Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity

Description

By showing us the human brain at work, PET (positron emission tomography) scans are subtly - and sometimes not so subtly - transforming how we think about our minds. "Picturing Personhood" follows this remarkable and expensive technology from the laboratory into the world and back. It examines how PET scans are created and how they are being called on to answer myriad questions with far-reaching implications: is depression an observable brain disease? Are criminals insane? Do men and women think differently? Is rationality a function of the brain? Based on interviews, media analysis and participant observation at research labs and conferences, Joseph Dumit analyses how assumptions designed into and read out of the experimental process reinforce specific notions about human nature. Such assumptions can enter the process at any turn, from selecting subjects and mathematical models to deciding which images to publish and how to colour them. Once they leave the laboratory, PET scans shape social debates, influence courtroom outcomes and have positive and negative consequences for people suffering mental illness. Dumit follows this complex story, demonstrating how brain scans, as scientific objects, contribute to our increasing social dependence on scientific authority.

Joseph Dumit is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Science & Technology Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a coeditor of "Cyborgs & Citadels" and "Cyborg Babies" and Associate Editor of the journal "Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry".

Winner of the 2005 Diana Forsythe Prize, American Anthropological Association "Picturing Personhood is one of the few visual-culture studies freed from lame textbook generalizations and predictable criticism... Given that brain imaging is on its way to becoming a decisive factor in the technologies of social control and selection, it is a question of political awareness to study the latest step in the conversion of human beings into visual information."--Tom Holert, Bookforum