# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Keywords: Association for Rhetoric of Science and Technology

How to Cite:

Gruber, D. & Jack, J. & Keranen, L. & McKenzie, J. M. & Morris, M. B., (2011) "Rhetoric and the Neurosciences: Engagement and Exploration", Poroi 7(1), 1-12. doi: https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1084

Rights: Copyright © 2011 David Gruber, Jordynn Jack, Lisa Keranen, John M. McKenzie, and Matthew B. Morris

Published on
01 Feb 2011

Peer Reviewed

Poroi, 7, 1, Gruber, Jack, Keranen, McKenzie, and Morris

Challenges in Rhetoric of Science and Technology: ARST Report

Rhetoric and the Neurosciences:

Engagement and Exploration

David Gruber

Dept. of Communication, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC USA

Jordynn Jack

Dept. of English, University of North Carolina, Raleigh, NC USA

Lisa Keränen

Dept of Communication, University of Colorado - Denver, Denver, CO USA

John M. McKenzie

Dept. of Communication, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX USA

Matthew B. Morris

Dept. of Communication, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX USA

Poroi, 7,1 (January 2011)
http://dx.doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1084
Few popular science news articles today attract as much attention or are communicated with as much flamboyance as those involving the neurosciences. Catchy but charged headlines such as "Obese Teens May Be Lacking in Brain Size, Not Willpower" (Rettner, 2010) or "Thought Police: How Brain Scans Could Invade Your Private Life" (Wise, 2007) make the point. These popular accounts present rhetoric scholars with numerous opportunities for interrogating scientific understandings of the brain and their development through the discourses, practices, and materials of neuroscience. However, a strictly deconstructive approach, as Bruno Latour (2004) notes, can be viewed as intellectually hostile to the efforts of scientific researchers(p. 225-228). Because neuroscience is a relatively new and diverse field, it is important to consider both scope and audience when striving to make a contribution to a critical tradition in the humanities and social sciences. Such a contribution, we believe, entails not only sharing observations within one's immediate research community, but also promoting truly interdisciplinary interactions between neuroscientists and rhetorical scholars. In what follows, we offer a brief and general summary of the contemporary neurosciences. We then make a call for collaborative scholarship wherein neuroscientists and rhetoricians partner in order to examine the constitutive nature of language, perception, and consciousness. We close by advancing a four-part agenda for research at the intersection of rhetoric and neuroscience.

Although the study of the nervous system dates back to antiquity, the second half of the twentieth century witnessed a dramatic expansion of investigations of the nervous system, emotion, and cognition.This growth is in large part due to the invention of axial X-Ray imaging, the electroencephalogram (EEG), positron emission tomography (PET), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), offering researchers the ability to conduct experiments on living individuals and to visualize processes occurring at different levels beneath the skull. These developments, combined with the experimental methods of cognitive psychology, led to advancements in understanding the tie between brain functions and mental activities (Raichle, 2009). It also moved the study of the brain from a largely structural one to a joint focus on structures and processes (Van Horn, 2004; Brown, 2010). This is pragmatically demonstrated in the work of Voss and Schiff (2009). As a result of these recent advances, researchers have launched multiple investigations of the nervous system, emotion, cognition, and the interplay between them, establishing a multiplicity of new disciplines with names such as neuroengineering, neuroinformatics, and neuroeconomics.

Indeed, neuroscientists are now "breaking bread" with those outside of the biological and medical disciplines, as the editor of Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience put it in the inaugural 2006 issue, and are seeking to develop multiple lines of investigation in tandem with emerging imaging technologies (Lieberman, 2006). This disciplinary fertility and availability of methods has pushed neuroscientists to explore a bevy of brain phenomena, from "neural mechanisms for mate choice" (Fisher, et al., 2005) to "neuroanatomical sites for eating behavior" (Führer, et al., 2008) to the brain's mechanisms for "perceptual decisions about complex visual forms" (McKeeff and Tong, 2006). The result of so much high-profile research, as Jordynn Jack (2010) notes, is that "neuroscientific research findings are only gaining in popularity" (p. 412). Indeed, neuroscience studies have become a persuasive cultural form regularly "touted for their potential to transform advertising, political campaigns, and law," while "... seem[ing] to offer concrete, material proof of concepts previously considered ephemeral, especially when claims are supported with showy, multicolored brain scan images" (Jack, 2010, p. 412-413). Given neuroscience's suasive capacity, rhetorical investigations of the texts, contexts, practices, and materials of the neurosciences are well-poised to help citizens, humanistic and social science researchers, and neuroscientists alike understand what is at stake in the processes of "coming to know" the nervous system, brain, affect, and cognition.

A rhetorical perspective is not only valuable for revealing the "important, if not indirect way in which rhetorical considerations define the shape of modern science" (Ceccarelli, 2001, p. 169). It is also valuable for helping to uncover how such science is interpreted, understood, and made meaningful by varied audiences. Lisa Keränen explains that "whereas other branches of science studies consider the historical, philosophical, and sociocultural dimensions of science, the rhetoric of science focuses on how language affects scientific processes and understandings" (Karenen, 2010, 23). Scott Graham offers a slightly different viewpoint, suggesting that material objects can exert persuasive influence and that rhetorical agency comes from a "material-semiotic network" (Graham 2009, 400). Whatever falls beneath the rhetorical umbrella in a given context, however, there is little doubt that discursive practices and material structures work together to express values, shape institutions, and offer conceptions of what it means to be human. Accordingly, the neurosciences supply a rich set of data for rhetoricians, ranging from intra-scientific debates about the nature of synapses to popularized accounts of brain functioning.

