In continuation of the first 27, here are the remaining 52 items of my “History of the Skull, Mind, and Brain Sciences” reading list with John Tresch. It’s a lot of stuff, and I have no idea how he and I shall have a conversation about all of these in a 60- to 90-minute Skype session tomorrow evening, when I’ll already be brain-dead from sitting and working in window-less rooms for hours. But I guess I will be flexible or, better, creatively plastic, and figure out a way to mold or not mold myself to the crazy demands of being a grad student shortly before “orals.” (Less than 4 weeks left!) Continue reading
Tag Archives: neuroscience in the courtroom
Review Paper: The Neuroscience of Pedophilia
The sad days are over! I just submitted the final paper for the last psychology class towards my SCAN certificate. The seminar, instructed by Teresa Pegors, is titled “Neuroscience of Human Motivation and Behavior,” and I had the more or less fabulous idea to write about pedophilia research—since it investigates into the shoreline between criminality and sexuality. That was tough, though. Not only because of the topic per se, but also since I had forgotten how hard neuroscientific(-ish) writing is. I had to correct myself over and over because it is simply too easy to write about “normal” and “abnormal” brains and desires! But, luckily, I had Georges Canguilhem watching me.
The abstract of the paper is below, and you can get a pdf of it here. Continue reading
Precautionary Detention of “Broken Brains”
What yesterday evening appeared to be one of the most embarrassing things I have ever done to a university teacher, turned out to be the trigger for my writing this post—in both a state of mental rage, and the deep fulfilling conviction that there is so much more to be done in the History, Philosophy, and Sociology of the Neurosciences (HPSNS), i.e., that my work is not expendable. Continue reading