About Brain, Self and Society

What are the social impacts of the new sciences of the brain?

Rapid advances in these sciences are certainly having profound consequences for our understanding of basic mental processes.

• Molecular neuroscience is beginning to unravel the neuronal and neurochemical mechanisms of cognition, emotion and desire.
   
• Psychiatric genetics claims to identify susceptibilities to mental pathology, and the intersections of genes, experience and environment.
   
• Brain imaging claims to visualize the living brain, to diagnose mental disorder, understand brain patterns underlying thought and feelings, identify lying, deception and more.
   
• Psychiatric drugs claim to modulate basic neural mechanisms, not only to alleviate mental disorders but to enhance mental capacities.
   
• Besides the long tradition of military interest in neurotechnologies there is now evidence of growing military research in several countries.

And these developments have implications for the way we understand human subjectivity, identity and selfhood.

As we enter the 21st century, we need to explore the extent to which the languages, techniques and personnel of the new brain sciences are supplementing or supplanting the psychological ways of thinking and acting that were shaped by the development of psychology in the past century 20th and with what consequences. And, in our increasingly globalised world, how are these ideas interacting with ideas of selfhood, personhood, ideas of freedom and self-fulfilment from radically different cultural traditions.

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