The Sci-Fi Brain: Narratives in Neuroscience and Popular Culture

Authors

  • Åsa Alftberg Lund University and Malmö University
  • Peter Bengtsen Lund University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.2000.1525.1810111

Keywords:

medical humanities, cultural analysis, narratives, technology, science fiction, neuroscience, popular culture, Dollhouse

Abstract

The connection between neuroscience, popular media and lay perceptions of the brain involves the framing of complex scientific processes and results through familiar cultural narratives and metaphors. Such narratives are often built on the premise that neuroscience, with the help of powerful new technologies, will finally solve the mysteries of brain and mind, consciousness and morality. At the same time, popular culture—especially the science fiction genre—tends to focus on worst case scenarios of the implementation of technology. This article explores cultural narratives of what the brain is and how it functions in two different contexts—among neuroscientists and within popular culture. In particular, narratives about technology and the malleable brain as well as the notion of the mad scientist are studied. The article explores how these narratives are presented and used in popular culture and how neuroscientists relate to the narratives when describing their work. There is a contrast, but also a blurring of boundaries, between actual research carried out and the fictional portrayals of scientists constructing, or altering, fully functional brains. To some extent, the narratives serve as a background for the public’s understanding of, and attitude towards, neuroscience—something that must be taken into consideration when dealing with the therapeutic treatment of patients. The narratives of neuroscience in popular culture are to a certain degree shaped by actual scientific practices and findings, but neuroscience is also influenced by laypeople’s perceptions, which often have their roots in the narratives of popular culture.

Author Biographies

Åsa Alftberg, Lund University and Malmö University

Åsa Alftberg is an ethnologist at the Department of Social Work, Malmö University. Her research interests are body, health and materiality but also knowledge translation, mainly in relation to ageing and old age, as well as disability and neuroscientific settings.

Peter Bengtsen, Lund University

Peter Bengtsen is an art historian and sociologist working as assistant professor at the Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund University. His research interests include street art, graffiti, the publicness of public space, spatial justice, and the representation of neuroscience and neurological disease in popular media.

References

Aamodt, Sandra & Sam Wang (2008): Welcome to your brain: why you lose your car keys but never forget how to drive and other puzzles of everyday life, New York: Bloomsbury.

Altermark, Niklas (2014): ‘The ideology of neuroscience and intellectual disability: reconstituting the “disordered” brain’, Disability & Society, 29:9, 1460–1472. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2014.953244

Avraamidou, Lucy (2013): ‘Superheroes and supervillains: reconstructing the mad-scientist stereotype in school science’, Research in Science & Technological Education, 31:1, 90–115. https://doi.org/10.1080/02635143.2012.761605

Basting, Anne (2003): ‘Looking back from loss: views of the self in Alzheimer’s di­sease’, Journal of Aging Studies, 17:1, 87–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0890-4065(02)00092-0

Beaulieu, Anne (2000): ‘The Brain at the End of the Rainbow: The Promise of Brain Scans in the Research Field and the Media’, Janine Marchessault & Kim Sawchuk (eds): Wild Science: Reading Feminism, Medicine and the Media, London: Rout­ledge.

Beaulieu, Anne (2002): ‘Images are Not the (Only) Truth: Brain Mapping, Visual Knowledge and Iconoclasm’, Science, Technology and Human Values, 27:1, 53–86. https://doi.org/10.1177/016224390202700103

Bengtsen, Peter & Ellen Suneson (2017): ‘Pathological Creativity: How popular me­dia connect neurological disease and creative practices’, Kristofer Hansson & Mar­kus Idvall (eds): Participating in the New Neuroculture. Neuroscience from the perspectives of cultural analysis and visual culture, Lund: Arkiv förlag.

Brown, Nik & Andrew Webster (2004): New Medical Technologies and Society. Re­ordering Life, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Connolly, William E. (2002): Neuropolitics. Thinking, Culture, Speed, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.

Dumit, Joseph (1997): ‘A Digital Image of the Category of the Person. PET Scan­ning and Objective Self-fashioning’, Gary Lee Downey & Joseph Dumit (eds): Cyborgs and Citadels: Anthropological Interventions in Emerging Sciences, Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.