Rhetoricians have not always had such optimism for the possibility of collaborating with the cognitive and brain sciences. Traditional rhetorical problematics surrounding agency, choice, deliberation, and identity have until recently most often put rhetoricians starkly in the position of critical or even skeptical hesitation. Since scientific discourses were often considered, as Alan Gross once famously remarked merely "rhetoric without remainder", it did not seem that there was much room for rhetoric and the sciences to collaborate (Gross, 1997, 6). That little more than ten years later one finds rhetoricians such as John Lynch asserting a need to resist "a logic of representation that undermines a full examination of materiality and the complexity of scientific practice" (Lynch, 2009, 435) indicates a promising move toward recognizing both the legitimacy of current scientific research in this area without accepting it uncritically. This more nuanced realignment among rhetoricians of inquiry, as well as a more receptive attitude among neuroscientists themselves, suggests that scholars in both disciplines may now find significant territories of mutual interest to explore together.

It is our view that a specifically rhetorical engagement of neuroscience should be an engagement with neuroscience and should, therefore, be built as much as possible on cooperation and mutual exchange. The point is at least implicit in Jenny Edbauer Rice's exploration of multidisciplinary works on "affect" (Rice, 2008). She cites Lawrence Grossberg suggestion that "texts may have other effects than meaning-effects" and subsequently explains that rhetorical theorists ask many of the same questions as those individuals studying meaning using the tools of neuroscience (Rice, 2008, 201-202). In addition, Diane Davis points toward the possibility of engagement with neuroscience by expanding on Kenneth Burke's appeal to neurobiology in his well-known formulation of "identification" (Davis, 2008). The discovery of mirror neurons, Davis argues, leads to a rethinking of Burkian identification as compensatory to division and recognizes, instead, the always already sociality of human being (Davis, 2008, 131-132).

Of course, the extent to which rhetorical critics could or should mingle in the field of neuroscience will likely be debated well into the future and may face concerns about biological reductionism and essentialist thinking. Yet, it would be a mistake to ignore the materiality of bodies in the constitution of perception. Rhetorical scholars who take the advice offered by Jordynn Jack and L. Gregory Applebaum to "carefully analyze the work with a rhetorical as well as scientific lens" (should steer clear of these pitfalls (Jack & Applebaum, 2010, 414). Alternately, they should avoid "throwing out the baby of materialism with the bathwater of vulgar reductionism" as Cary Wolfe (1991) once said (Wolfe, 1991, 66). In short, neuroscience research holds the potential to add a new dimension of understanding to traditional rhetorical concepts and may very well prove useful in helping transform or contribute to the exploration of meaning production and human identification.

The call informing this paper-to avoid what may seem like an assault on neuroscience coming from the outside and to remain open to the potentials of neuroscience-does not require abandoning rhetorical principles or epistemological positions that rhetorical critics understand as integral to the analysis of science. In fact, given the current cultural import of neuroscience and the tendency for fMRI investigations to be situated as "uncritically real, objective or effective in the eyes of the public" (Racine et. al, 2005, p. 160), we affirm the need for a rigorous cultural rhetorical criticism. Nevertheless, by partnering with neuroscience researchers, critics will better understand who has a stake in the advancement of this research and why, while positioning themselves to explore the professional practices that allow neuroscience research to hold together and produce socially significant work.

In addition, we believe that rhetorical scholars have a disciplinary perspective that may help neuroscience researchers to consider their unique goals in tandem with an audience's expectations. On this point, however, it seems preferable to discuss strategies of scientific communication from as local a position as possible; we hesitate to treat neuroscience monolithically and to broadly speculate in this paper about the "right" or "best" ways to communicate different kinds of neuroscience research agendas that each have what James Paul Gee calls their own big-C "Conversations," or their own situated language patterns tied to specific social issues in particular cultural contexts (Gee, 1999, 94). In fact, David Gruber (2010) has argued that different neuroscience research agendas receive different treatment in the popular press and manifest different patterns of communication (Gruber, 2010). It is perhaps sufficient to say that rhetorical critics will likely find productive partnerships with neuroscience researchers who desire to investigate persuasion, appeal, ethics, and similar concepts in their work.

From our view, four key areas of research merit attention for rhetorical scholars. Although not exclusive or exhaustive, we see these areas as particularly deserving of rhetorical investigation. We offer corresponding citations as a starting point for interested researchers.

1. The first area concerns how brain scan technologies, such as the CT, the MRI and the fMRI, are applied and interpreted and how the "interpretive boundaries" for neuroscience studies are configured and communicated. Anne Beaulieu, for example, describes how scientists use tropes that convert images into pictures of numbers in situations where brain representations seem too "intuitive and unscientific" (Beaulieu, 2002, 76). Kelly Joyce shows how physicians present MRI images with "transparency, objectivity, and progress" when speaking to patients Joyce, 2005, 439). In other words, an important vein of research will consider how scientific authoritativeness is discursively maintained and how neuroscience studies are taken as more credible than other forms of or claims to knowledge. Of course, neuroscientists also strive to better understand their own research practices (Raichle, 1998; Taber et al., 2005; Weisberg, 2008); indeed, because they are aware of the persuasive impact of their research and images neuroscientists see the value of a rhetorical analysis and are pursing partnerships with rhetorical studies (Racine et al., 2005; McCabe and Castel, 2000, Jack & Applebaum, 2010).

