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Hans Berger and the E.E.G. Krister Holmes HANS BERGER AND THE E.E.G. KRIster HOLMES Hans Berger’s conception of the alpha and beta waves, fundamental brain frequencies upon which all succes- sive EEG science was to develop In a concerted effort to bridge the divide separating hu- mans and their machines, Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are becoming commercially available. These devices, based on the electroencephalogram (EEG), read electrical impulses from the brain and then translate those impulses into computer code. This new computer interface is critically polarizing in nature. For architecture, BCIs could represent a kind of endpoint. The Brain Computer Interface contains a space where mind and its instru- ment can short circuit language, the intellect, social interaction, and physical reality. The BCI is a radically open architecture of endless self-reflection free of the discomforts and annoyances of ‘real’ architectural space. In the end, the BCI reifies the gap it attempts to bridge. Historical investigation shakes loose the simplicity of this facile dichotomy. If we examine the technological history of the instrument that is the darling of computer programmers, gamers, transhumanists, artificial intelligence researchers and even some cutting edge architects it is possible to break free of the paralyzing dialectic plaguing many fields. Hans Berger is widely regarded as the discoverer of the electroencephalogram. Through the process of this investigation it becomes clear that it is Berger’s refusal to conform to the tenets of scientific rational- ism, his technical and representational obsessions, and his mag- pie-like curation of multiple conflicting epistemologies are what allowed his discovery—and may even suggest strategies for the present. The history of the human electroencephalogram reveals there was never a gap for the brain computer interface to fill. The EEG is not historically contained within any dichotomy, and if anything, it bears out the fact that humans have always been 88 Krister Holmes Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00080 by guest on 29 September 2021 both technical and natural—even that these categories no longer bear any relational meaning to one another. The invention of the EEG by this amateur researcher in the early years of the 19th century shows this imaginary opposition between that which is human and that which is technical obscures a more complex ontology. The slow birth of the human electroencephalogram (EEG) in the 1920s represents a unique technical history. While still incredibly useful in some diagnostic capacities, the EEG has largely been supplanted by higher resolution and less abstract imaging devices. However, nothing today can compete with the EEGs temporal resolution. The nature of graphing the electrical potentials of the human brain poses questions about our under- standing of electricity, consciousness, their representations. Hans Berger (1873-1941) a doctor and amateur neuro- logical investigator who lived and worked in Jena, Germany, is widely regarded as the discoverer of the human electroen- cephalogram. Berger’s position outside conventional discourse networks allowed him to posit new modes of investigation. The research position he insinuated afforded him the opportunity to ask questions that other investigators were either intimidated by, or apathetic toward. Berger’s new application of the graphi- cal method, coupled with his unique epistemological position- ing, served to disclose horizons within and between which contemporary projects proceed. Hans Berger became interested in studying the nature of the brain because of a parapsychological event. While serving as a soldier during World War I, Berger fell from his horse and was nearly killed by a cannon cart. That same evening he received his first-ever telegram from his father, occasioned by his sister’s extrasensory perception: She had suddenly told my parents that she knew with certainty that I had suffered an accident... This is a case of spontaneous telepathy in which at a time of mortal dan- ger... I transmitted my thoughts, while my sister, who was particularly close to me, acted as the receiver.1 This inspiration, while probably not quite so alarming a generation earlier, clearly differentiated Berger from his contem- poraries. This slightly anachronistic approach, combined with his personal conviction to trace the mental telegraphy able to elicit an electrical telegram, is what created the space for Berger to investigate the nature of electrical activity emanating from the 1 Hans Berger, On The Encephalogram of Man trans. Pierre Gloor (London: Else- vier, 1969), 3. 89 Hans Berger and the E.E.G. