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The 1990s were the Decade of the Brain, and the first hundred years of the new millennium have been proclaimed its Century. Neuroscientists see these as symbolic gestures that will support their drive to solve the puzzle of human consciousness, and unravel the secrets of an organ described as the most complex of the universe. But proclaiming a Decade or a Century of the Brain also signals the omnipresence of the brain as a major icon of contemporary culture – from literature and the plastic arts, to medical ethics, to theology and religion, to emerging research areas such as neuroeconomics or neuroeducation, and to an expanding galaxy of more or less extravagant neurobeliefs and neuropractices. The conference intends to explore various aspects of the history, sociology, anthropology, and presence and consequences of the cerebral subject as a major figure of contemporary culture.
2-4 August 2006, Rio de Janeiro. Organized by the Institute for Social Medicine (State Univ. of Rio de Janeiro) and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin). For more information, contact F. Vidal or see www.brainhood.net
Program
2 August 2006
9.00 – 9.20: Opening
9.30- 10.20: Keynote Lecture:
Jurandir Freire Costa
(State University of Rio de Janeiro)
The cerebral subject as challenge to psychoanalysis.
10.30- 12.30: Brain, mental life and pathology
Margaret Lock
(McGill University)
Alzheimer´s disease: The neurodegenerative disorder of the century
Cathy Gere
(University of Chicago)
‘Nature’s Experiment’: Epilepsy, localization of brain function, and the emergence of the cerebral subject
Benilton Bezerra Jr.
(State University of Rio de Janeiro)
Searching the Freudian brain
14.00- 17.00: Brain and self: Explorations through the visual arts
Susan Aldworth
(Visual Artist, London)
The physical brain and the sense of self: An artist’s exploration
Fernando Vidal
(Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin)
Brainhood in the movies
Birgit Schneider and Margarete Vöhringer
(Humboldt University, and Center for Literary Research, Berlin)
The psyche in the arts and sciences ca. 1920
3 August 2006
9.30- 12.30: Ethics and public policy
Antonio Battro
(Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Vatican City)
Neuroeducation. Teaching and learning brains
Eric Racine
(Stanford University)
Neuroethics and the public understanding of neuroscience
Vicente de Paulo Barretto
(State University of Rio de Janeiro)
Neurosciences, human person and law
Roberto Lent
(Federal University of Rio de Janeiro)
Neurorobotization of human beings: Is this the trend?
14.30- 17.30:
Knowing and practicing the self
John Tresch
(University of Pennsylvania)
Meetings with Buddhist brains
Gesa Lindemann
(Technical University of Berlin)
Neuronal expressivity: A new technology of innocence
Francisco Ortega
(State University of Rio de Janeiro)
Towards a genealogy of neuroasceticism
4 August 2006
9.00- 12.00: Horizons of the cerebral subject
Bernard Andrieu
(University of Nancy)
Neuromutation of the hybrid body
Cristiana Facchinetti
(Fiocruz - Rio de Janeiro)
The brain and eugenics
Mário Eduardo Costa Pereira
(State University of Campinas)
On the project of a neuroscientifically-based psychiatric classification
13.30- 16.30: Knowledges, technologies and practices of the cerebral subject
Marion Droz
(University of Lausanne)
Neuronal plasticity: Object of knowledge and scientific practices
Michael Hagner
(ETH Zürich)
Mind Reading and Neuroimaging: Insight into the brain or the mind?
Paula Sibilia
(Federal University of Rio de Janeiro)
The dematerialization of the body: From analogical to digital dualism
16.30-17.00: Closing Ceremony
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