Seeing the mind in the matter: functional brain imaging as framed visual argument.

• Author: Gibbons, Michelle G.
• Position: Report

In June, 2003, Newsweek devoted a special issue to what its cover boldly proclaimed were "Inventions that Will Change the World." Along with quantum cryptography, designer babies, and rain-producing machines, functional brain imaging was pegged as one of ten inventions poised to impact life in the twenty-first century significantly. One article described how brain imaging "shows what happens when liars lie and patients feel sad," predicting that the technology one day could be used for lie detection and the diagnosis of mental disorders (Zimmer 60). In 2005, the Los Angeles Times began a series entitled "Mapping the Mind." One article described studies of preference that explore how the brain responds to "cool" versus "uncool" celebrities (Hotz, "Searching" A26); another reported on imaging studies of trust (Hotz, "Anatomy"). These articles represent just a fraction of the extensive coverage of brain imaging studies in the popular press. In fact, since the beginning of 2000, Newsweek has published more than twenty articles about functional brain imaging, or that at least refer to imaging research. Imaging studies become news stories so frequently because their results are intriguing and often bear significant implications for society. Just as importantly, such studies frequently are accompanied by attractive pictures of brain activity.

Images serve an important role in the communication of scientific ideas. However, the layperson's understanding of science sometimes becomes indistinguishable from visual illustration. When asked to depict a dinosaur, most people could provide a rough sketch of some kind based on images they have seen. Few, however, know how scientists developed these approximations of dinosaurs' appearance. Thus, the layperson's verbal knowledge of dinosaurs tends to pale in comparison to her visual knowledge. Similarly, although few people are familiar with Watson and Crick's discussion of DNA in their famous 1953 Nature article, most instantly recognize Watson and Crick's illustration of the double helix (Myers). Indeed, this image of DNA's structure may comprise a person's entire understanding of DNA. Visual knowledge of science sometimes eclipses verbal knowledge when that science travels beyond the specialized realm in which the illustration was initially produced. Scientific images, therefore, are salient points of reference regarding popular understandings of scientific arguments. Quite recently, functional brain imaging has produced pictures of the brain with colorfully highlighted regions that indicate where the brain is working. These images are becoming almost as recognizable as the double helix. Indeed, when the Pittsburgh Steelers played in the 2006 Super Bowl, a local newspaper used the conventions of the functional brain image to suggest that the city could think of nothing but its football team (see Figure 1).

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

When they appear in the popular press, scientific findings are translated to suit an inexpert, popular audience (Fahnestock). Technical terminology gives way to colloquial language while details and caveats are lost to a more general presentation of findings. Scientific images, however, are translated minimally, if at all. The same functional brain image that appears in a scientific journal may well appear in the pages of newspapers and magazines, and on television newscasts. In this paper, I suggest that, although the same functional brain image may appear in scientific and lay contexts, the argument made by this image often varies considerably. I propose argument frames as a way of understanding how functional brain images argue differently, and perhaps misleadingly, as they move from scientific to popular contexts. Argument framing is an approach to visual argument that is particularly well-suited to the study of images that, like functional brain images, shift among different contexts. In what follows, I first will explain how functional brain images are produced. Then I will outline a theory of argument framing and apply it to the case of functional brain imaging.