2. As Joseph Dumit showed in his three-year study of neuroscience researchers working with PET scans, "brain images make claims on us because they portray kindsof brains" (Dumit, 2004, 5, italics in original). That neuroscience studies often compare brains is nothing new; typological practices make up much of the history of the neurosciences and have contributed valuable insights. Nevertheless, identifying where assumptions about classifications enter into research programs and exploring how grounds for separate classifications are established, as Dumit did, has serious political and cultural implications and forms a significant area of rhetorical concern (Jack, n. d.).

3. In their 2009 article, "Critical Neuroscience: Linking Neuroscience And Society Through Critical Practice," Choudhury et al. suggest neuroscience findings are complimentary to capitalist societies and fit with a "cultural focus on the individual and interiority" (Choudhury et al., 2009, 62). Other cultural critics express concern that neuroscience research may serve as a technology of governmentality (Johnson, 2008; Thorton, 2010). Understanding how neuroscience agendas co-opt or promote larger cultural issues (Littlefield, 2009) and how they advance corporate or political interests (Slaby, 2010; Choudhury et al., 2009) remains central to critical rhetorical work.

4. A final area of concern lies in exploring how concepts of mutual interest to rhetorical scholars, such as reason and emotion, are defined and operationalized in the neurosciences (Jack & Applebaum, 2010). Engaging research about the extent of interdependency among the human senses is an example (Porter et al., 2006). Another is exploring the entwined relationship between the emotions and the intellect (Bechara, 2004; Tavares et al., 2010). These topics offer rhetorical scholars a chance to ask questions and be questioned, and to identify and question assumptions about the human brain-body relationship.

For each of these "areas of rhetorical concern," we maintain that neuroscience researchers and rhetoricians will benefit from ongoing, programmatic, collaborative projects. Although Papoulias and Callard have recently pointed out the dangers of trying to develop a transdisciplinary approach that ends up using scientific work out of context with an insufficient or confusing "composite language," they nevertheless encourage scholars to pursue disciplinary teamwork and offer an insightful recommendation for doing so (Papoulias & Callard, 2010, 33-34). Papoulias and Callard argue that any encounter with another discipline "is also necessarily an encounter with the methodologies and processes of legitimation characteristic of the natural sciences. Any interdisciplinary gesture must explicitly address, rather than wish away, such supplementary trafﬁc" (Papoulias & Callard, 2010, 50). Because the task of the rhetorician is precisely to "explicitly address" the "traffic" of "methodologies and processes" across various divides we believe that rhetorical scholars are positioned to successfully build bridges across historically divided disciplinary modes of investigation; thus, we situate the advice offered by Papoulias and Callard as a call to enter the foray while staying grounded in a rhetorical perspective.

Beaulieu, A. 2002. Images are not the (only) truth: Brain Mapping, visual knowledge, and iconoclasm. Science, Technology & Human Values, 27(1), 53-86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/016224390202700103

Bechara, A. 2004. The role of emotion in decision-making: Evidence from neurological patients with orbitofrontal damage. Brain and Cognition, 55(1), 30-40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2003.04.001

Brown, B. (n.d.). Methods used to study the brain. Georgia Perimeter College. Retrieved November 20, 2010, from http://facstaff.gpc.edu/~bbrown/psyc1501/brain/methods.htm

Ceccarelli, L. 2001. Shaping Science with Rhetoric: The cases of Dobzhansky, Schrödinger, and Wilson. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226099088.001.0001

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Davis, D. 2008. Identification: Burke and Freud on who you are. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 38(2), 123-147. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02773940701779785

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Fisher, H., Aron, A., & Brown, L. L. 2005. Romantic love: An fMRI study of a neural mechanism for mate choice. The Journal of Comparative Neurology, 493(1), 58-62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cne.20772

Führer, D., Zysset, S., & Stumvoll, M. 2008. Brain Activity in Hunger and Satiety: An exploratory visually stimulated fMRI study. Obesity, 16(5), 945-950. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/oby.2008.33

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Graham, S. 2009. Agency and the Rhetoric of Medicine: Biomedical brain scans and the ontology of fibromyalgia. Technical Communication Quarterly, 18(4), 376-404. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10572250903149555

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Johnson, D. 2008. Managing Mr. Monk: Control and the politics of madness. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 25(1), 28-47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15295030701851130

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Poroi, 7, 1, Gruber, Jack, Keranen, McKenzie, and Morris

Challenges in Rhetoric of Science and Technology: ARST Report

Rhetoric and the Neurosciences:

Engagement and Exploration

David Gruber

Dept. of Communication, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC USA

Jordynn Jack

Dept. of English, University of North Carolina, Raleigh, NC USA

Lisa Keränen

Dept of Communication, University of Colorado - Denver, Denver, CO USA

John M. McKenzie

Dept. of Communication, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX USA

Matthew B. Morris

Dept. of Communication, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX USA