Dumit, Joseph (2004): Picturing Personhood. Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity, Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Goethals, Ingeborg, Filip Jacobs, Chris Van der Linden, Jacques Caemaert & Kurt Audenaert (2008): ‘Brain activiation associated with deep brain stimulation cau­sing dissociation in a patient with Tourette’s Syndrome’, Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 9:4, 543–549. https://doi.org/10.1080/15299730802226126

Gray, Ann (2003): Research practice for cultural studies, London: Sage Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9780857024596

Haynes, Roslynn D. (2016): ‘Whatever happened to the “mad, bad” scientist? Over­turning the stereotype’, Public Understanding of Science, 25:1, 31–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662514535689

Haraway, Donna (1991): ‘A cyborg manifesto. Science, technology, and socialist-fe­minism in the late twentieth century’, Donna Haraway (ed): Simians, cyborgs and women: The reinvention of nature, New York: Routledge.

Johnson Thornton, Davi (2011): Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Popular Media, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Klaming, Laura & Pim Haselager (2013): ‘Did My Brain Implant Make Me Do It? Questions raised by DBS Regarding Psychological Continuity, Responsibility for Action and Mental Competence’, Neuroethics, 6, 527–539. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-010-9093-1

Krueger, Richard A. & Mary A. Casey (2014): Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Malabou, Catherine (2008): What Should We Do with Our Brain? New York: Ford­ham University Press, Perspectives in continental philosophy.

Nisbet, Matthew & Declan Fahy (2013): ‘Bioethics in Popular Science: Evaluating the Media Impact of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks on the Biobank Debate’, BMC Medical Ethics, 14:10. https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6939-14-10

Orthia, Lindy A. (2011): ‘Antirationalist critique or fifth column of scientism? Chal­lenges from Doctor Who to the mad scientist trope’, Public Understanding of Sci­ence, 20:4, 525–542.

Pickersgill, Martyn (2011): ‘“Promising” therapies: neuroscience, clinical practice, and the treatment of psychopathy’, Sociology of Health & Illness, 33:3, 448–464. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2010.01286.x

Pickersgill, Martyn, Paul Martin & Sarah Cunningham-Burley (2015): ‘The changing brain: Neuroscience and the enduring import of everyday experience’, Public Un­derstanding of Science, 24:7, 878–892.

Rose, Nikolas & Joelle M. Abi-Rached (2013): Neuro. The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Rubin, Beatrix P. (2009): ‘Changing Brains: The Emergence of the Field of Adult Neurogenesis’, Biosocieties, 4, 407–424. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1745855209990330

Schmitz, Sigrid (2012): ‘The Neurotechnological Cerebral Subject: Persistence of Implicit and Explicit Gender Norms in a Network of Change’, Neuroethics, 5, 261–274. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-011-9129-1

Star, Susan Leigh (1992): ‘The Skin, the Skull, and the Self: Toward as Sociology of the Brain’, Anne Harrington (ed), So Human a Brain: Knowledge and Values in the Neurosciences, Boston: Birkhauser. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-0391-9_14

Stiles, Ann (2009): ‘Literature in Mind: H. G. Wells and the Evolution of the Mad Scientist’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 70:2, 317–339. https://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.0.0033

Toumey, Christopher P. (1992): ‘The Moral Character of Mad Scientists: A Cultural Critique of Science’, Science, Technology, & Human Values, 17:4, 411–437. https://doi.org/10.1177/016224399201700401

Vidal, Fernando (2009): ‘Brainhood, anthropological figure of modernity’, History of the Human Sciences, 22:1, 5–36. https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695108099133

Weingart P., C. Muhl & P. Pansegrau (2003): ‘Of Power Maniacs and Unethical Ge­niuses: Science and Scientists in Fiction Film’, Public Understanding of Science, 12:3, 279–287. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662503123006

Whiteley, Louise Emma (2012): ‘Resisting the Revelatory Scanner: Critical Engage­ments with fMRI in Popular Media’, BioSocieties, 7:3, 245–272. https://doi.org/10.1057/biosoc.2012.21

Zivkovic, Marko (2015): ‘Brain Culture. Neuroscience and Popular Media’, Interdis­ciplinary Science Review, 40:4, 409–417.

Downloads

Published

2018-04-19

How to Cite

Alftberg, Åsa and Bengtsen, P. (2018) “The Sci-Fi Brain: Narratives in Neuroscience and Popular Culture”, Culture Unbound, 10(1), pp. 11–30. doi: 10.3384/cu.2000.1525.1810111.

Issue

Section

The Unbound Brain