Plastic Reason (eBook)

An Anthropology of Brain Science in Embryogenetic Terms

Tobias Rees (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016
352 Seiten
University of California Press (Verlag)
978-0-520-96317-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Throughout the twentieth century, neuronal researchers knew the adult human brain to be a thoroughly fixed and immutable cellular structure, devoid of any developmental potential. Plastic Reason is a study of the efforts of a few Parisian neurobiologists to overturn this rigid conception of the central nervous system by showing that basic embryogenetic processesmost spectacularly the emergence of new cellular tissue in the form of new neurons, axons, dendrites, and synapsescontinue in the mature brain. Furthermore, these researchers sought to demonstrate that the new tissues are still unspecific and hence literally plastic, and that this cellular plasticity is constitutive of the possibility of the human. Plastic Reason, grounded in years of fieldwork and historical research, is an anthropologist's account of what has arguably been one of the most sweeping events in the history of brain researchthe highly contested effort to consider the adult brain in embryogenetic terms. A careful analysis of the disproving of an established truth, it reveals the turmoil that such a disruption brings about and the emergence of new possibilities of thinking and knowing.

Inhalt

Illustrations The Ground of the Argument
Note on Technical Terms
Acknowledgments

On Growth and Form
1. ENTRY
Observation
2. RELATIONAL
Regional Rationalities
3. CONCEPTUAL
Histories of Truth
4. NOCTURNAL
Vital Concepts
5. EXPERIMENTAL
Plastic Anatomies of the Living
6. ETHICAL
Humility
7. LETTING GO
The Plastic

Coda: Plasticity after 2003
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.5.2016
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: adult brain • brain research • Brain science • cellular plasticity of the brain • central nervous system • developmental neurobiology • embryogenetic processes in the adult brain • Evolution • history of brain science • history of medicine • Human Brain • lifelong development • mature brain development • Medical Anthropology • nervous system • Neurobiology • Neurology • neuronal research • Neuroplasticity • neuroscience research • plasticity of human brain
• ISBN-10: 0-520-96317-2 / 0520963172
• ISBN-13: 978-0-520-96317-7 / 9780520963177