FUNCTIONAL BRAIN IMAGING

Many functional brain images are produced using either fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) or PET (positron emission tomography) technologies. In a PET scan, a person is injected with a radioactive isotope and placed inside a scanning apparatus. The scan is able to detect the brain's absorption of the isotope, which is an indirect measure of brain activity. Most fMRI studies are BOLD (blood oxygenation level dependent) studies. That is, they use a magnetic field to measure hemodynamic response, a blood-oxygen-dependent signal that, again, is an indirect measure of brain activity. Although PET and fMRI employ different processes, the resulting images are quite similar: both colorfully depict those regions where the brain is working when various mental tasks are performed. Although much of this analysis applies to both PET and fMRI, I focus exclusively on fMRI images here in order to minimize the need for technical explanation.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Figure 2 shows a relatively simple activation image. In fMRI, brain function typically is depicted by brightly colored regions of activation. As shown here, the white and light grey tones indicate activation corresponding to suppression of the urge to track a moving stimulus, instead looking in the opposite direction. Different types of images can display activation data. Figure 2 shows a sagittal cut (a side view of the brain). Other types include the axial (as if one were looking down on the top of the head) and coronal (as if looking at the brain through the back of the head). Figure 2 also gives no sense of perspective or depth. Software enabling three-dimensional reconstruction of fMRI data is available, however, and has become increasingly popular. Indeed, fMRI data displays can vary considerably, although Figure 2 remains one of the most familiar types.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging is relatively new and its use has grown tremendously in recent years. Extensive news coverage reflects the very real growth of functional imaging as a means of studying cognitive processes. In 1991, scientific journals reported a grand total of ten or so fMRI studies. By 2001, however, that number had jumped to nearly nine hundred (Illes, Kirschen, and Gabrieli). Indeed, by 2001 entire scientific journals devoted to the research produced by functional brain imaging and similar mapping technologies had been established. (1) A few voices in the scientific community have objected to the rapid rise of neuroimaging research. William Uttal claims that the zeitgeist of imaging tends to exclude opposing views. He notes that, between 1998 and 2000, almost every article published in Science regarding mental processing included something to do with functional brain imaging (xiii). Neuroethics, a new branch of bioethics, also has emerged in response to ethical concerns raised by functional brain imaging and other new forms of neuro-scientific research (see Farah and Wolpe; Gazzaniga; Illes).

Although a recent innovation, brain imaging techniques like fMRI belong to an older tradition of technologies that depict the body's inner structure and/or function, including Wilhelm Rontgen's discovery of x-rays in 1895 and the development of ultrasound and mammography (see Doby and Alker; Kevles; Wolbarst). One possible reason for functional brain imaging's popular appeal is that it promises access to a person's most private recesses: the mind. Technologies that aim to steal a peek into the usually hidden spaces of the living human body, however, do not actually enable us to "look" inside them. Modern imaging technologies do not render the human body transparent; rather, they construct a representation of the body, one that is highly mediated by medical instruments, visual conventions, media technologies, and social norms (Dijck; Joyce). Imaging technologies do not stand outside culture but are embedded within it. Images of brain activity, for example, can influence our conceptions of self and identity significantly (Dumit, "Digital Image"). Art historian Barbara Stafford understands brain images within a postmodern visual tradition. "Medicine's focus on the transparent head," she observes, "is postmodernist in its drastic reformulation of information about a formerly opaque body and its rupture of any utopian ideal of corporeal wholeness or sensory coherence" (131). (2) Brain images, therefore, do not stand apart from the broader visual milieu in which they exist but, instead, belong firmly within it.

Functional brain images can provide complex, epistemically good evidence of brain function (Bogen; Delehanty). When these images appear in the popular press, however, they generally are presented not as complex, technically mediated images but as neuro-realistic ones. Eric Racine, Ofek Bar-Illan, and Judy Illes define neuro-realism as the way in which "coverage of fMRI investigations can make a phenomenon uncritically real, objective or effective in the eyes of the public" (160). When not informed of the methodological and technical assumptions that underlie fMRI research, readers are apt to believe "that fMRI enables us to capture a 'visual proof' of brain activity, despite the enormous complexities of data acquisition and image processing" (160). In a study of 132 fMRI articles that appeared in popular print media from January, 1991, to June, 2004, they concluded that most portrayed this research optimistically and neuro-realistically, and failed to examine its limitations or capacities critically.

Functional brain images also appear in other nonscientific venues such as courtrooms. In the legal context, their ability to be understood in neuro-realistic terms is particularly problematic. Joseph Dumit argues that, for this reason, these images should be considered expert images that the laity simply cannot read correctly...