Reading the Human Brain: How the Mind Became Legible

TLDR: The human body was made legible long ago. But what of the human mind? Is it possible to read the mind, for one human being to know what another is thinking or feeling, their beliefs and intentions? Some developments in contemporary neuroscience suggest the answer to this question is "yes" as discussed by the authors.

Abstract: The human body was made legible long ago. But what of the human mind? Is it possible to ‘read’ the mind, for one human being to know what another is thinking or feeling, their beliefs and intentions. And if I can read your mind, how about others – could our authorities, in the criminal justice system or the security services? Some developments in contemporary neuroscience suggest the answer to this question is ‘yes’. While philosophers continue to debate the mind-brain problem, a range of novel technologies of brain imaging have been used to argue that specific mental states, and even specific thoughts, can be identified by characteristic patterns of brain activation; this has led some to propose their use in practices ranging from lie detection and security screening to the assessment of brain activity in persons in persistent vegetative states. This article reviews the history of these developments, sketches their scientific and technical bases, considers some of the epistemological and ontological muta...

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DOI:
10.1177/1357034X15623363
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Citation for published version (APA):
Rose, N. S. (2016). Reading the Human Brain: How the Mind Became Legible. Body and Society, 22(2), 144-
170. https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X15623363
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Download date: 09. Aug. 2022

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Frequently asked questions

Q1. What contributions have the authors mentioned in the paper "The mind transparent? reading the human brain" ?

This paper reviews the history of these developments, sketches their scientific and technical bases, considers some of the epistemological and ontological mutations involved, explores the ecological niches where they have found a hospitable environment, and considers some implications of this materialization of the readable, knowable, transparent mind. 

Q2. What future works have the authors mentioned in the paper "The mind transparent? reading the human brain" ?

While Wittgensteinian philosophers object that such neuroscience attributes to brains things that can only properly be attributed to persons ( Bennett and Hacker, 2003 ), can the authors consider the possibility that these neural processes do not merely ‘ subserve ’ mental states but are, instead, the real material locus of such mental states, feelings and intentions ? 61 Despite the mundane interests of those who fund much of the work I have discussed in this paper, despite the overclaiming endemic in the popular media, and despite the potent mixture of potentially hopeful clinical applications and potentially undesirable socio-political deployments within these findings, something more profound may be happening in these endeavours to read thoughts in the molecular biology of the brain. 

Q3. What is the main reason why humans have been able to read others?

Their readings of the eyes, faces, voices, gestures, comportment of others – usually through methods that are not conscious or calculated - appears to underpin sympathy, empathy, compassion, love, as well as suspicion, and fear and no doubt much else. 

Q4. What is the thesis that is beginning to acquire plausibility?

The thesis that is beginning to acquire plausibility is that while deceitful words are cheap and easy, and bodies can be trained to deceive, the brain cannot lie. 

Q5. What is the reason why the argument is moving out of the laboratory?

Arguments that there are evolved brain regions that are specialised for reading the intentions and emotions of others, and indeed ‘feeling their pain’, are moving out of the laboratory, not only into the psychiatric clinic – explaining disorders such as autism in terms of anomalies in the mind reading capacities of those diagnosed9 – but also – hesitantlyand often controversially - into forensic psychiatry, notably in debates about the neural basis of ‘psychopathy’. 

Q6. What is the main argument that neurotechnology is able to identify?

however, a number of neuroscientists have claimed that they are able to use neurotechnologies to identify not just memories, but also specific thoughts, beliefs and intentions in the brain itself. 

Q7. What is the main thesis of Melissa Littlefield?

38 As Melissa Littlefield has shown, much of the original impetus for funding of research into brain based lie detection came from the CIA and related agencies: as she argues, the terrorist attacks on the US in September 2001 created “a niche of heightened anxiety” amenable to the rhetoric of brain based lie detection (Littlefield, 2009: 383). 

Q8. What is the main argument against the reductionism of the research?

In fact, Nicolelis is harshly critical of the reductionism and localisation-ism of many of the brain researchers whose work The authorhave discussed in this paper, arguing against those who believe that they can reconstruct brain processes from a focus on the properties of individual neurons, that the belief that brain functions are localised is fundamentally misleading, and that memories, thoughts and representations of the world do not inhere in single neurons, as in the Halle Berry example, but are created by populations of neurons constantly in flux, constantly creating and recreating internal neuronal models of the world (Nicolelis, 2011). 

Q9. What is the significance of the research?

Despite the mundane interests of those who fund much of the work The authorhave discussed in this paper, despite the overclaiming endemic in the popular media, and despite the potent mixture of potentially hopeful clinical applications and potentially undesirable socio-political deployments within these findings, something more profound may be happening in these endeavours to read thoughts in the molecular biology of the brain. 

Q10. What other researchers argued that it was possible to use brain scanning technology to identify specific thoughts?

46Other researchers also argued that it was possible to use brain scanning technology to identify specific thoughts – in this case, not by activating a neuron that encoded a specific visual memory, but by mapping the neurons that fire during a current thought of a particular object. 

Q11. What was the first attempt to find the brain’s roots?

The first attempts – by Walter Dandy and then by Egas Moniz - worked by injection of air, or dye, into the ventricles of the brain, or the blood vessels within it – a painful process but one that could reveal gross abnormalities, lesions or tumours and so had a limited but important clinical role (Dandy, 1918; Moniz, 1933) .18