Poroi, 7,1 (January 2011)
http://dx.doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1084
Few popular science news articles today attract as much attention or are communicated with as much flamboyance as those involving the neurosciences. Catchy but charged headlines such as "Obese Teens May Be Lacking in Brain Size, Not Willpower" (Rettner, 2010) or "Thought Police: How Brain Scans Could Invade Your Private Life" (Wise, 2007) make the point. These popular accounts present rhetoric scholars with numerous opportunities for interrogating scientific understandings of the brain and their development through the discourses, practices, and materials of neuroscience. However, a strictly deconstructive approach, as Bruno Latour (2004) notes, can be viewed as intellectually hostile to the efforts of scientific researchers(p. 225-228). Because neuroscience is a relatively new and diverse field, it is important to consider both scope and audience when striving to make a contribution to a critical tradition in the humanities and social sciences. Such a contribution, we believe, entails not only sharing observations within one's immediate research community, but also promoting truly interdisciplinary interactions between neuroscientists and rhetorical scholars. In what follows, we offer a brief and general summary of the contemporary neurosciences. We then make a call for collaborative scholarship wherein neuroscientists and rhetoricians partner in order to examine the constitutive nature of language, perception, and consciousness. We close by advancing a four-part agenda for research at the intersection of rhetoric and neuroscience.

Although the study of the nervous system dates back to antiquity, the second half of the twentieth century witnessed a dramatic expansion of investigations of the nervous system, emotion, and cognition.This growth is in large part due to the invention of axial X-Ray imaging, the electroencephalogram (EEG), positron emission tomography (PET), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), offering researchers the ability to conduct experiments on living individuals and to visualize processes occurring at different levels beneath the skull. These developments, combined with the experimental methods of cognitive psychology, led to advancements in understanding the tie between brain functions and mental activities (Raichle, 2009). It also moved the study of the brain from a largely structural one to a joint focus on structures and processes (Van Horn, 2004; Brown, 2010). This is pragmatically demonstrated in the work of Voss and Schiff (2009). As a result of these recent advances, researchers have launched multiple investigations of the nervous system, emotion, cognition, and the interplay between them, establishing a multiplicity of new disciplines with names such as neuroengineering, neuroinformatics, and neuroeconomics.

Indeed, neuroscientists are now "breaking bread" with those outside of the biological and medical disciplines, as the editor of Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience put it in the inaugural 2006 issue, and are seeking to develop multiple lines of investigation in tandem with emerging imaging technologies (Lieberman, 2006). This disciplinary fertility and availability of methods has pushed neuroscientists to explore a bevy of brain phenomena, from "neural mechanisms for mate choice" (Fisher, et al., 2005) to "neuroanatomical sites for eating behavior" (Führer, et al., 2008) to the brain's mechanisms for "perceptual decisions about complex visual forms" (McKeeff and Tong, 2006). The result of so much high-profile research, as Jordynn Jack (2010) notes, is that "neuroscientific research findings are only gaining in popularity" (p. 412). Indeed, neuroscience studies have become a persuasive cultural form regularly "touted for their potential to transform advertising, political campaigns, and law," while "... seem[ing] to offer concrete, material proof of concepts previously considered ephemeral, especially when claims are supported with showy, multicolored brain scan images" (Jack, 2010, p. 412-413). Given neuroscience's suasive capacity, rhetorical investigations of the texts, contexts, practices, and materials of the neurosciences are well-poised to help citizens, humanistic and social science researchers, and neuroscientists alike understand what is at stake in the processes of "coming to know" the nervous system, brain, affect, and cognition.

A rhetorical perspective is not only valuable for revealing the "important, if not indirect way in which rhetorical considerations define the shape of modern science" (Ceccarelli, 2001, p. 169). It is also valuable for helping to uncover how such science is interpreted, understood, and made meaningful by varied audiences. Lisa Keränen explains that "whereas other branches of science studies consider the historical, philosophical, and sociocultural dimensions of science, the rhetoric of science focuses on how language affects scientific processes and understandings" (Karenen, 2010, 23). Scott Graham offers a slightly different viewpoint, suggesting that material objects can exert persuasive influence and that rhetorical agency comes from a "material-semiotic network" (Graham 2009, 400). Whatever falls beneath the rhetorical umbrella in a given context, however, there is little doubt that discursive practices and material structures work together to express values, shape institutions, and offer conceptions of what it means to be human. Accordingly, the neurosciences supply a rich set of data for rhetoricians, ranging from intra-scientific debates about the nature of synapses to popularized accounts of brain functioning.

Rhetoricians have not always had such optimism for the possibility of collaborating with the cognitive and brain sciences. Traditional rhetorical problematics surrounding agency, choice, deliberation, and identity have until recently most often put rhetoricians starkly in the position of critical or even skeptical hesitation. Since scientific discourses were often considered, as Alan Gross once famously remarked merely "rhetoric without remainder", it did not seem that there was much room for rhetoric and the sciences to collaborate (Gross, 1997, 6). That little more than ten years later one finds rhetoricians such as John Lynch asserting a need to resist "a logic of representation that undermines a full examination of materiality and the complexity of scientific practice" (Lynch, 2009, 435) indicates a promising move toward recognizing both the legitimacy of current scientific research in this area without accepting it uncritically. This more nuanced realignment among rhetoricians of inquiry, as well as a more receptive attitude among neuroscientists themselves, suggests that scholars in both disciplines may now find significant territories of mutual interest to explore together.

