Brain, Self and Society: The Social and Political Implications of the New Brain Sciences
Lead Research Organisation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
Department Name: Sociology
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Nikolas Rose (Principal Investigator / Fellow) |
Publications
Abi-Rached JM
(2010)
The birth of the neuromolecular gaze.
in History of the human sciences
Aicardi C
(2017)
The integrated ethics and society programme of the Human Brain Project: reflecting on an ongoing experience
in Journal of Responsible Innovation
Burri, Regula; Dumit, Joseph
(2007)
Biomedicine as Culture: Instrumental Practices, Technoscientific Knowledge, and New Modes of Life
Carter, Bob; Charles, Nickie
(2010)
Nature, Society and Environmental Crisis
Carter, Bob; Charles, Nickie
(2010)
Nature, Society and Environmental Crisis
Dickens P
(2009)
The Cosmos as Capitalism's Outside
in The Sociological Review
Fitzgerald D
(2016)
Revitalizing sociology: urban life and mental illness between history and the present.
in The British journal of sociology
| Description | A comprehensive genealogy of the birth of a neuromolecular style of thought and an analysis of its social and political implications. It explores the ways that the brain sciences are influencing our understanding of human behavior from neuropsychiatry and neuroeconomics to neurotheology and neuroaesthetic: the rise of the belief that the brain is what makes us human, and it seems that neuroscientists are poised to become the new experts in the management of human conduct. Neuro describes the key developments--theoretical, technological, economic, and biopolitical--that have enabled the neurosciences to gain such traction outside the laboratory. It explores the ways neurobiological conceptions of personhood are influencing everything from child rearing to criminal justice, and are transforming the ways we "know ourselves" as human beings. In this emerging neuro-ontology, we are not "determined" by our neurobiology: on the contrary, it appears that we can and should seek to improve ourselves by understanding and acting on our brains. Neuro examines the implications of this emerging trend, weighing the promises against the perils, and evaluating some widely held concerns about a neurobiological "colonization" of the social and human sciences. Despite identifying many exaggerated claims and premature promises, Neuro argues that the openness provided by the new styles of thought taking shape in neuroscience, with its contemporary conceptions of the neuromolecular, plastic, and social brain, could make possible a new and productive engagement between the social and brain sciences. |
| Exploitation Route | The findings were one element in our recent successful bid for an ESRC Research Centre in Society and Mental Health and King's College London, which aims to develop further the integration of conceptual and empirical work on the social sciences, the life sciences and the neurosciences and mental health |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Education,Healthcare |
| URL | https://politybooks.com/our-psychiatric-future/;https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691149615/neuro |
| Description | They have underpinned a new approach to understanding mental health, integrating insights and ways of thinking from the social sciences and the neurosciences into a new neuroecosocial approach to mental health, and in work on the implications of the EC funded Human Brain Project. They also underpinned the argument that led to our successful award of a Research Centre Grant from the ESRC for the King's ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health, of which I am co-director. Based at King's, the new interdisciplinary Centre will develop policies and practices for creating mentally healthy environments. Mental health is a priority for governments and policy makers. Mental health problems affect one in four people and cost an estimated £90bn per year in the UK alone. Their onset and persistence are strongly influenced by social conditions, relationships, and experience. Current evidence suggests mental health problems are rising among some groups of young people and in disadvantaged communities. Researchers will work together with clinicians, policymakers, users of mental health services and communities experiencing poor mental health to better understand these social dimensions and build effective policies to tackle them. The Centre will address questions in three key areas where there is the greatest need: Young people - what impact have recent social and economic changes, from the rise of social media to the growth of precarious employment, had on the mental health of young people? Marginalised communities - what impact have recent social and economic changes, such as prolonged austerity, had on the mental health of disadvantaged communities, including black and minority ethnic? Work and welfare - what impact have widespread welfare reforms had on mental health, and what welfare policies might better promote mental health? All the research in this Centre will be developed in collaboration with mental health service users, government departments, local authorities, schools, policy makers and charities. This will ensure that changes are practicable and directed where they will have most impact. Collaborations with research institutions across the UK, Europe and North America will enable the Centre to build upon and help develop best practice nationally and internationally. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2013 |
| Sector | Education,Healthcare,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal,Policy & public services |
| Description | Collaborative Research Urban Transformations in China |
| Amount | £8,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Economic and Social Research Council |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2016 |
| End | 12/2019 |
| Description | Beyond the origin : mapping the birth(s) of modern neurosciences |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Our brains, our selves, European neuroscience and society Aarhus mirror workshop historical and ethnographic approaches to the new brain sciences. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | |
| URL | http://www.neurosocieties.eu/MIRROR/main.htm |
| Description | Biopolitics and neuropolitics : governing conduct in the age of the brain |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research or patient groups |
| Results and Impact | Keynote at Pontificia Catholic University, Sao Paolo, Brazil, August 2011 Section not completed |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |
| Description | Brain Self and Society project presentation |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | MSc. course 'Key Methods in the Social Study of Bioscience and Biomedicine' |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2009 |
