Brainwaves: A Cultural History of Electroencephalography

Description

Translated by Ann M. Hentschel In the history of brain research, the prospect of visualizing brain processes has continually awakened great expectations. In this study, Cornelius Borck focuses on a recording technique developed by the German physiologist Hans Berger to register electric brain currents; a technique that was expected to allow the brain to write in its own language, and which would reveal the way the brain worked. Borck traces the numerous contradictory interpretations of electroencephalography, from Berger’s experiments and his publication of the first human EEG in 1929, to its international proliferation and consolidation as a clinical diagnostic method in the mid-twentieth century. Borck's thesis is that the language of the brain takes on specific contours depending on the local investigative cultures, from whose conflicting views emerged a new scientific object: the electric brain. Cornelius Borck is Professor of History, Theory and Ethics of Medicine and Science and Director of the Institute of History of Medicine and Science Studies at the University of Luebeck, Germany. Introduction - Brain Waves Then and Now 1. Electrifying Brain Images 2. Hans Berger’s Long Path to the EEG Current in the Head Research Strategies of a Conservative Psychiatrist The Measure of Psychic Energy The Course to Current Amplified Oscillations Artefacts and Noise Invitation to Stockholm 3. Electrotechniques of the Live Mind Cultural Currents 1918–1933 The Bioengineer and Psychodiagnostics Nerve Apparatus and Psychic Circuits Thought Rays and Radio-Telepathy Configurations of Electrotherapy in the Radio Age Poetics of New Objectivity in Brain Script The Experimentalization of Daily Life 4. Terra nova: Contexts of Electroencephalographic Explorations Epistemic Resonances and Material Cultures Berger’s Further Voyage through Brain Waves Local Appointment in Buch near Berlin Acknowledgment with British Understatement The Leap over the Pond The Matrix of the Waves 5. Set to and Survey Much! On the Cultural Practice of a New Technology Dynamics of Standardization A Diagnostic Panopticon Under the Shock Spell The Electrical Brain at Auschwitz 6. Designing, Tinkering, Thinking What’s Hidden inside the EEG? Rapid Vibrations of Thought The Concert of Cerebral Currents A German Physiologist’s Lofty Flights The Brain as a Cybernetic Machine Brain Theories out of the Model Building-Block Box Conclusion - Plea for an Open Epistemology