It is our view that a specifically rhetorical engagement of neuroscience should be an engagement with neuroscience and should, therefore, be built as much as possible on cooperation and mutual exchange. The point is at least implicit in Jenny Edbauer Rice's exploration of multidisciplinary works on "affect" (Rice, 2008). She cites Lawrence Grossberg suggestion that "texts may have other effects than meaning-effects" and subsequently explains that rhetorical theorists ask many of the same questions as those individuals studying meaning using the tools of neuroscience (Rice, 2008, 201-202). In addition, Diane Davis points toward the possibility of engagement with neuroscience by expanding on Kenneth Burke's appeal to neurobiology in his well-known formulation of "identification" (Davis, 2008). The discovery of mirror neurons, Davis argues, leads to a rethinking of Burkian identification as compensatory to division and recognizes, instead, the always already sociality of human being (Davis, 2008, 131-132).

Of course, the extent to which rhetorical critics could or should mingle in the field of neuroscience will likely be debated well into the future and may face concerns about biological reductionism and essentialist thinking. Yet, it would be a mistake to ignore the materiality of bodies in the constitution of perception. Rhetorical scholars who take the advice offered by Jordynn Jack and L. Gregory Applebaum to "carefully analyze the work with a rhetorical as well as scientific lens" (should steer clear of these pitfalls (Jack & Applebaum, 2010, 414). Alternately, they should avoid "throwing out the baby of materialism with the bathwater of vulgar reductionism" as Cary Wolfe (1991) once said (Wolfe, 1991, 66). In short, neuroscience research holds the potential to add a new dimension of understanding to traditional rhetorical concepts and may very well prove useful in helping transform or contribute to the exploration of meaning production and human identification.

The call informing this paper-to avoid what may seem like an assault on neuroscience coming from the outside and to remain open to the potentials of neuroscience-does not require abandoning rhetorical principles or epistemological positions that rhetorical critics understand as integral to the analysis of science. In fact, given the current cultural import of neuroscience and the tendency for fMRI investigations to be situated as "uncritically real, objective or effective in the eyes of the public" (Racine et. al, 2005, p. 160), we affirm the need for a rigorous cultural rhetorical criticism. Nevertheless, by partnering with neuroscience researchers, critics will better understand who has a stake in the advancement of this research and why, while positioning themselves to explore the professional practices that allow neuroscience research to hold together and produce socially significant work.

In addition, we believe that rhetorical scholars have a disciplinary perspective that may help neuroscience researchers to consider their unique goals in tandem with an audience's expectations. On this point, however, it seems preferable to discuss strategies of scientific communication from as local a position as possible; we hesitate to treat neuroscience monolithically and to broadly speculate in this paper about the "right" or "best" ways to communicate different kinds of neuroscience research agendas that each have what James Paul Gee calls their own big-C "Conversations," or their own situated language patterns tied to specific social issues in particular cultural contexts (Gee, 1999, 94). In fact, David Gruber (2010) has argued that different neuroscience research agendas receive different treatment in the popular press and manifest different patterns of communication (Gruber, 2010). It is perhaps sufficient to say that rhetorical critics will likely find productive partnerships with neuroscience researchers who desire to investigate persuasion, appeal, ethics, and similar concepts in their work.

From our view, four key areas of research merit attention for rhetorical scholars. Although not exclusive or exhaustive, we see these areas as particularly deserving of rhetorical investigation. We offer corresponding citations as a starting point for interested researchers.

1. The first area concerns how brain scan technologies, such as the CT, the MRI and the fMRI, are applied and interpreted and how the "interpretive boundaries" for neuroscience studies are configured and communicated. Anne Beaulieu, for example, describes how scientists use tropes that convert images into pictures of numbers in situations where brain representations seem too "intuitive and unscientific" (Beaulieu, 2002, 76). Kelly Joyce shows how physicians present MRI images with "transparency, objectivity, and progress" when speaking to patients Joyce, 2005, 439). In other words, an important vein of research will consider how scientific authoritativeness is discursively maintained and how neuroscience studies are taken as more credible than other forms of or claims to knowledge. Of course, neuroscientists also strive to better understand their own research practices (Raichle, 1998; Taber et al., 2005; Weisberg, 2008); indeed, because they are aware of the persuasive impact of their research and images neuroscientists see the value of a rhetorical analysis and are pursing partnerships with rhetorical studies (Racine et al., 2005; McCabe and Castel, 2000, Jack & Applebaum, 2010).

2. As Joseph Dumit showed in his three-year study of neuroscience researchers working with PET scans, "brain images make claims on us because they portray kindsof brains" (Dumit, 2004, 5, italics in original). That neuroscience studies often compare brains is nothing new; typological practices make up much of the history of the neurosciences and have contributed valuable insights. Nevertheless, identifying where assumptions about classifications enter into research programs and exploring how grounds for separate classifications are established, as Dumit did, has serious political and cultural implications and forms a significant area of rhetorical concern (Jack, n. d.).

3. In their 2009 article, "Critical Neuroscience: Linking Neuroscience And Society Through Critical Practice," Choudhury et al. suggest neuroscience findings are complimentary to capitalist societies and fit with a "cultural focus on the individual and interiority" (Choudhury et al., 2009, 62). Other cultural critics express concern that neuroscience research may serve as a technology of governmentality (Johnson, 2008; Thorton, 2010). Understanding how neuroscience agendas co-opt or promote larger cultural issues (Littlefield, 2009) and how they advance corporate or political interests (Slaby, 2010; Choudhury et al., 2009) remains central to critical rhetorical work.

