Article ID: CBB001452056

The Self and Its History (2014)

unapi

Hunt, Lynn (Author)


American Historical Review
Volume: 119, no. 5
Issue: 5
Pages: 1576-1586


Publication Date: 2014
Edition Details: Part of a series: History Meets Biology
Language: English

Neuroscience is a fast-growing field that has gained much attention of late, especially at universities, but also among the general public. Membership in the Society for Neuroscience increased by 46 percent just between 2001 and 2010, to more than 41,000 members.1 Research on the brain has increased exponentially since the development of new brain imaging techniques, especially the introduction of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in the 1990s. Use of fMRI makes it possible to detect functional activation of different locations in the brain through measurements of blood volume changes or changes in the concentration of oxygen. In 1992, fMRI provided the experimental basis for just four publications. By 2007, the rate had reached eight per day.2 Add to that the explosion of research at the cellular level of neurons, glial cells, and synapses in humans, mice, roundworms, sea slugs, and other animals, and the output is staggering. As might be expected, new books aiming to synthesize these studies are appearing at an accelerating rate, too. I cannot pretend to do justice here even to the synthetic works on the subject. The rapid expansion of research in neuroscience means that it is not a stable, fixed object. As historians have begun to test the waters of this field, it has rapidly become apparent that neuroscience can serve various ends; criticisms of humanists trying to engage neuroscience often include charges that they have read the wrong studies, misinterpreted the results of experiments, or worse yet, turned to neuroscience looking for a universalizing, anti-representational and anti-intentional ontology to bolster their claims.3 But those debates notwithstanding, the question of the self is a

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Article Roundtable, American Historical Review (2014) Introduction: History Meets Biology. American Historical Review (pp. 1492-1499). unapi

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Authors & Contributors
Shin, Youjung
Freeborn, Alfred
Tamm, Marek
Langlitz, Nicolas
Scheidel, Walter
Russell, Edmund
Concepts
History as a discipline; chronology; study of the past
Historiography
Interdisciplinary approach to knowledge
Neurosciences
Biology
Natural science
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
18th century
Enlightenment
20th century
19th century
Places
Netherlands
Sweden
South Korea
Utrecht (Netherlands)
Galapagos Islands
United States
Institutions
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT
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