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3. fMRI Brain Imaging and the Experience of Sound
- The MIT Press
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3 fMRI Brain Imaging and the Experience of Sound In cognitive neuroscience laboratories fMRI visuals are engaged in a multimodal manner. This multimodal engagement regards the bodily conduct involved in working and interacting with digital screens. fMRI practitioners do not only inspect brain scans by passively posing their gazes on the surfaces of the visuals; they also modify the aspects of the visuals by working on computer keyboards, gesturing in front of digital displays, touching the visuals, listening to the sound of the scanning machine, and moving their semiotic bodies while coordinating with each other. Seeing in the laboratory—intended as recognizing meaningful patterns in experimental data—thus refers not only to the sight but also to the touch and hearing. This chapter opens the discussion of the multimodal character of fMRI in the laboratories of cognitive neuroscience by focusing on just one of its modalities: sound. According to Michel Foucault’s (1963) The Birth of the Clinic, the standard of modern medical rationality is what could be seen with the eye. The work of anatomist and physiologist Xavier Bichat (1771–1802) and his contemporaries, Foucault suggests, marks the shift between the 18thcentury study of brain pathology, characterized by its “language of fantasy,” and the discourse of modern medicine. In the history of science, these 18th-century anatomists are remembered for their technique of opening human skulls to observe the brain. The knowledge of the brain was from that point onward linked to perception: [M]edical rationality plunges into the marvelous density of perception, offering the grain of things as the first face of truth, with their colours, their spots, their hardness , their adherence. The breath of the experiment seems to be identified with the domain of the careful gaze, and of an empirical vigilance receptive only to the evidence of visible contents. The eye becomes the depository and source of clarity; 50 Chapter 3 it has the power to bring a truth to light that it receives only to the extent that it has brought it to light; as it opens, the eye first opens the truth: a flexion that marks the transition from the world of classical clarity—from the ‘enlightenment’—to the nineteenth century. (Foucault, 1963: xiii) Today, we still inhabit this era of constant visibility where with changes in technology (fMRI being the primary example), “the artisanal skill of the brain-breaker” (Foucault, 1963: xiii) has been largely replaced with noninvasive techniques of observing the human brain. fMRI is presented as a technology that allows scientists to learn about the brain anatomy and its processes by looking at the visuals of the living brain displayed on computer screens. Because fMRI practitioners, rather than touching the brain, are centered on digital screens, one may expect the heightening of their visual experience at the expense of the embodied engagement. The eye would take the exclusive primacy in observing and reasoning about the brain, while the role of the hands, ears, and the interacting body would disappear from the scene. The details of work and interaction in the fMRI laboratory disprove this conjecture. Though the visual aspect of fMRI is critical, practitioners deal with the digital brain through a multimodal engagement. With this chapter, I begin to describe the actual moments of practice in fMRI laboratories as I combine interview data with observations from an instance of real-time laboratory work and learning. To generate a sense of the scene, I transcribe the interaction between two fMRI practitioners involved in a data analysis session that also serves as a learning process for one of the practitioners. Cyrus Mody and David Kaiser, in their effort to highlight the need for science studies to more decisively embrace the ideas of pedagogy (see also, e.g., Kaiser, 2005; Nersessian, Kurz-Milcke, Newstetter , & Davies, 2003), state: “By bringing training in focus, we can see that, even in ostensibly nonpedagogical settings, teaching and research activities are mutually reliant. The exigencies of one activity strongly inform the practice and content of the other” (Mody & Kaiser, 2008: 378). The pedagogical dimension of scientific practice (whose discussion continues through chapters 4 and 5) is a way to access the tacit knowledge of competent practitioners (e.g., Collins, 1974; Collins, de Vrjes, & Bijker, 1997; Polanyi, 1958, 1959) while it brings to light its multimodal dimension. The chapter highlights the nature of the experience that the fMRI practitioner goes through to acquire professional knowledge. To become an [18.224.32.86] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 15...