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<div class="" style="font-family: ArialMT;"><b class="">Linking the Brain: Computerization, Biomedicalization, and Globalization in Neuroscience, 1960-2000</b></div>
<div class="" style="font-family: ArialMT;">Youjung Shin, MIT</div>
<div class="" style="font-family: ArialMT;">Today, February 27, 2020</div>
<div class="" style="font-family: ArialMT;">4pm | E51-095</div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">Many observers have assumed that the American Human Brain Project of the 1990s marked</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">the culmination of the “computer revolution” in neuroscience. The Project aimed to build a</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">large-scale brain database and drew an international participation from countries including</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">South Korea. The development of the Human Brain Project was, however, not a sudden or</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">inevitable consequence of the adoption of new computing technologies in neuroscience. It</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">rather represented the contingent gathering of divergent moral economies which shaped the</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">values of data and data practices in neuroscience in different countries. From a historical and</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">comparative perspective, my book project examines distinctive evolutionary processes of the</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">“computer revolution” in the U.S. and South Korea and its culmination in the Human Brain</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">Project in the post-Cold War period. By doing so, it traces the conjoint rise of big data and</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">big biology at the interdisciplinary intersection of brain, mind, and computer studies in the</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">late 20<span class="" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">th </span>century.</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">This talk presents an overview of my book in progress, mainly focusing on the U.S. It will</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">highlight two moments in the history of neuroscience, when its plural term, neurosciences,</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">was highly used and resonated to address the issue of heterogeneous ideas and practices in</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">brain science. The first moment was when the first neuroscience community was formed at</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">MIT in the 1960s with the launch of the “Neurosciences Research Program.” The second</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">moment was when the “Neurosciences Research Branch” was newly built at the National</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">Institute of Mental Health in the 1980s which led the Human Brain Project in the U.S. By</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">focusing on those two moments, this talk will show the changing meaning of computing</font></div>
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<font face="ArialMT" class="">technologies, the shaping of interdisciplinarity in neuroscience(s), and the making of big</font></div>
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<span class="" style="font-family: ArialMT; color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">science project during and after the Cold War.</span>
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