4. A final area of concern lies in exploring how concepts of mutual interest to rhetorical scholars, such as reason and emotion, are defined and operationalized in the neurosciences (Jack & Applebaum, 2010). Engaging research about the extent of interdependency among the human senses is an example (Porter et al., 2006). Another is exploring the entwined relationship between the emotions and the intellect (Bechara, 2004; Tavares et al., 2010). These topics offer rhetorical scholars a chance to ask questions and be questioned, and to identify and question assumptions about the human brain-body relationship.

For each of these "areas of rhetorical concern," we maintain that neuroscience researchers and rhetoricians will benefit from ongoing, programmatic, collaborative projects. Although Papoulias and Callard have recently pointed out the dangers of trying to develop a transdisciplinary approach that ends up using scientific work out of context with an insufficient or confusing "composite language," they nevertheless encourage scholars to pursue disciplinary teamwork and offer an insightful recommendation for doing so (Papoulias & Callard, 2010, 33-34). Papoulias and Callard argue that any encounter with another discipline "is also necessarily an encounter with the methodologies and processes of legitimation characteristic of the natural sciences. Any interdisciplinary gesture must explicitly address, rather than wish away, such supplementary trafﬁc" (Papoulias & Callard, 2010, 50). Because the task of the rhetorician is precisely to "explicitly address" the "traffic" of "methodologies and processes" across various divides we believe that rhetorical scholars are positioned to successfully build bridges across historically divided disciplinary modes of investigation; thus, we situate the advice offered by Papoulias and Callard as a call to enter the foray while staying grounded in a rhetorical perspective.

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McCabe, D., & Castel, A. 2008. Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning. Cognition, 107, 343-352. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2007.07.017

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Prasad, A. 2005. Making Images/Making Bodies: Visibilizing and disciplining through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Science, Technology & Human Values, 30(2), 291-316. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0162243904271758

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Rhetoric and the Neurosciences: Engagement and Exploration

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Keywords: Association for Rhetoric of Science and Technology How to Cite: Gruber, D. & Jack, J. & Keranen, L. & McKenzie, J. M. & Morris, M. B., (2011) "Rhetoric and the Neurosciences: Engagement and Exploration", Poroi 7(1), 1-12. doi: https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1084 Rights: Copyright © 2011 David Gruber, Jordynn Jack, Lisa Keranen, John M.

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Also working in this area, Duke faculty in in the Duke Divinity School seek to advance theological understanding of the questions and insights being raised by current pioneering research in neuroscience. Their work in the area of theology and neuroscience addresses significant questions that touch on many disciplines, including neuro-oncology, child development, philosophy, theology, and psychiatry.

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Exploring Graphic Organizers?

Graphic organizers integrate both text and visuals. This has been scientifically proven to be an effective way of teaching and learning. Using them can be extremely useful for both teachers and students as they will make lessons more engaging as well as easily comprehensible.

We have listed below multiple types of graphic organizers you can use during various scenarios, whether you are reading, writing, doing research or studying for exams. Each tool is accompanied by a template that you can use right away.
1. What are Graphic Organizers 1.1. Benefits of graphic organizers 2. Types of Graphic Organizers 2.1. Graphic Organizers for Writing 2.1.1. 1. Persuasion map 2.1.2. 2. Sequence Chart 2.2. Graphic Organizers for Reading 2.2.1. 3. Story map 2.2.2. 4. Biography graphic organizer 2.2.3. 5. KWL chart 2.3. Graphic Organizers for Teaching 2.3.1. 6. Learning map 2.3.2. 7. Analogy graphic organizer 2.3.3. 8. Vocabulary graphic organizer 2.3.4. 9. Problem-solving organizer 2.3.5. 10. Math Graphic Organizer 2.4. Graphic Organizers for Learning 2.4.1. 11. Timeline graphic organizer 2.4.2. 12. T chart 2.4.3. 13. Hierarchy chart 2.4.4. 14. Star diagram 2.5. Graphic Organizers for Brainstorming 2.5.1. 15. Cluster diagram 2.5.2. 16. Lotus diagram 2.5.3. 17. Cause and effect graphic organizer 2.5.4. 18. Mind map 2.6. Graphic Organizers for Compare and Contrast 2.6.1. 19. Double bubble map 2.6.2. 20. Venn diagram 2.6.2.1. Add to Our List of Graphic Organizers for Teachers and Students
What are Graphic Organizers

A graphic organizer is a teaching and learning tool that is used to organize information and ideas in a way that is easy to comprehend and internalize. By integrating text and visuals, graphic organizers show relationships and connections between concepts, terms, and facts.

Graphic organizers can be used in all grade levels, and have proven to be effective learning tools for gifted children and students with special needs. And with adult learners, graphic organizers can help enable the connection between what they already know and newly acquired knowledge.

Benefits of graphic organizers

Different types of graphic organizers can be used across the curriculum for teaching, learning, and note-taking. They are easy to create and impactful in simplifying information.

Help visualize or present information in a way that is easier to comprehend, by breaking down larger or complex concepts or ideas into smaller and simpler parts.

