Taking care of one’s brain: how manipulating the brain changes people’s selves

Abstract

The increasing attention to the brain in science and the media, and people's continuing quest for a better life, have resulted in a successful self-help industry for brain enhancement. Apart from brain books, foods and games, there are several devices on the market that people can use to stimulate their brains and become happier, healthier or more successful. People can, for example, switch their brain state into relaxation or concentration with a light-and-sound machine, they can train their brain waves to cure their Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or solve their sleeping problems with a neurofeedback device, or they can influence the firing of their neurons with electric or magnetic stimulation to overcome their depression and anxieties. Working on your self with a brain device can be seen as a contemporary form of Michel Foucault's "technologies of the self." Foucault described how since antiquity people had used techniques such as reading manuscripts, listening to teachers, or saying prayers to "act on their selves" and control their own thoughts and behaviours. Different techniques, Foucault stated, are based on different precepts and constitute different selves. I follow Foucault by stating that using a brain device for self-improvement indeed constitutes a new self. Drawing on interviews with users of brain devices and observations of the practices in brain clinics, I analyse how a new self takes shape in the use of brain devices; not a monistic (neuroscientific) self, but a "layered" self of all kinds of entities that exchange and control each other continuously.

The changing brain: Neuroscience and the enduring import of everyday experience

“…One much discussed technique relating to the idea that the structure and/or function of the brain is changeable is ‘brain training’; this is generally understood as mental exercises that are regarded by some as being able to improve brain functioning. A range of devices, exercises and programmes continue to be promoted as a means of improving memory, enhancing cognition, tackling psychiatric disorders, and combating neurodegeneration ( Brenninkmeijer, 2010 ). Yet, ‘brain training’ has been the subject of much controversy, with many neuroscientists condemning it as unproven and based on an exaggerated understanding of the degree of plasticity the human brain possesses (e.g.…”

Subjectivity, ecology and meditation – Performing interconnectedness

“…The processes of subjectification responsible for the emergence of the modern self are heterogeneous, involving a number of devices that include historical processes (Weber, 1930;Elias, 1978), the proliferation of institutional spaces (Goffman, 1968;Foucault, 1995), non-humans (Haraway, 1991;Rose, 2007;Brenninkmeijer, 2010) and the repetition of performances (Bourdieu, 1977;Butler, 1990). The modern self is an emergent effect of these devices, and to perform an alternative paradigm of subjectivity one has to transform the 'technology built in our history' (Foucault, 1999, p. 181).…”

“…STS reflections on subjectivity often focus on the importance of relationality and entanglements between humans, non-humans and technologies (Haraway, 1991;Latour, 2005;Schull, 2005;Rose, 2007;Brenninkmeijer, 2010), suggesting that human activity is conditioned and made possible by these associations (Gomart and Hennion, 1999;Latour, 2005) and that a relevant dimension of humans is the development of the capacity to be affected by these couplings . Influenced by such literature, I explore technologies of meditation as mediators (Latour, 1991) that perform non-dual enactments of selves and social, including new ways of tackling the ecological crisis.…”

Recommendation Systems as Technologies of the Self: Algorithmic Control and the Formation of Music Taste

“…letters and diaries). It is such assemblages -and not just technical artefacts -that Foucault (1997b) delineates by 'technologies of the self' (see also Brenninkmeijer, 2010). As we shall see, recommendation systems too constitute such an assemblage.…”