Plastic reason : an anthropology of brain science in embryogenetic terms /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Rees, Tobias, author.
Imprint:Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2016]
Description:xxiii, 323 pages ; 24 cm
Language:English
Subject:
Format: Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/10807510
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9780520288126
0520288122
9780520288133
0520288130
9780520963177
0520963172
Notes:Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary:"Throughout the twentieth century, neuronal researchers knew the adult human brain to be a thoroughly fixed and immutable cellular structure, devoid of any developmental potential. Plastic Reason is a study of the efforts of a few Parisian neurobiologists to undermine this rigid conception of the central nervous system and to show that basic embryogenetic processes--most spectacularly the emergence of new cellular tissue in form of new neurons, axons, dendrites, and synapses--continue in the mature brain. Furthermore, these researchers sought to demonstrate that the new tissues are still unspecific and hence literally plastic, and that this cellular plasticity is constitutive of the possibility of the human. Plastic Reason, grounded in years of fieldwork and historical research, is an anthropologist's account of what has arguably been one of the most sweeping events in the history of brain research--the highly contested effort to consider the adult brain in embryogenetic terms. A careful analysis of the breaking open of an established truth, it reveals the turmoil that such a disruption brings about and the emergence of new possibilities of thinking and knowing where before there were none."--Provided by publisher.

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