Award Abstract # 1753701
An Ethnography of a Brain Interface Device

NSF Org: SES
Division of Social and Economic Sciences
Recipient: THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY
Initial Amendment Date: January 19, 2018
Latest Amendment Date: January 19, 2018
Award Number: 1753701
Award Instrument: Standard Grant
Program Manager: Frederick Kronz
SES
 Division of Social and Economic Sciences
SBE
 Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences
Start Date: February 1, 2018
End Date: December 31, 2019 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $12,410.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $12,410.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2018 = $12,410.00
History of Investigator:
  • S Lochlann Jain (Principal Investigator)
    lochjain@stanford.edu
  • Cordelia Erickson-Davis (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: Stanford University
450 JANE STANFORD WAY
STANFORD
CA  US  94305-2004
(650)723-2300
Sponsor Congressional District: 16
Primary Place of Performance: Stanford University
235 Hamilton Ave
Palo Alto
CA  US  94304-1212
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
16
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): HJD6G4D6TJY5
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): STS-Sci, Tech & Society
Primary Program Source: 01001819DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 7567, 9179
Program Element Code(s): 760300
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.075

ABSTRACT

This project will advance our understanding of using technologies of the brain in interpreting the senses. The project will engage in public participation in discussions regarding the development and use of brain machine interface devices. The study will identify how these technologies are brought to market, and experienced by individual users. It will be of interest to patients, doctors, policy makers, scientists and technology developers.

This project will bring together social studies of science, the neurosciences and translational medicine to investigate the ways in which brain machine interface (BMI) devices are being developed. It will explore questions about what subjects see when using BMI devices? What does it mean for a BMI device to "work"? The study will trace how institutional relationships involved in the production of a BMI device (i.e. the academic military- industrial complex) manifest in individual, perceptual experience. The project will use phenomenological and experimental methods that include computational modeling, psychophysics and behavioral tasks, as well as interviews and ethnography. By combining institutional ethnography and critical phenomenological methods in the context of the neuroscience the result will contribute to our understanding of the processes of embodiment.

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

I am interested in using cross-disciplinary methods in order to create multilevel analyses of perceptual phenomena.  This project serves as a case example of this kind of work, focusing on artificial vision produced by visual prosthesis devices. The project centers on the following questions: what do individuals with these devices see when these devices are turned on for the first time? How does that change over time? What does it mean for one of these devices to “work”?  Over the course of four years, I followed these devices – and one in particular - from bench to bedside, using mixed methods that allowed me to attend to both their perceptual and political origins and effects.  What I found was that the reason we currently know so little about the experience of artificial vision produced by these devices - despite hundreds of individuals having already ben implanted, scores of them closely followed in research trials - is because we don’t ask.  Why we don’t ask is the story of perception in the age of information and financialization, a story that I elaborate on using ethnographic data collected from neuroscience labs in Silicon Valley, a biotech start-up in Paris and the US FDA. 

But ask we must, as it is our ethical imperative to understand what these technologies and others like them are doing and why. Within this work I develop a conceptual framework and perceptual toolkit with which to inquire about the effects of complicated information and communication technologies. I demonstrate their use with ethnographic data related to the perceptual experience of visual prosthesis recipients. I find that when we do ask, we learn that artificial vision produced by these devices seems to be a fundamentally different phenomenon than natural vision. It is a finding that must be understood within the political and economic context in which the devices are made, and that has important implications for both how these devices are produced and implemented, as well as for our more general understanding of sensory perception.  

 


Last Modified: 05/28/2020
Modified by: Cordelia Erickson-Davis

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