The social dimension of brain images in the digital age

By: Jorge Alexander Daza-Cardona

Since the 1990s, the so-called "Decade of the Brain," the fascination with brain images has only grown. Nowadays, brain images are everywhere, especially those devised with digital attributes. They are used in the medical sciences for diagnosis, research, and health promotion campaigns, as well as being featured in cartoons, food commercials, and science fiction films. However, brain images are not mere representations of the brain or decorative items that go along with neuroscientific information; they invite us to think about reality in certain ways while disregarding others (Sturken & Cartwright, 2018).

My aim with this blog post is to show that many of the brain images utilized in current neuroscience and media are inviting us to think about our problems in reductive ways. In contrast, I advocate for the use of brain images that enable us to see the social dimension of brains. This reflection is part of my work within the “Situated Neurology” project, in which I have been studying the brain images posted on medical websites for the last three years.

My approach to the social dimension of brains has been strongly inspired by Pitts-Taylor’s Neurocultures Manifesto (2012), which sustains that brains are simultaneously biological, social, and political realities. In this sense, brain images and culture interact in a bidirectional manner. On the one hand, they are not direct representations of an abstract reality but are shaped by the imagination of the society in which they are created. On the other hand, they influence culture, as they serve as models from which we learn to understand ourselves and our relationships with others (Dumit, 2004).

Picturing neuroreductionism through a film

The film Transcendence (Pfister, 2014) offers an example of how society and brain representations are intertwined. The film explores the conflict between a group of scientists seeking to connect human consciousness to an artificial intelligence (AI) and an anti-AI insurgent faction that aims to halt their efforts. Thus, it reflects the current hopes and anxieties around neuroscientific technology and AI developments.

I am particularly interested in one of the film's opening scenes. It occurs in a fundraising event where scientists attempt to convince the audience about the potential benefits of intelligent machines. They affirm that they are close to understanding human consciousness, and by doing so, they will be able to solve larger issues, such as Alzheimer's Disease, cancer, poverty, and the environmental crisis. During the pitch, digital brain images are displayed on a screen in the background. They are full of colours, nodes, and links, giving them a great appeal in a cybernetic fashion.

This scene is not far from the promises made by neuroscientific research over the last few decades, where neuroscientists attempt to explain numerous social phenomena using neurological theories; for instance, altruism, criminal behaviour, racial bias, and wisdom (Vrecko, 2010). Martin (2000) refers to this tendency as “neuroreductionism,” which involves reducing every human experience to the brain. In the film, the scientists promise to enhance human capacities in a way that will enable us to address our most pressing social issues, rather than directing their efforts toward researching matters such as economic redistribution or changing the global consumption patterns.

The brain images in this scene reinforce neuroreductionism since they are used as rhetorical devices to suggest that the answer to the mentioned social problems lies within the brain. In the current digital age, these types of brain images are predominant in all kinds of scientific news due to their aesthetic value (Khalili-Mahani & Loos, 2023). They are included in announcements of breakthroughs, explanations of the brain’s anatomy, descriptions of brain diseases, and marketing of experimental therapeutics. Figure 1 illustrates this by representing the human brain activity in the frontal lobe.

Figure 1: Human brain activity with plexus lines. External cerebral connections in the frontal lobe. Communication, psychology, artificial intelligence or AI, cognition concepts illustration with copy space. Credit: Matthieu. Source: Adobe Stock

Space movies or brain images?

Let me refer to a case outside neuroscience to gain a better grasp of current brain representations. In their study on nanotechnology, Campbell and colleagues (2015) noted that science fiction movies, especially those set in space, have influenced the advertising related to nanotechnology. These scholars coined the concept of “extra-planetary space” to describe how nanotechnology advertisement utilizes sparkling particles on black backgrounds to represent the existence of technological-based entities that cannot even be seen with a microscope. However, Campbell and colleagues warn us about these spaces since they eliminate the presence of other entities, reduce complexity, and depoliticize objects.

The concept of “extra-planetary space” has been key in our understanding of digital brain images in the “Situated Neurology” project. In a forthcoming publication, we took it as a referent to propose our own concept: “Matrix Brains”  (Daza-Cardona & Elliott, 2026). This formulation was encouraged by the resemblances between the scenes from the Matrix film series and the brain images posted on a website dedicated to promoting cognitive testing. Matrix Brains also inhabit “extra-planetary spaces”; they are shiny entities composed of links and nodes placed in black vacuums away from the head that sustains them, the environment they inhabit, and the society they interact with. Sadly, I was unable to obtain the necessary copyright permissions to reproduce the images from the website here; however, they are remarkably similar to the images found in image databases (for example, Figure 2).

Figure 2: Abstract glowing brain with network lines and points on a dark blue background. Credit: DIAHIMAGESNEW. Source: Adobe Stock

Social brain images

Considering the outlined reflections, I want to see fewer images of digital solipsistic brains that lead us to think of technology-based and individual solutions to our health problems, and more images that represent the complexity of the nervous system and the social dimensions of the brain. One example of the latter is Figure 3. It shows a bike rental shop in Amsterdam with an advertisement that says, “brains travel on bikes.”

Figure 3: A bike parked in front of a bike shop. Credit: Samuel Valentín. Source: Unsplash.

I like this photograph because it captures the physical reality around brains, rather than their digital dimension. Technically, it does not feature an image of a brain, but it includes it as a word. More importantly, it highlights the obvious fact that brains are not isolated from the environment since they require transportation technologies to move around. This photograph can be used in campaigns to encourage physical activity by implying that smart people ride bikes, or in health campaigns to prevent brain injuries by suggesting that we must protect our brains when biking.

In conclusion, brains, society, and environment are entangled; therefore, the neurosciences, social sciences, and environmental sciences should collaborate to understand their complex relationships. One possible outcome of this collaboration could be the production of a new set of brain images that help us understand our most significant social inequalities, as well as inform interventions beyond the clinical setting. For instance, images that show how structural racism affects the brain, how class differences are related to brain development, how patriarchy disrupts women's brain functioning, and how wars and environmental disasters devastate the brains of the people forced into them. Ultimately, I would like to see more images that invite us to mutually care for, nourish, and protect our brains (Martin et al., 2015).

References

Daza-Cardona, J. A., & Elliott, D. (2026). Marketing brain images and shaping ways of seeing: A visual analysis of a neuroscientific website.

Dumit, J. (2004). Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity. In Picturing Personhood. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691236629

Khalili-Mahani, N., & Loos, E. (2023). A critical perspective on the mediatization of brain imaging and healthy ageing. Journal of Science Communication, 22(5), Y01. https://doi.org/10.22323/2.22050401

Martin, A., Myers, N., & Viseu, A. (2015). The politics of care in technoscience. Social Studies of Science, 45(5), 625–641.

Martin, E. (2000). AES Presidential Address: Mind-Body Problems. American Ethnologist, 27(3), 569–590.

Pfister, W. (Director). (2014). Transcendence [Video recording]. Warner Bros. Pictures.

Pitts-Taylor, V. (2012). Neurocultures Manifesto. Social Text Online. https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/neurocultures-manifesto/

Sturken, M., & Cartwright, L. (2018). Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (Third Edition). Oxford University Press.

Vrecko, S. (2010). Neuroscience, power and culture: An introduction. History of the Human Sciences, 23(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695109354395