Handling Digital Brains: A Laboratory Study of Multimodal Semiotic Interaction in the Age of Computers

6. Materiality of Digital Brains

6 Materiality of Digital Brains Rather than dealing with biological matter, fMRI practitioners spend long hours in front of computer screens working with “digital brains.” This allows them to engage with their experimental data in an embodied manner. Because fMRI scans function as Peirce’s iconic signs, they generate effects of similarity (Eco, 1999) not because they simply look like the brains, but because they afford certain actions that are in some ways analogous to the engagement with physical objects. Through this embodied engagement , the scans participate in what practitioners experience as the objects of their practice. This means that when practitioners account for features in experimental data, they deal with phenomenal objects that are simultaneously digital and physical, three-dimensional and two-dimensional, material and mathematical. In other words, the practitioners understand the objects of their practice as hybrid phenomena enacted at the junction between the digital world of technology and the physical world of corporeal action. To capture the laboratory existence of these hybrid phenomenal objects, this chapter focuses on the coordination between interaction and manual work in an fMRI laboratory. I describe how fMRI practitioners coordinate the hands that perform intricate gestural enactments with the hands that are busy using computer input devices. By recalling Michael Lynch’s (1991) discussion of optical and digital topical contextures (see also chapter 1), I examine how the digital brains conserve or acquire their material status during specific instances of work and interaction. In this account, the digital is not only what happens on the other side of the screen but also concerns the bodies in front of the screen. Moreover, it is not only about abstract procedures but also about digits and hands. 122 Chapter 6 Cross-Laboratory Interaction This chapter tackles the interaction between two laboratories: laboratory I (visited in chapters 1 and 2) and laboratory II (featured in chapters 3 and 5). Both laboratories study human visual perception to localize visual processes in specific brain regions and to determine the ways in which visual stimuli are processed there. Dissatisfaction with commercial “off-the-shelf” data analysis tools led each laboratory to design its own software. Although the two software suites are different, they both generate “inflated” and “flattened” cortical maps, and thus allow for more precise identification and location of brain activation (see also chapters 1 and 2). Though the use of such software programs requires specific competencies, the members of the two laboratories emphasize the higher degree of creativity and control over experimental data that such software allows. During my ethnographic study, a Ph.D. student from Paul’s laboratory (i.e., laboratory I), Jane (already encountered at the opening of this book), collaborated with the laboratory visited in the previous chapter (i.e., laboratory II) on a project regarding her doctoral dissertation. Thanks to this collaboration, the two laboratories had a long-awaited opportunity to compare closely the two software programs. The design of this kind of software and the related methodological improvements are the way for laboratories to become obligatory points of passage in the research field (Latour, 1988). The comparison between the two software programs, while allowing for some competition between the laboratories, strengthens the possibility of the laboratories’ impact on the field, largely dominated by commercial software. To accomplish the comparison, Octavia—the bright and patient postdoctoral student encountered in the previous chapter— introduced Jane to the software designed in laboratory II. Jane and Octavia acted as “linkages” between the two laboratories. Whereas contact between the laboratory members is usually confined to scientific conferences and other professional meetings (the members may run into each other when collecting their experimental data at the fMRI center or when serving on various university committees), Jane and Octavia—two young female researchers—crossed the laboratory boundaries to encounter the members of the other laboratory in their work environment. This chapter focuses on two short videotaped excerpts from those encounters. Both excerpts come from an early stage of fMRI data analysis Materiality of Digital Brains 123 in laboratory I, where what practitioners call functional images (lowresolution visuals that represent cognitive processes) and structural images (high-resolution visuals that reveal the anatomy of the brain; see chapter 2, figure 2.2a, b) have to be aligned with each other. This instance of collaborative work and interaction took place between Octavia, visiting from laboratory II, and the principal investigator of laboratory...