Provide students the opportunity to actively contribute and participate in the learning process through the creation of graphic organizers.

Help develop cognitive skills such as brainstorming, critical and, categorizing and prioritizing content, reflection, etc.

Help recall prior knowledge about a subject and quickly connect it to new information

Promotes self-learning. By using graphic organizers for note-taking, analyzing, studying, etc. students can familiarize themselves with a lesson far more easily.

Types of Graphic Organizers

Here we have listed 19 types of graphic organizers for teaching and learning. Based on their varied purposes, you can utilize them in reading, writing, researching, brainstorming, and analyzing.

Graphic Organizers for Writing

1. Persuasion map

The persuasion map is an interactive graphic organizer that helps students familiarize themselves with the process of persuasive writing . It assists them with outlining and preparing arguments for their essays, speeches, debates, etc.
How to use it
Step 1: Choose a topic of interest for your essay/debate. Do proper research around it to collect enough information.

Step 2: Define the claim that you want to make with your essay. Persuasive writing by writing this down first.

Step 3: Next to it, write down the reasons for making that claim.

Step 4: Then write down facts, examples, and information to back up your reasoning.

Step 5: End your persuasion map with the conclusion of your essay.

2. Sequence Chart

A sequence graphic organizer is a tool that helps visualize the order of steps of a process or a timeline of events, etc. It can also be used for note-taking, lesson planning, and essay writing.
How to use it
Step 1: Identify the steps in the process or event.

Step 2: Using a sequence chart arrange these steps in sequential order.
Template
Graphic Organizers for Reading

3. Story map

A story map can be used to identify the different elements such as characters, character plots, themes, techniques, etc. in a book students are reading. It's a useful tool that teachers can integrate into the lesson to improve students' comprehension.
How to use it
Step 1: Read the book and understand it well.

Step 2: Discuss the different significant elements that were involved in the story. These could be the characters, setting, problem and solution, etc. You can fill the story map during the discussion.

Step 3: Once the map is complete you can discuss each element individually.

4. Biography graphic organizer

This is a tool that assists with understanding a character from a novel, autobiography or movie or a historical figure more in-depth. It brings attention to various important factors about a person's life.
How to create it
Step 1: Gather as much information you can about the character you are studying. You can also refer to online resources, or ask from teachers or experts.

Step 2: As you analyze the information you have gathered, isolate the facts that stand out or you think are important.

Step 3: Use your biography graphic organizer to lay out the information in a presentable way. You can add images to make it more comprehensible as well.

5. KWL chart

KWL chart is used for gathering information from student's prior knowledge or experience. This 3 column chart captures the before (what the reader already knows), during (what the reader wants to learn) and after (what the reader learned) stages of reading.
How to use it
Step 1: Get students to brainstorm around the selected topic and write down everything they know about it in the K column.

Step 2: Ask them to generate a list of questions about what they want to know in the W column of the chart.

Step 3: During or after reading the book/ lesson get them to answer these questions in the L column.

Graphic Organizers for Teaching

6. Learning map

Learning maps visually depict the key takeaways - skills, ideas, knowledge - students should get from a lesson. It usually provides a high-level view of the lesson/ unit/ course that is to be studied and the connection between its different components. Students can also use learning maps in the classroom for note-taking.
How to use it
Step 1: At the center of the map, write down the topic (i.e. name of the lesson or unit)

Step 2: Brainstorm ideas and information related to it. Write these down on branches emerging from the center. Make sure that you place them in a way that makes sense to teach or in a logical sequence around the center.

Step 3: Add connectors between these elements and add labels to highlight the kind of relationship between them.

Learning map template (Click on the template to edit it online)

Learning Map Template (Click on the template to edit it online)

7. Analogy graphic organizer

The analogy graphic organizer uses analogy to help students identify similarities and differences between a new topic and a topic that they are already familiar with.
How to use it
Step 1: Select a topic/ concept that the students already know and is analogous in certain aspects to the new topic

Step 2: Introduce the new concept and get the students to read and discuss it

Step 3: Using an analogy graphic organizer, ask the students to brainstorm and write similarities and differences between the two topics.

Step 4: Based on the completed graphic organizer, ask the students to write a brief description of the new topic

Analogy Graphic Organizer (Click on the template to edit it online)

8. Vocabulary graphic organizer

This tool can be used to assess the vocabulary knowledge of students. You can create graphic organizers including various elements to help students learn new words, and learn antonyms and synonyms.

9. Problem-solving organizer

Problem-solving graphic organizers can be used to improve the problem-solving skills of the students. It helps students identify and evaluate solutions to problems.
How to use it
Step 1: Identify the problem and write it in the problem box

Step 2: Ask students to then write down why they think it is a problem in the first place

Step 3: Get them to brainstorm all possible solutions along with the pros and cons relates to them.

Step 4: Once they select the best possible solution, ask them to list down all its possible consequences

Step 5: Students can then make suggestions to improve the selected solution further

10. Math Graphic Organizer

Math graphic organizers are used to describe math concepts graphically to students. It helps with simplifying and solving complex math problems.
How to use it
Step 1: Select the math problem you want to identify and a relevant graphic organizer that you can use to solve it.

Step 2: Invite your students or colleagues to collaborate as you wish.

math graphic organizer template (Click on the template to edit it online)

Graphic Organizers for Learning

11. Timeline graphic organizer

Timeline diagrams are a type of graphic organizer that shows a sequence of events in chronological order.

