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Being Neurologically Human Today: Life and Science and Adult Cerebral Plasticity (An Ethical Analysis)

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Being Neurologically Human Today: Life and Science and Adult Cerebral Plasticity (An Ethical Analysis) TOBIAS REES McGill University Being neurologically human today: Life and science and adult cerebral plasticity (an ethical analysis) ABSTRACT Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the Throughout the 20th century, scientists believed only question important for us: What shall we do? How shall we live? that the adult human brain is fully developed, organized in fixed and immutable function-specific —Max Weber, Science as Vocation neural circuits. Since the discovery of the profound he relation between life and science—a relation that has often plasticity of the human brain in the late 1990s, this been said to be no relation at all—surfaced many times in the belief has been thoroughly undermined. In this course of my fieldwork among Parisian neuroscientists. A scene article, combining ethnographic and historical here, a word there, minor events , which indicated that the two are research, I develop an “ethical analysis” to show somehow related. But it was only toward the end of my stay that that (and in what concrete sense) the emergence of Tthe relation as such, the question of what kind of relation this is, became adult cerebral plasticity was a major mutation of the a serious intellectual concern for me—a concern that was to profoundly neurologically human—a metamorphosis of the reshape my comprehension of the contested emergence of adult cerebral confines within which neuroscience requires all plasticity, the actual topic of my research. What gave rise to this concern those who live under the spell of the brain to think were three “ethnographic incidents.”1 and live the human. [neuroscience, adult cerebral plasticity, France, ethics, ethnography, science and technology studies] Life and science Life and science I Late one Friday evening in April 2003, I had a conversation with Philippe Ascher, perhaps the best-known Parisian electrophysiologist. Ascher had asked me to visit him in his lab, a curious space full of electronic devices, power cords, and computers. The reason for this invitation was our com- mon interest in the history of French neuroscience. That evening we dis- cussed the battles between electrophysiologists and molecular neurobiol- ogists that were fought in the 1970s. At one point in our conversation, he made the following remark. “The nervous machine,” he said, pointing to his head, “is organized in fixed and immutable neural circuits. We know at least since the 1940s that these neural circuits are governed by chemical molecules and electronic signals. The arrival of molecular biology didn’t add any basic insights. It did not revolutionize our conception of the brain. It was a new tool, that’s all.” AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 150–166, ISSN 0094-0496, online ISSN 1548-1425. C 2010 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2009.01247.x Being neurologically human today American Ethnologist Ascher’s remark captured my attention because his given his claim of adult fixity, would integrate Prochiantz claim that the brain is organized in fixed and immutable into his history of neuroscience. neural circuits ran counter to what, at that time, I had “What then,” I asked him, “is the place of Prochiantz’s studied for more than a year. Since January 2002, I had work in the history of neuroscience? You know that he worked in the lab of Alain Prochiantz, located at the claims that the brain is profoundly plastic and that the chal- Ecole´ Normale Superieure.´ The lab’s research was organized lenge neuroscientists face today is to think the nervous sys- around an obscure observation Prochiantz had made in tem from the perspective of this plasticity.” the late 1980s, namely, that homeotic genes are expressed Ascher nodded, serious. “Look,” he replied, “I like in the adult brain and that the proteins they code for— Alain, but his work, you know, it is all speculation. From homeoproteins—have the capacity to transfer between the perspective of electrophysiology his claims don’t make cells (Joliot et al. 1991). The observation was obscure pri- sense. There simply is no space for plasticity in the adult. marily because, at the time, homeotic genes were associ- Where should it occur? The adult brain is already wired, it ated exclusively with embryogenesis. They were known to really is.” control the development of every known animal, even of Watching Ascher as he explained that “the adult brain plants, and have been frequently described as “develop- is already wired,” I was struck by the scene. There he was, mental genes” or as “master control genes of organogen- dressed in black, with huge black glasses