A Stone in a Spaghetti Bowl: The Biological and Metaphorical Brain in Neuro-Oncology

Gross, Sky

doi:10.1108/s1057-6290(2011)0000013009

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…The research on functional neuroimaging by Whiteley (2012) is a warning against premature conclusions concerning the reductive impact of popularized neuroimages in lay public. This is comparable to studies that have also reported the relative impact of the perspective of neuroscience in personal beliefs when it comes to oncologic patients, clinical practices in the treatment of depression and the treatment of psychopathy, respectively (Gross, 2011;Helén, 2011;Pickersgill, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Educating ‘cerebral subjects’: The emergence of brain talk in the Argentinean society

Mantilla

2014

BioSocieties

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This article focuses on both the dissemination of neuroscientific knowledge and its social implications through the analysis of a television program entitled The Enigmas of the Brain hosted by an Argentinean neuroscientist. My main concern in this article is to analyze some of the discursive uses of brain talk, that is, the many ways in which brain terminology is engaged in accounts about what the brain does and how some terms are linked together in order to create a sense of brain causality in a number of heterogeneous processes. The research that led to this article follows a qualitative design. The content of the television show was transcribed and analyzed following a content analysis strategy. This data is part of a sociological research project about the cognitive neuroscience field in Argentina. I suggest that brain talk is more about creating new words to explain and make sense of life than about communicating scientific information to a lay audience. As it is explained in the program, the purpose is to educate the public, but I argue that not in the sense of giving new information, but in the sense of producing linguistic resources that encourage the emergence of new self-narratives.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Educating ‘cerebral subjects’: The emergence of brain talk in the Argentinean society

Mantilla

2014

BioSocieties

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“… Bröer and Heerings (2013) , for instance, employ a Q-sort methodology to establish that the disorder-understandings of adults with ADHD comprise a matrix of psychological, sociological and holistic concepts that exist alongside, and interact with, neurological conceptualizations. Gross’s (2011) ethnography of a neuro-oncology unit further indicates the multi-dimensionality of disorder meanings, finding that brain tumour patients’ self-conceptions are split into two elements: one that is based in, and another that is completely separate from, the brain. A form of Cartesian dualism allows these patients to conceive of the tumour not as an illness of the self but as the disease of ‘just another organ’.…”

Section: Does Neuroscience Foster a Conception Of The Self That Is Bamentioning

confidence: 99%

How has neuroscience affected lay understandings of personhood? A review of the evidence

O’Connor

Joffe

2013

Public Underst Sci

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The prominence of neuroscience in the public sphere has escalated in recent years, provoking questions about how the public engages with neuroscientific ideas. Commentaries on neuroscience’s role in society often present it as having revolutionary implications, fundamentally overturning established beliefs about personhood. The purpose of this article is to collate and review the extant empirical evidence on the influence of neuroscience on commonsense understandings of personhood. The article evaluates the scope of neuroscience’s presence in public consciousness and examines the empirical evidence for three frequently encountered claims about neuroscience’s societal influence: that neuroscience fosters a conception of the self that is based in biology, that neuroscience promotes conceptions of individual fate as predetermined, and that neuroscience attenuates the stigma attached to particular social categories. It concludes that many neuroscientific ideas have assimilated in ways that perpetuate rather than challenge existing modes of understanding self, others and society.

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The trouble with brain imaging: Hope, uncertainty and ambivalence in the neuroscience of autism

Fitzgerald

2014

BioSocieties

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A Stone in a Spaghetti Bowl: The Biological and Metaphorical Brain in Neuro-Oncology

Cited by 3 publications

References 34 publications

Educating ‘cerebral subjects’: The emergence of brain talk in the Argentinean society

Educating ‘cerebral subjects’: The emergence of brain talk in the Argentinean society

How has neuroscience affected lay understandings of personhood? A review of the evidence

The trouble with brain imaging: Hope, uncertainty and ambivalence in the neuroscience of autism

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