This article is part of: Commonplaces
Reflex. The images themselves seem to come reflexively. The clinician’s percussion hammer bouncing off of the knee. A startled infant. I hadn’t thought much about the idea of the reflex. At least not since the fifth grade, when I had unsuccessfully tried to condition four white laboratory mice to respond either to the sound of a bell or a flashing …
This article is part of: Commonplaces
January, 2525. Below ground. Chemical fumes and white walls. A barely functional weblink with the following webpage, read to the sound of steady beeping:
The science of reading the electrical activity in the cerebral cortex is called encephalography; the material representation of the different electrical folds of the brain an encephalogram.
A biosignal like no other, the EEG is used …
The Alzheimer Conundrum: Entanglements of Dementia and Aging
Princeton University Press, 2013. 328 pages, US $29.95 (Cloth)
Margaret Lock’s The Alzheimer Conundrum: Entanglements of Dementia and Aging is a welcome addition to a body of work that has so productively explored the historical contingencies, cultural specificities, and philosophical dilemmas that surround and shape bodies and people’s …