Brainmedia: One Hundred Years of Performing Live Brains, 1920-2020

Will we ever be able to see the brain at work? Could it be possible to observe thinking and feeling as if watching a live broadcast from within the human head? Brainmedia uncovers past and present examples of scientists and science educators who conceptualize and demonstrate the active human brain guided by new media technologies: from exhibitions of giant illuminated brain models and staged projections of brainwave recordings to live televised brain broadcasts, brains hooked up to computers and experiments with ＂brain-to-brain＂ synchronization.

Drawing on archival material, Brainmedia outlines a new history of ＂live brains,＂ arguing that practices of-and ideas about-mediation impacted the imagination of seeing the brain at work. By combining accounts of scientists examining brains in laboratories with examples of public demonstrations and exhibitions of brain research, Brainmedia casts new light on popularization practices, placing them at the heart of scientific work.

Flora Lysen is a historian of science and media and a member of Maastricht University’s Science and Technology Studies research group in the Netherlands. Studying how scientific concepts develop and circulate between different disciplinary domains and social spaces, her work focuses on practices of imag(in)ing the body and the brain, in particular the interaction between technology and the senses.