Rembrandt's self-portraits (ibid. 7)-is also a claim that they belong
in a deep-rooted cultural tradition of a hermeneutics of selfhood.
As is often the case with popular science, illustrations take the
lead role in Portraits of the Mind. The pictures cover entire pages and
spreads, often in lavish colour, stunningly sharp and detailed, and

A tightly choreographed bal let of electrical currents constandy-and
fathomlessly-flickers throughout the vast expanses of the neural
plains, engendering your every decision, every beli~
every crush,
and every aversion. Your experience of red in Warhol's Campbell s
SOllp CalIS, your feeling of helplessness in the fuce of death, your

body's reaction

to

a full (along with its accompanying jolt of fcas),

and your most intimate secrets are all somehow carried by neurons

that speak the language of electricity. Your very language fucultylearning English. deploying it in conversation. reading this book-is
produced by their electrical activity. 'These neurons' currents were

147

THE ATOMIZED BODY

set in motion before you were born and will persist through sleep
and consciousness until rhe final moments of your life. You are
the summ.don of the electrical activity in your brain. (ibid. 150)

This passage employs a number of tropes that are often found in popular
accountS of neuroscience. First and foremost the text asserts that self-

hood, in all its embodied, affective, and intellectual aspects, is entirely
contained in and reducible to the workings of neural networks. Neuronal
processes, in turn, are described through anthropomorphic metaphors.
They are said to move in patterns that are consciously designed, they
speak a 'language', and demonstrate a persistent character-descriptions [hat imply that the brain and its neurons possess an agency and
intent of their own. Furthermore, landscape metaphors portray the
brain's interior as a self-enclosed world, with 'vast expanses' and 'plains'.
Throughout the book this self-contained brain-universe is presented
in a two-sided manner, namely as a remote realm of strange and won-

drous phenomena, which at the same time is highly recognizable and
accessible. The overall rhetorical effect is one of profound and fateful
insight, as in Lehrer's concluding statement about the lesson gained
from viewing brain images, that '1his, right here, is human nature,

staring back at us. We have been laid bare' (ibid. 7).
It would be a mistake to think of those metaphoric, anthropomorphic
stories about the brain's internal processes as mere simplifications for

the sake of accessibility. That would be to imply that they only reduce
complexity and to ignore the fact that such metaphors and narrations
also add something, namely meaning: they make implicit propositions
of what it means existentially to be a neuronal subject. One might be
struck here by the extent to which neurology, more than other medical
sciences except perhaps for genetics, addresses questions traditionally
belonging to other disciplines such as philosophy, theology or sociology.
For example, neurologist Joy Hirsch foresees a future when scholars
of law, finance, psychology, and other disciplines, unite around the
neuron as their shared object of study (ibid. 203). Then, she goes on
to say, people's political opinions, prejudices, moral judgements, and

NEURONAL FANTAS I ES

all the other sciences. The prospect of employing neurology in all
aspects of governance also demonstrates the major societal influence

of the medical sciences in the modern era, as shown inAuentially by
Foucault and others.
Nevertheless, for all their far-reaching claims for neuroscience, the
texts in Portraits of the Mind play second fiddle to the pictutes. The
visual element dominates the book, and it is by means of the pictures
that the central message of the book is delivered. As is common in popular science, the epistemological status of the images is described in a
somewhat contradictory manner. On the one hand, it is acknowledged
that the accomplishments of brain imaging in recent years have been
brought about by the emergence of advanced imaging technologies.
Only through an 'astonishing array of new techniques for visuaJizarion

and interpretation' can we now probe the neuronal world (ibid. 6), and
therefore, the hisrofY of neuroscience is 'the history of [he techniques
we employ to delve into the brain' (ibid. 8). Throughout the book,
the pictures are accompanied by summaries of their technological,
chemical, and computational prerequisites, although, as previously
mentioned, the reader is invited to skim through these passages. On
the other hand, the pictures are presented in what can be termed a
'rhetoric of transparency'. The act oflooking into the brain is emphasized as immediate and direct: 'it's now possible [0 see inside [hat fleshy

machine [emphasis in original]' (ibid. 6); 'For the first time, we can see
the physical consequences of every thought' (ibid. 6); 'these pictures
.. . allow us to observe the brain directly, without the frame of a conjecture' (ibid. 7). Such phrasings evoke a sense of revelation, as if a veil
of Aesh has been lifted from our eyes, finally allowing us unimpeded
visual access to the workings of the brain, and hence of the mind. This
rhetoric of transparency belies to some extent the dense procedure of

