Open Talk: Embracing or Resisting the Brain? Neuroscience in Changing Societies
Date & time: Tuesday, 5.11.2024, 16:00
Location: Room 1325, LUT Lappeenranta Campus
Knowledge about the brain has become commonplace in many areas of life. It influences biomedical practice, shapes illness experiences, and informs ideas of personhood. At the same time, efforts to understand or intervene in the brain, from law to education and from clinical to commercial domains, have often encountered reservation and resistance. In this talk, I will explore how neuroscience has increasingly permeated a range of personal and professional arenas over the past two decades. However, I will argue that both advocates and critics of neuroscience have sometimes overstated its influence on research, policy, and everyday life. Social responses to neuroscience and the significance of the brain have shifted over time, and the arenas in which it is variously - or even simultaneously - embraced or resisted can be surprising. As the influence of neuroscience continues to evolve, we might ask: how can - or should - we shape the social life of the brain?
About the speaker:
Martyn Pickersgill is a professor in Edinburgh Medical School, where he holds a Personal Chair in the Sociology of Science and Medicine. Martyn's research has focused in particular on the sociologies of epigenetics, neuroscience, psychiatry, and psychology. In 2018, he co-founded the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society through seed and continuing funding of over £2m from the Wellcome Trust, and is currently Co-Director of the Centre. In 2020, he also became Co-Director of a new £5.3m Wellcome Trust PhD Programme in 'One Health Animal Models of Disease: Science, Ethics and Society', which brings together expertise from the social and biomedical sciences. Martyn was also a founding Associate Director of the SKAPE Centre for Science, Knowledge and Policy. He is part of the Senior Leadership Team for the Usher Institute, and previously served as Director of Research.