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00080 by guest on 29 September 2021 brain. According to Pierre Gloor, medical historian and transla- tor of Berger’s reports, Berger rejected the two prevailing dis- course networks available to him: the neuroanatomists and the psychological functionalists. Where the neuroanatomists sought the physical trace and electrochemical nature of neural com- munication, the functionalists investigated the outward signs of subjective experience.2 The neuroanatomists could not imagine being able to coax any meaningful pattern from the multitudes of electrical communiqués occurring every second, nor could they believe that the information could be read from the scalp.3 The functionalists were simply confused as to what the question even was. Prior to his fame as a neuroanatomist and cyberneticist, William Grey Walter worked for the acclaimed electrophysiolo- gists E.D. Adrian and B.H.C. Matthews at Cambridge. In 1928 Hans Berger’s reports were becoming more widely known and largely disparaged. That year Ivan Pavlov—a functionalist—came to visit Adrian and Matthews’ school of electrophysiology. Wal- ter reported that Pavlov “was not in the least interested in the mechanism of cerebral events; they just happened, and it was the happening and its consequences that interested him, not how they happened.”4 The electrophysiological workings of the directing organ were not within the purview of Pavlov’s investi- gation. While Berger’s investigations were of no interest to Pavlov, they were also at odds with the other significant group of neural investigators: the neuroanatomists. Emil Du Bois-Reymond was a giant in electrophysiology and neuroanatomy and was so personally influential for Berger frequently that he frequently referenced him in aphorisms. Berger wrestled with du Bois-Rey- mond’s maxim: “ignoramus et ignorabimus” (We do not know and we will not know). Du Bois-Reymond’s phrase prompted Berger’s defensive refrain through almost all of his reports in one fashion or another: “certainly we do not know these mate- rial processes, but in my opinion we have here in the α-w [alpha wave] a concomitant phenomenon of these processes.”5 It was not the material representation of consciousness that Berger 2 The psychophysiology promisingly initiated by Weber, Fechner, Helmholtz and Wundt had fallen into disrepute. Instead “two approaches had become fashion- able, the neuroanatomical approach of… Meynert, Flechsig, and von Monakow, and the functional approach as exemplified by the work of… Janet, Freud, Adler and Jung.” Berger, On The Encephalogram of Man, 3. 3 Berger, On The Encephalogram of Man, 10. 4 Walter, William Grey, The Living Brain (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., 1953), 28. 5 Berger, On The Encephalogram of Man, 129. 90 Krister Holmes Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00080 by guest on 29 September 2021 Diagram of electrical potentials within the brain. E: state of excitation, R: state of quies- cence, a+b two recording points. Hans Berger 1931. claimed to be measuring, but merely the traces left behind by a complex phenomenon as it registered in the electromagnetic band. A coherent metrological representation capable of regis- tering and charting something as vast as the human brain was inconceivable for du Bois-Reymond and the other neuroanato- mists. Consequently, Berger relied on the arguments of Angelo Mosso, another brain researcher and predecessor working in brain plethsmography, to defend his own endeavor against the neuroanatomists’ objections: Mosso... stressed that each time we apply exact measur- ing instruments to the brain, the hope rightly stirs in us that we may learn to recognize the physical bases of con- sciousness. Even when we do not arrive at a satisfactory 91 Hans Berger and the E.E.G. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00080 by guest on 29 September 2021 result, we could nevertheless be certain… that we are on the right path to discovery.6 For Berger, it was possible to incrementally breach the hu- man interior via the coded voltage potentials emanating through the hard casement of the skull. Du Bois-Reymond would only venture so far as to allow that the electrical activity was there, but refused to connect it with anything more than the incomprehen- sibly complex web of biological wiring. Du Bois-Reymond would not have believed measuring such a phenomenon could produce a coherent representation. But to du Bois-Reymond’s ‘we do not know and we will not know,’ Berger felt compelled to add, ‘but we can observe the concomitant phenomena of mental events.’ Berger attempted to observe the traces of consciousness through the neuroanatomical graphical method. His telepathic experience drove him to constantly seek new technological innovations in an attempt to be able
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