The Rise of the Posthuman Brain: Computational Neuroscience, Digital Networks and the ‘In Silico Cerebral Subject’

The purpose of this paper is mainly diagnostic. It investigates current research projects in computational neuroscience to emphasize a shift from a life science approach (biology and medicine) to a computer science approach in the epistemology of the human brain. This shift updates and preserves the “posthuman view” (N. Katherine Hayles) to render a proper regime of knowledge of the brain in the digital age. Moreover, the massive impact of digital media and digital networks in particular cause essential modifications of the concept of the (post-)human subject in the 21st century. At first, the paper will present an analysis of the “Human Brain Project” to highlight the shift from the human to the posthuman brain in one of the most influential projects in computational neuroscience at the moment. What follows is a discussion of the relations between the “Human Brain Project” and the transhumanist-impelled “Substrate-Independent Mind Project” to emphasize the rise of the posthuman brain between visions of treatment and enhancement. Finally, the paper draws attention to recent theory of digital networks to expose some broader transformations of the concept of the (post-)human subject. In the information-driven ‘century of the brain’ that is dominated by (computational) neuroscience, the human as a “cerebral subject” (Fernando Vidal) turns into an ‘in silico cerebral subject.’ As a programmable and networked model of/for human properties the ‘in silico cerebral subject’ becomes the main epistemic object in computational neuroscience to re-conceptualize the human (brain) out of a multi-level system with brain-like artificial intelligence.