They come in handy when studying history as you can use it to display major historical events that occurred during a period of time along with important details such as dates and locations in which they took place.

In addition, timeline charts can also be used to show the progress of something (i.e. growth of a business) or changes.
How to use it
Step 1: Identify the different events and the sequence of order in which they took place.

Step 2: Use a research on your target audience to arrange them chronologically

Step 3: Include significant details such as dates, locations and other additional information as needed.

12. T chart

T charts allow students to study two facets of a topic. For example, disadvantages and advantages, pros and cons, differences and similarities, etc.
How to use it
Step 1: Draw a T chart and write down the two areas you want to brainstorm around on each column head.

Step 2: Write down facts on each column as you carry out your brainstorming.

13. Hierarchy chart

Hierarchy charts visualize the elements of a system, organization or concept from its highest position to the lowest. Students can use this tool to understand the superordinate and subordinate categories of a topic and the relationship between them.
How to use it
Step 1: Identify the most important element under the topic you are studying. Write this down at the top of the hierarchy chart.

Step 2: List down the second layer of sub-elements stemming from the first component you have identified. Add a third and fourth as necessary.

Step 3: Connect these with lines to show how they are connected to each other.

14. Star diagram

Star diagrams are used to organize the characteristics of a chosen topic. It can also be used to brainstorm around new topics.
How to use it
Step 1: Select the topic you want to study and write it down in the center of the star diagram.

Step 2: Write down the characteristics or attributes related to the central topics on each point of the star. Adjust the points of the star depending on how many traits you write down.

Graphic Organizers for Brainstorming

15. Cluster diagram

Cluster diagrams can be used to facilitate a brainstorming session or structure idea generation and even to help with exploring new topics.
How to use it
Step 1: Pick your topic of interest to explore. This should be placed in the middle of the diagram.

Step 2: Brainstorm around this main idea and come up with sub-topics related to it. Place them around the center.

Step 3: Brainstorm around each of the sub-topics and write down related ideas around them.

Step 4: Add as many layers as you want. However, use color-coding to emphasize each branch of thought. This will make it easier for you to read and understand the cluster diagram.

16. Lotus diagram

Lotus diagram is an analytical tool that can be used to breakdown broader and more complex topics into smaller components for easy understanding. It can be used for brainstorming and studying new topics.
How to use it
Step 1: Draw a 3×3 grid in the center. On the square in the center, write down the main topic to be explored.

Step 2: Write down the related sub-topics around it as you brainstorm.

Step 3: Draw 8 more 3×3 grids around the one in the center. Each of these can be used to write down facts that you brainstorm around each subtopic.

17. Cause and effect graphic organizer

This type of graphic organizer shows the causes and effects of an event. The cause is the reason why something has happened, and effect is the result of what has happened. Visualization helps clearly understand the different cause and effect relationships.
How to use it
Using a cause and effect graphic organizer, identify the causes and effects related to the problem you are studying or writing about. There could be several models of cause and effect events, such as one cause leading to one effect or multiple effects, or multiple causes leading to one effect or multiple effects.

One cause leading to several effects

Several causes leading to one effect (You can use a fishbone diagram here)

Each cause having one related effect

One cause triggering another cause that leads to another

18. Mind map

A mind map is a tool that helps capture the free flow of thought and is widely used for brainstorming around topics. Additionally, it can also be used to organize and group information about a topic.
How to use it
Step 1: Write down the topic you are brainstorming around in the center.

Step 2: On branches emerging from the middle, write down brainstormed ideas/ thoughts.

Step 3: Expand each sub idea with more facts. You can keep on adding more information to your mind map until you have enough.

Graphic Organizers for Compare and Contrast

Here we have listed 19 types of graphic organizers for teaching and learning. Based on their varied purposes, you can utilize them in reading, writing, researching, brainstorming, and analyzing. Best of all you can use our Compare and Contrast Chart Maker to draw them.

19. Double bubble map

The double bubble map is one of the popular thinking maps. It is much like a Venn diagram and is used to identify similar and different qualities between two things.
How to use it?
Step 1: Write down the two ideas/ topics you are comparing in the two bubbles in the center.

Step 2: As you brainstorm and analyze the topic, write down the differences in the bubbles radiating from the center.

Step 3: Write down the similarities in the bubbles that are common to both topics.

20. Venn diagram

Another graphic organizer that helps you visually represent a comparison of differences and similarities between two subjects, is the Venn diagram. What makes it different from the is that it can include more than two topics and one common area.
How to use it
It works similar to the double bubble map.

Step 1: Write down the topics being compared on the top of each circle.

Step 2: Writ down the differences or unique characteristics inside its own sector avoiding the overlapping area.

Step 3: List the similarities in the common area.

Add to Our List of Graphic Organizers for Teachers and Students

Although we have covered 19 types of graphic organizers in this post, there are plenty more that can be useful to our users. Know more? Mention in the comments section below to keep expanding the list of ultimate graphic organizers.

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The Ultimate List of Graphic Organizers for Teachers and Students | Creately

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19 types of graphic organizers for reading, writing, teaching, learning and brainstorming. Explained with editable templates for graphic organizers."

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Neuroscience, AI and the Future of Education | Scott Bolland | TEDxSouthBank