Brainwaves: A Cultural History of Electroencephalography

Brainwaves: A Cultural History of Electroencephalography
ISBN-10
1317172809
ISBN-13
9781317172802
Category
History
Pages
334
Language
English
Published
2018-01-29
Publisher
Routledge
Author
Cornelius Borck

Description

In the history of brain research, the prospect of visualizing brain processes has continually awakened great expectations. In this study, Cornelius Borck focuses on a recording technique developed by the German physiologist Hans Berger to register electric brain currents; a technique that was expected to allow the brain to write in its own language, and which would reveal the way the brain worked. Borck traces the numerous contradictory interpretations of electroencephalography, from Berger’s experiments and his publication of the first human EEG in 1929, to its international proliferation and consolidation as a clinical diagnostic method in the mid-twentieth century. Borck's thesis is that the language of the brain takes on specific contours depending on the local investigative cultures, from whose conflicting views emerged a new scientific object: the electric brain.

Other editions

Similar books