Plastic Reason: An Anthropology of Brain Science in Embryogenetic Terms

Throughout the twentieth century, neuronal researchers knew the adult human brain to be a thoroughly fixed and immutable cellular structure, devoid of any developmental potential. Plastic Reason is a study of the efforts of a few Parisian neurobiologists to overturn this rigid conception of the central nervous system by showing that basic embryogenetic processes-most spectacularly the emergence of new cellular tissue in the form of new neurons, axons, dendrites, and synapses-continue in the...