Psychedelic attachment theory
I am going to share a story with you. And then I am going to explain what was, for me, the most important part of my PhD research:…
Tag: Neuroscience
Feeling Adrift in the Ethnography of a Laboratory
This semester, I officially began my fieldwork for my doctoral dissertation in the city of Bogotá. As part of an ethnography, I will be wandering through different neuroscience…
What the Mind Needs: The Secret Psychology of Wainscoting
A wainscoting panel from the 1830s, block-printed artwork. Public domain image from the Smithsonian Design Museum Have you ever visited an old hotel or office building and were surprised…
The problems with XR headsets that even Apple can’t fix
A history of wearables at Augmented World Expo 2013 Tech companies have been trying to make VR/AR/XR headsets go mainstream for over three decades. Here’s what I’ve discovered in…
Genetics, neuroscience and the narrative on eating disorders: Where science and storytelling meet by Emma Louise Pudge
The narrative around eating disorders is shifting. Researchers and activists have advanced a more complex understanding of eating disorders by presenting cutting-edge scientific and clinical research …
The Mercurial Life of Drugs: Psychedelics as models, risk factors, and treatments for mental disorders by Johanna Pokorny
A Workshop Report by the Neuroscience and Society Network Introduction The Neuroscience and Society Network organised a workshop on 11-12 July 2018 at the Institute of Psychology, Psychiatry…
Art, neuroscience and ethnography
Neuroscience The brain is a wild and wonderful thing. Even in a damaged, broken, or diseased state, it performs wonders. Oliver Sacks, neurologist and prolific writer, knew this…
Opening up shrinking life-worlds by Maarten van Westen
Lives change dramatically as dementia progresses. Using observations of people suffering from obsessions and compulsions, I will analyse this change along three dimensions. Obsessive-Compulsive Disord…
Web Roundup: Death, Life, and the Immortal Brain by Kathleen Lynch
Among the many tech-focused booths at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) early this year, one stood out in particular: an exhibition of manufactured bodies, or “sleeves,” into which…
Web Roundup: In the clouds by Lily Shapiro
As I’m sure many of you saw, this month started with the successful launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, giving a boost (sorry) to privatized space travel, and providing…
Book Forum––Fernando Vidal and Francisco Ortega’s Being Brains: Making the Cerebral Subject by Todd Meyers
Fernando Vidal and Francisco Ortega’s Being Brains: Making the Cerebral Subject is a fine-grained account of the “neuro-” in a range of disciplines, and, importantly––crucial…
Book Forum––Des Fitzgerald’s Tracing Autism: Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and the Affective Labor of Neuroscience by Todd Meyers
Des Fitzgerald writes of his book, Tracing Autism, “This is a book about scientists talking about their own practice, in tones that are beset by ambiguity, uncertainty, complexity,…
On Plastic Reason by Tobias Rees by Setrag Manoukian
Plastic Reason: An Anthropology of Brain Science in Embryogenetic Terms by Tobias Rees University of California Press, 2016, 352 pages Plastic Reason is an excellent occasion to…
Web Roundup: Moral enhancement by Jane Roberts
This month’s web round up focuses on notions of treatment as enhancement…or vice versa? I’ve recently come off a stretch of spending quite a lot of time reading…
Don’t Panic! The Neuroscience behind falling into Balance w/ Vivek Pandey Vimal
Are balance and movement something that can be culturally shaped? Why aren’t female rats being used in drug studies? In this episode of This Anthropological Life we team…
Tobias Rees’s Plastic Reason: An Anthropology of Brain Science in Embryogenetic Terms by Nima Bassiri
Plastic Reason: An Anthropology of Brain Science in Embryogenetic Terms by Tobias Rees University of California Press, 2016, 352 pages In the prefatory pages of Plastic Reason,…
Mara Buchbinder’s “All In Your Head: Making Sense of Pediatric Pain” by Joanna Kempner
All In Your Head: Making Sense of Pediatric Pain by Mara Buchbinder University of California Press, 2015, 256 pages Pain has a famously intangible quality. To paraphrase…
Web Roundup: The Electronic Over-Soul and our Worst Selves (and Other Mishaps) by Sara M Bergstresser
The web roundup for this month is a sequel to last month’s roundup on Mind, Consciousness, and Artificial Intelligence. I will address another interface between machines and minds,…
Mind, Consciousness, and Artificial Intelligence by Maria Cecilia Dedios
This month’s web roundup comes through a bit late – paradoxically- due to technical difficulties (my computer died!). Although I will be able to recover most of my…
Sex/Gender: Part I: Why Now? by Constance Cummings
A Critical Moment: Sex/Gender Research at the Intersections of Culture, Brain, and Behavior FPR-UCLA 2016 Conference Summary Emerging theories in neuroscience – fueled by new technologies in brain im…
Felicity Callard and Des Fitzgerald’s “Rethinking Interdisciplinarity Across the Social and Neurosciences” by Jörg Niewöhner
Rethinking Interdisciplinarity Across the Social and Neurosciences by Felicity Callard and Des Fitzgerald Palgrave (Pivot series), 2015, 160 pages The first thing you notice when picking up a…
Cassandra Crawford’s Phantom Limb: Amputation, Embodiment, and Prosthetic Technology by Seth Messinger
Phantom Limb: Amputation, Embodiment, and Prosthetic Technology by Cassandra S. Crawford NYU Press, 2014, 314 pages The title of this important book gives only the slightest hint of…
Web Roundup: Public, Intimate Spaces (Bathrooms & Brains) by Sara M Bergstresser
Bounded categories and category-bounded spaces are always of interest. This month, there were salient discussions of two such spaces: the (gendered) public bathroom and the brain. Bathrooms Public…
A stubborn conundrum
Professor Margaret Lock has published an exhaustive ethnography of Alzheimer disease research in her latest book, The Alzheimer Conundrum. I recently reviewed this book for The Australian Journal of…