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Being neurologically human today: Life and science and adult cerebral plasticity (an ethical analysis)
Author(s) -
REES TOBIAS
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01247.x
Subject(s) - spell , human brain , neuroscience , cognitive science , human life , neuroplasticity , psychology , brain function , sociology , epistemology , philosophy , political science , anthropology , law , humanity
Throughout the 20th century, scientists believed that the adult human brain is fully developed, organized in fixed and immutable function‐specific neural circuits. Since the discovery of the profound plasticity of the human brain in the late 1990s, this belief has been thoroughly undermined. In this article, combining ethnographic and historical research, I develop an “ethical analysis” to show that (and in what concrete sense) the emergence of adult cerebral plasticity was a major mutation of the neurologically human—a metamorphosis of the confines within which neuroscience requires all those who live under the spell of the brain to think and live the human.