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Nervous systems, brain science in the early Cold War, Andreas Killen

eng

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Nervous systems

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Andreas Killen

brain science in the early Cold War

A chronicle of the scientific research and experiments into the brain during the Cold War era. Andreas Killen looks at the Laurentian Symposium, an international meeting of neuroscientists who met to discuss breakthroughs challenging then commonly held ideas about the relationship between brain and mind. Experiments with electrical stimulation of the brain, flicker, sensory deprivation, mescal, hypnosis, and word association were opening portals to strange realms, and seemed to point to evidence of decoupling or dissociation of different brain systems connected to consciousness. Killen puts these experiments into perspective, revealing how they were conducted at a time not only of revolutionary developments in brain science but when scientists were obsessed with the altered states of consciousness experienced by POWs undergoing interrogation and individuals subjected to the "bombardment" of the mass media. Killen shows how a new boldness marked the investigations of that era, and how those mid-century scientists opened pathways to the future - even while that future was veiled in uncertainty driven by ominous geopolitical events. Nervous Systems explores this critical time and the fraught political and social context in which mid-century sciences of the brain and behavior took shape

adult

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