and untamed grey esis” (Gehring 1998; Nusslein-Volhard¨ 2004). Prochiantz’s hair, surrounded by black shelves full of electronic devices findings, however, suggested the curious possibility that and computers, with colorful power cords hanging over some embryogenetic processes could go on in the mature his head and shoulders, explaining that the adult brain is nervous system, that is, that the adult brain could be the already wired. It was as if he metenscene` —bodily—what he locus of a plasticity usually associated exclusively with em- said. Perhaps this impression was unremarkable, but at the bryogenesis (it is important to note here that the term plas- time I noted it as an example of how science and life may ticity indicates the brain’s continuous embryogenetic po- intersect.5 tential to induce new nervous tissue and to thereby change its form).2 To his fellow neuroscientists, this speculation Life and science II seemed implausible. Anatomists had reported for almost a century that the adult nervous tissue is strictly fixed and Three days later, the relation between life and science sur- immutable, devoid of any developmental processes. That faced a second time. I was sitting in the coffee corner of morphogenetic transformations could occur in the adult, Prochiantz’s lab, chatting with Laure Sonnier, one of Prochi- that is, that new neurons could emerge or that old ones antz’s graduate students (Laure was working on the signif- could change their form or the form of their connections, icance of homeotic genes for the birth of new neurons). that axons and dendrites could appear and disappear, that At one point, Christo Goridis joined us. Goridis was direc- new synapses could grow, was, from a neuroscientific per- tor of a neurochemistry lab located on the same floor as spective, simply impossible. When Prochiantz stubbornly Prochiantz’s research group. insisted that he had made a major discovery, he quickly be- “Neurogenesis,” he explained, after he had listened to came an enfant terrible. Gradually, his lab was pushed to our exchange for a while, “exists. It exists in the olfactory the margins of the neuroscientific community, and within bulbs. Fine. But does it have a function as well in the a year or two his group was left with almost no scientific hippocampus? Does it occur in the cortex? Far from clear, contact with other national or international labs.3 And then, even doubtable. In any case, neurogenesis is a minor phe- shortly before I arrived in Paris, the unexpected happened: nomenon. It might be interesting from a pharmacological Around the year 2000, after Prochiantz had worked in iso- perspective, as in Laure’s work, but not from a scientific lation for almost a decade, several labs reported the birth, perspective. It will not change the way we think about the differentiation, and migration of new neurons in the adult brain.” mammalian brain.4 The result of these reports was neither He stared at us provocatively, holding on to his coffee a full rehabilitation of Prochiantz nor the beginning of a new and his cigarette. Goridis was tall, very thin, and always a bit way of thinking the brain—at least not immediately. The ini- nervous—an impression that his intense way of smoking re- tial result, rather, was a major and passionate debate about inforced. His three-day-old beard lent him a sharp, angular the significance of plasticity: Does it really exist? If so, then look. do plastic changes have a function? Are they minor phe- “Alain!” he raised his voice and head, “he believes in nomena, occurring only in “less important” brain regions? plasticity!” Would one really have to think of plasticity as the main fea- He took his glasses off, vigorously rubbed his eyes, and ture of the brain, as Prochiantz (who figured centrally in the then—apparently performing a lecture—continued to in- debate) claimed it to be? I was curious how—or if—Ascher, struct us. 151 American Ethnologist Volume 37 Number 1 February 2010 “The character of a person is basically formed around chair, ran out of his office, and aggressively drew himself up age 25. Rakic and many others have shown that this is in front of me. the time when the nervous system assumes its definite “I am not coherent,” he shouted. “I don’t need a psy- form. Afterwards nothing really changes anymore. There’s choanalysis!” no escape!”6 I was so baffled by the speed and the intensity of the With long, mechanical steps, he began walking up and confrontation that at first I could not react. down the little corridor, continuously smoking. “I am not coherent!” he aggressively repeated. “I don’t “Whether we like it or not,” he went on, “we are ma- need a psychoanalysis!” chines. I know that many people don’t like that idea; they Why was he so furious? I tried to calm him down, but I waste their time and energy to show that man isn’t a ma- could not appease him.
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