The electric brain. History and knowledge culture of electroencephalography.

This study examines the emergence, development, and dissemination of procedures for recording electrical brain activity (electroencephalography) from an international comparative perspective from 1920 to 1950. It aims at a precise analysis of the malleability of an electrophysiological procedure in various experimental cultures, focusing on the question of which representations of the brain were produced by or incorporated into this research. In the process of its widespread application, electroencephalography stabilized itself in the intermediary field of neurology, psychiatry, psychology, and philosophy as an investigative technique that influenced the discursive topography and thus also the validity of neuroscience as a whole. The study understands this research process as the emergence of a new object of knowledge, namely the electrical brain, which, according to neuroscientific models, could be constructed in the "electronic brains." The history of the electric brain places this technical realization in a line of development that also encompasses the historical conditioning of its own claim to validity, since the procedures, technical methods, and conceptual models in the research process determine the epistemic form of the brain.