[Sci-tech-public] [STS Colloquium] TODAY, 2/27, 4pm, E51-095 - Youjung Shin presents Linking the Brain: Computerization, Biomedicalization, and Globalization in Neuroscience, 1960-2000

[Gus Zahariadis]

Linking the Brain: Computerization, Biomedicalization, and Globalization in Neuroscience, 1960-2000
Youjung Shin, MIT
Today, February 27, 2020
4pm | E51-095

Many observers have assumed that the American Human Brain Project of the 1990s marked
the culmination of the “computer revolution” in neuroscience. The Project aimed to build a
large-scale brain database and drew an international participation from countries including
South Korea. The development of the Human Brain Project was, however, not a sudden or
inevitable consequence of the adoption of new computing technologies in neuroscience. It
rather represented the contingent gathering of divergent moral economies which shaped the
values of data and data practices in neuroscience in different countries. From a historical and
comparative perspective, my book project examines distinctive evolutionary processes of the
“computer revolution” in the U.S. and South Korea and its culmination in the Human Brain
Project in the post-Cold War period. By doing so, it traces the conjoint rise of big data and
big biology at the interdisciplinary intersection of brain, mind, and computer studies in the
late 20th century.

This talk presents an overview of my book in progress, mainly focusing on the U.S. It will
highlight two moments in the history of neuroscience, when its plural term, neurosciences,
was highly used and resonated to address the issue of heterogeneous ideas and practices in
brain science. The first moment was when the first neuroscience community was formed at
MIT in the 1960s with the launch of the “Neurosciences Research Program.” The second
moment was when the “Neurosciences Research Branch” was newly built at the National
Institute of Mental Health in the 1980s which led the Human Brain Project in the U.S. By
focusing on those two moments, this talk will show the changing meaning of computing
technologies, the shaping of interdisciplinarity in neuroscience(s), and the making of big
science project during and after the Cold War.

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