134 NOTES TO INTRODUCTION
tial relationships with the built world. Further, my discussion calls into question
the “neurotypical” and its reification. Not only is autism cited to rationalize a
broad range of neuroscientific research programs, but it is also used to shore up
claims about what constitutes typical traits, relations, and experiences, including
those related to sex/gender (Gillis- Buck and Richardson 2014). The concept of
neurodiversity on its own does not do enough to unsettle these claims.
32 The divisions between empirical and theoretical research programs are not strict;
rather, neuroscientists rely heavily on frameworks from other fields to identify
research problems, to make sense of findings, and to argue for their relevance.
The embodied simulation theory of mirror neurons is a good example; the sig-
nificance of mirror neurons was established initially through interventions in
debates about theory of mind taking place in philosophy of mind and psychol-
ogy (Gallese and Goldman 1998). The framework of simulation has shaped sub-
sequent discussions about mirror neurons in relation to empathy (Gallese 2001,
2014), concepts and metaphors (Gallese and Lakoff 2005), art and aesthetics
(Freedberg and Gallese 2007), and sociocognitive disorders (Iacoboni 2008; Gal-
lese et al. 2009). The strongest claims about mirror neurons depend on the idea
of a shared manifold — a common phenomenological experience, motor schema,
and relation to objects — that unites humans as conspecifics through their em-
bodied relations in the world.
Chapter 1. The Phenomenon of Brain Plasticity
1 James dedicated a chapter of his classic Principles of Psychology, published in
1890, to considering the question How and why do we gain continuity in our
thoughts and behaviors over time? In animals, he wrote, habits are given by
instinct, whereas in people they are generally considered acts of reason, prod-
ucts of disembodied, conscious thought and deliberation. A pragmatist, James
rejected both instinct and reason as explanations for human habit. James recog-
nized plasticity as a material property that has its own force, outside of human
control, but like his contemporary Ramon y Cajal, he was also concerned with
its personal and social implications. We should guard against bad habits “as the
plague,” James wrote, and we can capitalize on the inculcation of good habits.
2 Brain tissue looked much different than other biological tissue under the micro-
scopes of the nineteenth century, enough so that its cellular composition was in
question. In 1873 the Italian neuroanatomist and histologist Camillo Golgi, work-
ing in a lab he set up in the kitchen of his apartment, used a new stain, silver
nitrate, to look at nervous tissue. He saw cell- like structures that looked different
from other cells, having two different kinds of extensions or “processes” coming
out of them (dendrites and axons). These were densely intertwined and formed,
he thought, a holistically functioning network of electric nervous impulses. In
1887 Cajal, a Spanish army doctor, medical illustrator, and anatomist, also work-
ing out of his kitchen, borrowed Golgi’s method. Using the same technology,