techno-chemical-algorithmic signal processing by imaging devices,
which occurs before an actual picture is realized. Needless to say, the

particulars of those processes are impenetrable to most people except
for the most devoted specialistS. However, the deployment of tropes of
transparency in popular science malces the processing seem insignifi-

aesthetic experiences, as well as society's economic decision-making

cant or negligible-as if it does not really matter that the technology

and national policies, will be understood and perhaps regulated in
terms of their neurological foundations in the brain. In other words,

and mathematics are mere. The rhetoric of transparency encourages

neurology here comes across as a 'universal science' in me Aristotelian

obstacle that blocks our vision, but instead insef[ numerous layers of

sense-as a science of first principles, of'being qua being', underlying

representation between the observer and the object of study. As the

us to forget that imaging devices do not simply remove some physical

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THE ATOMIZED B ODY

NEURONAL FANTASIES

philosopher of science Don Ihde has pointed out with regard to what
he calls 'visualism in science', technologies can he said to let us perceive
both 'more' and 'less', for as they widen our scope of vision, they also
mediate our perceptions, making them less direct (Ihde 1999: 47)·
This hermeneutic ambiguity is intrinsic to technologically aided vision

found the book as awe-inspiring as I have. Since the book presents a
variety of imaging techniques, each of which produces pictures with a
particular 'look', ranging from the photographic to the diagrammatic,
one should not generalize about their appearance toO broadly. However,
some aesthetic features recur, and here I will emphasize two that may
at first seem contradictory: the pictures are realistic, and they are imagilla/y. This is a question of twO broad aesthetic dynamics that combine
in what might be best described as an aura of visual fascination that
bolsters the book's argument about the conflation of mind and brain.
I will provide twO examples here.
Figure I (see colour plate) depicts a glial cell-a non-neuronal brain
cell that produces the protecting myelin that Flechsig discovered. It
is one example of the aesthetics of realism that permeates Portraits of
the Bmin. The sharpness and wealth of detail in the image convey a
sense of the glial cell's materiality, malting it seem almost palpable.
Modulations of shade and light give it plasticity and texture, as if it is
illuminated by an external light source located somewhere outside the

as such. and is not exclusive to contemporary imaging technologies.

After all, Galileo experienced it, Ihde remarks, when he struggled to fix
his hand-held compound telescope on the planets and satellites of the
night sk-y and mistook a reflection created by the lenses and mirrors for
a hitherto unseen halo around the celestial objects (ibid. 153). Ihde's
phenomenological inveS[igation of the ambivalence of techno-vision
falls outside rhe scope of this essay. What interests me here is instead

how popular science negotiates that ambivalence when it comes

to

rhe

notion ofhrain-mind concurrence.

Ir is important to remember that although most people, confronted
with a brain scan, lack the expertise required to decipher the data it
presents, rhe picture may have meaning for them nonetheless. 'Untied'

from specialist knowledge. rhe pictures can stand for themselves, as it
were, and offer their visual traits for the viewer (Q project subjective
and cultural meanings onto them. One of rhe most salienr features

of images is that they tend to seem meaningful, even when no specific informadon can be derived from them. That m eaning may not
be 'linguistic' in the sense that it could easily be put in words, but
the character of images-their demarcadon from their 'non-image'
surroundings, the inherent tension between their pictoriality (their

material presence as pictures) and their visuality {their symbolic representation of vision)-signals purposeful intent, compositional force,
and significant condensadon. [n other words, pictures tend to gesture
towards visual meaning, which , however 'non-verbal', imbues mem with
a characteristic otherness vis-a.-vis ordinary reality. Therefore someone

who knows nothing of the referent of a picture may still perceive the
picture as imbued with significance-although he may not be able to
say exacdy what it means.
With this in mind a few observations can be made about the illus-

trations in Portmils ofthe Mind. First of all, they are quite spectacular.
Their distinct sharpness, modulated contrast, and exquisite detail

announce unabashedly that they are intended to offer intense visual
pleasure. This reader has marvelled at their depiction of the intricate
wirings of the brain, and many enthusiastic reviewers seem to have

picture frame. We can imagine me sensation of its tactile properties if
we were to tOuch it-a mucous, gelatinous viscosity allowing for its

forking growth. It appears with an object-like quality, letting us sense
that it has a mass and weight that mal