Rees, Tobias (Author)
University of California Press
Physical Details: 352 pp.
Language: English
Throughout the twentieth century, neuronal researchers knew the adult human brain to be a thoroughly fixed and immutable cellular structure, devoid of any developmental potential. Plastic Reason is a study of the efforts of a few Parisian neurobiologists to overturn this rigid conception of the central nervous system by showing that basic embryogenetic processes—most spectacularly the emergence of new cellular tissue in the form of new neurons, axons, dendrites, and synapses—continue in the mature brain. Furthermore, these researchers sought to demonstrate that the new tissues are still unspecific and hence literally plastic, and that this cellular plasticity is constitutive of the possibility of the human. Plastic Reason, grounded in years of fieldwork and historical research, is an anthropologist’s account of what has arguably been one of the most sweeping events in the history of brain research—the highly contested effort to consider the adult brain in embryogenetic terms. A careful analysis of the disproving of an established truth, it reveals the turmoil that such a disruption brings about and the emergence of new possibilities of thinking and knowing.
...MoreReview Maurizio Meloni (2018) Review of "Plastic Reason: An Anthropology of Brain Science in Embryogenetic Terms". Bulletin of the History of Medicine (pp. 227-228).
Similar Citations
Article
Grommes, Christian;
Conway, Devon;
(2011)
The Stepping Test: A Step Back in History
(/isis/citation/CBB001034918/)
Thesis
Anna Wexler;
(2017)
Sparking Controversy: The Contested Use of Noninvasive Brain Stimulation
(/isis/citation/CBB716280426/)
Book
Finger, Stanley;
Boller, François;
Tyler, Kenneth L.;
(2010)
History of Neurology
(/isis/citation/CBB001034950/)
Article
Lanska, Douglas J.;
(2002)
Classic Articles of 19th-Century American Neurologists: A Critical Review
(/isis/citation/CBB000202037/)
Book
Salisbury, Laura;
Shail, Andrew;
(2010)
Neurology and Modernity: A Cultural History of Nervous Systems, 1800--1950
(/isis/citation/CBB001034355/)
Book
Jacyna, L. S.;
(2008)
Medicine and Modernism: A Biogrpahy of Sir Henry Head
(/isis/citation/CBB000950283/)
Article
Barras, Vincent;
Dupont, Jean-Claude;
(2010)
Introduction
(/isis/citation/CBB001034700/)
Article
Boling, Warren W.;
Ettl, Svenja;
Sano, Keiji;
(2010)
Professor Uchimura, Ammon's Horn Sclerosis, and the German Influence on Japanese Neuroscience
(/isis/citation/CBB001034938/)
Article
David S. Jones;
Kavita Sivaramakrishnan;
(2018)
Transplant Buccaneers: P.K. Sen and India’s First Heart Transplant, February 1968
(/isis/citation/CBB610950266/)
Book
Jan Ovesen;
Ing-Britt Trankell;
(2010)
Cambodians and Their Doctors: A Medical Anthropology of Colonial and Post-Colonial Cambodia
(/isis/citation/CBB950202829/)
Article
Christopher J. Boes;
(2018)
Adolph Sahs: A Neurologist Who Could Take on Still Another Job
(/isis/citation/CBB997467970/)
Article
Ariane Dröscher;
(2018)
Senescenza, rigenerazione e immortalità: Giuseppe Levi e il fenomeno vitale
(/isis/citation/CBB318884233/)
Article
Silvia Iorio;
(2016)
Theoretical Approaches and Key Concepts in Medical Anthropology
(/isis/citation/CBB030940498/)
Article
Paolo Mazzarello;
(2018)
Breve profilo delle scienze neurologiche in Italia dalla fine dell'Ottocento alla prima metà del Novecento
(/isis/citation/CBB113311549/)
Article
Barbara, Jean-Gaël;
(2010)
Relations médecine -- sciences dans l'individualisation des maladies nerveuses à la Salpêtrière à la fin du XIXe siècle
(/isis/citation/CBB001034702/)
Article
Frank W. Stahnisch;
(2017)
Die Neurowissenschaften in Straßburg zwischen 1872 und 1945. Forschungstätigkeiten zwischen politischen und kulturellen Zäsuren
(/isis/citation/CBB544720683/)
Article
Stephen G. Reich;
(2018)
Russell Dejong: “The Most Scholarly Neurologist in the Academy”
(/isis/citation/CBB286518842/)
Article
Timothy S. Streeter;
(2018)
Joseph Resch and the Plea of the Practicing Neurologists: A Postwar Neurology Resident’s Tale
(/isis/citation/CBB281229960/)
Article
Zoe M. Adams;
Joseph J. Fins;
(2017)
The Historical Origins of the Vegetative State: Received Wisdom and the Utility of the Text
(/isis/citation/CBB328347072/)
Book
Classen, Joseph;
Schnitzler, Alfons;
(2012)
Interventionelle Neurophysiologie
(/isis/citation/CBB001451023/)
Be the first to comment!