Visualizing Thoughts: Photography, Neurology and Neuroimaging

Abstract

As a vitalist model of consciousness was gradually supplanted by a materialist model, some nineteenth-century neurologists sought to preserve the idea of the mind as an invisible force superadded to the body while at the same time providing a materialist explanation for psychic phenomena using the language of waves, electricity and radiation. Enns analyses how these neurologists often relied on photography as both a scientific practice and a conceptual metaphor, as thoughts were understood as material yet invisible forces that emanated from the brain and that could be impressed directly onto photographic plates. This practice remains relevant today, as it shows how objectivity became a function of scientific instrumentation and it offers a critique of cerebral localization that can also be applied to contemporary neuroscience.