| Description | Commerce vs. commons |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | LSE Asia Forum 2008 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008 |
| Description | Engineering selfhood in the 21st century |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Invited opening keynote lecture in the series on trust in the new sciences : remaking the human. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2009 |
| URL | http://www.ukings.ca/kings_3438_16018.html |
| Description | Governing biobanks |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Delivered at the 4th BIONET Workshop, Shenzhen, PRC, April 2009. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | |
| Description | Governing conduct in the age of the brain |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Are developments in the neurosciences transforming our conceptions of what it is to be a human being, and if so, how, in what ways, and with what consequences? And with what implications for the social and human sciences? It is far too early to reach any definitive diagnosis: investigations into the brain and nervous system can be traced back many centuries, but neuroscience is barely fifty years old. We need to be wary of suggestions that we are in the midst of epochal transformations. Yet it is hard to ignore the pervasiveness of references to the brain and neuroscience in our own times, the growth of research and scientific publishing, the scale of public and private investment in this research, the frequency of popular accounts of new discoveries about the brain in the mass media and in books written for a mass market. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |
| Description | Governing conduct in the age of the brain |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research or patient groups |
| Results and Impact | Keynote at State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 2011 Section not completed |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |
| Description | Governing conduct in the age of the brain |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Delivered at clinical ethnography workshop, University of Chicago |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | |
| Description | Governing insecurity |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Delivered at International Workshop on Security and Insecurity, Science Po, Paris, April 2009. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | |
| Description | Governing international clinical trials |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Delivered at 3rd BIONET workshop |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | |
| Description | Neuro : the new brain sciences and the remaking of the human |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research or patient groups |
| Results and Impact | Delivered at the University of Toronto, March 2011. Section not completed |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |
| Description | Neuropolitics in the twenty first century |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | What consequences will recent developments in neurobiology have for the ways in which we are governed by others, and the ways we govern ourselves? The development of psychology in the twentieth century had a major social impact: on understanding and treatment of distress; on conceptions of normality and abnormality; on techniques of socialisation, education, regulation, reformation and correction; on advertising, marketing and consumption technologies; on the management of human behaviour in practices from the factory to the military. Human beings came to understand themselves as inhabited by a deep interior psychological space that is the site of personhood and personality, the locus of inscription of beliefs, the origin of affect, the target of therapeutic interventions. Psychological expertise played a significant role in making it possible to govern individuals, families, groups and populations in liberal democracies. In the early 21st century, we are witnessing a cascade of claims from the new brain sciences, which appear to map conduct, affect, and cognition directly onto the brain. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |
| Description | Of mice, men and traumatic memories |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Poster presentation at EMBL Workshop on Translating Behaviour: Bridging Clinical and Animal Model Research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2009 |
| URL | http://www.embl.de/training/courses_conferences/conference/2009/conf_113/ |
| Description | Screen and intervene : governing risky brains |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Delivered at 'Neurocultures' workshop, Max Planck Institute, Berlin, Germany |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | |
| Description | Staff conceptualisations of personality disorder in forensic contexts |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | poster presentation |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2009 |
| Description | The human sciences in the 'age of biology' : revitalising sociology |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Thanks to the insights of genomics and neuroscience we now understand ourselves in radically new ways. Is a new figure of the human, and of the social, taking shape in the 21st century? |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |
| Description | The politics of life itself : in contemporary China |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Delivered at Biopolitics in Asia workshop |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | |
| Description | The visible invisible : imaging the mind |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | ENSN 'Mini-NeuroSchool' on Social Neuroscience and Neuroimaging |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2009 |
| Description | What does it mean to be human? |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | World Science Festival |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2009 |
| URL | http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/2008/to-be-human |
| Description | What's wrong with your mice : pitfalls and promises of modelling human behaviour in animals |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | EMBL workshop on translating behaviour : bridging clinical and animal model research |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | |
| URL | http://www.embl.de/training/courses_conferences/conference/2009/conf_113/ |
| Description | Your biological biography |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | World Science Festival |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2009 |
| URL | http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/2008/your-biological-biography |