Biomedicine on Display

In October, I’m participating in ‘an interdisciplinary workshop for young scholars‘ at the University of Lübeck, organized by the Institute for the History of Medicine and Science Studies at the University of Lübeck, in cooperation with the Institut für Mensch, Ethik und Wissenschaft in Berlin.

The workshop title is “Good life better – anthropological, sociological and philosophical dimensions of enhancement” – which fits nicely with my project on the history of ‘successful aging’ and its relation to ideas about human enhancement.

Here’s my abstract for the workshop:

Good old brains — How concerns about the ageing society and ideas about cognitive enhancement interact in neuroscience

Discussions about human cognitive enhancement are in different ways based on assumptions about neuroscientific knowledge production and applicability of neuroscientific results. But what is it in neuroscience that relates to discussions about human enhancement? How has the production of knowledge within the neurosciences anticipated or dismantled the hopes and wishes for cognitive enhancement? Have neuroscientific practices related to such notions as ‘successful ageing’ offered new perspectives to the human enhancement debate? Drawing on a historical analysis of the concept of successful ageing in neuroscience publications from the 1980s till today, this paper will discuss how the aims and the production of knowledge within age-related neuroscience are connected to ideas about cognitive enhancement.

Neuroscientific research on ageing is a particularly relevant field for investigating this connection, since the brain is in the focus of both enhancement debates and research (and politics) concerning ageing. In the context of ageing research, the notion of ‘successful ageing’ has been influential in emphasising individual lifestyle choices and preventive measures as means to ageing ‘successfully’ (Rowe & Kahn, 1987). Instead of viewing ageing as something defined by inevitable physiological and cognitive decline – a growing concern for the ‘ageing’ Western societies from the 1980s onwards – this notion stresses that individuals themselves have the possibility to avoid such decline by maintaining and improving themselves through healthy lifestyles, etc. Concerns about ‘the ageing society’ and the individualised solutions offered by ‘successful ageing’ might even be considered an underlying driving force in discussions about cognitive enhancement: Both individuals and societies, it seems, have reason to improve cognitive functions and prevent neuro-degenerative diseases.

At first glance, neuroscientific research seems to corroborate with these concerns and wishes. As an article in Neurobiology of Aging states: “these findings suggest ways in which biological aging can be manipulated to promote good function in aged individuals.” (Collier & Coleman, 1991: 685). Publications such as this one discuss how use of substance intake and certain behaviour (e.g. diet and exercise) might in different ways ‘promote good function’; scientific perspectives that enhancement-proponents have picked up on and turned into notions like ‘smart drugs’ and ‘brain training’.

However, neuroscientific ageing-research also offers other perspectives on enhancement. Neuroscience may suggest ”that the aging individual has the potential to enhance or maintain intellectual functioning” (Staudinger, Cornelius & Baltes, 1989: 44). But what most of such suggestions implicate is not that it is possible to improve function beyond the ‘normal’, instead it refers to treating functional decline that has already taken place. On the other hand, preventive measures may work by improving the cognitive function of otherwise ‘normal’ individuals through lifestyle interventions or substance intake. But is this really ‘enhancement’? The notion of enhancement seems to refer to measures that moves us beyond the limits of human bodies (whatever they are), but the plasticity of the human brain complicates such notions as normal or enhanced. In addition, the difficulty of distinguishing ‘normal’ ageing from pathological ageing (what is normal at age 20 or 80?) makes the whole issue even more complicated.

As this is a work in progress, any comments and perspectives will be much appreciated!

As you may know, Medical Museion takes part in a multidisciplinary Center for Healthy Aging here at the University of Copenhagen. Currently, two of our junior researchers, postdoc Lucy Lyons and phd student Morten Bülow, are doing their research projects within the scope of the Center, and we are about to recruit yet another phd student.

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise to readers of this blog that our contribution to the overall Center activities involves a strong aesthetic component.

For example, we experimented with an aesthetic approach to aging in the Oldetopia exhibition two years ago. Lucy’s joining our group last December was a deliberate attempt to strengthen the aesthetic side. And the current exhibition ’Healthy Aging: A Life Span Approach’ (see also here), shown in our external exhibition area in the main building of the Faculty of Health Sciences is dominated by Danish photographer Liv Carlé Mortensen’s 15 collages of centennarians (like this one).

I just want to mention this as a background for why the upcoming conference on ‘Aging, Old Age, Memory, Aesthetics’ in Toronto, 25-27 March next year may be quite interesting for us. The conference focuses on how aging is portrayed and experienced in literature and the arts in light of social, political, scientific and cultural contexts:

In using the term aesthetics, we are drawing attention to the arts, aesthetic practices, theories of art, and modes of representation as they pertain to aging and memory. We look forward to presentations that analyze a variety of theoretical, thematic, and disciplinary approaches that remain linked by the consistent placement of old age and aging at the centre of concentrated investigation.

They are also recruiting creative submissions by artists whose work is concerned with the images generated by old age. 300-word proposals should be sent to andrea.charise@utoronto.ca by Friday 1 October 1, 2010.