Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: Lucas Buosi

Uma banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : Lucas Buosi
DATE: 24/10/2022
TIME: 09:30
LOCAL: SOL
TITLE:

The quest for neurorehabilitation: the coproduction of social and cognitive values

KEY WORDS:

Brain-Computer Interface; Neurorehabilitation; Technoscience; Control; Autonomy.

PAGES: 129
BIG AREA: Ciências Humanas
AREA: Sociologia
SUMMARY:

Since the 1990s, neurosciences have attracted public attention due to the
rehabilitative potential of some neurotechnologies, especially Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs). They
have been legitimized mainly for their medical use, as a way of promoting the autonomy of patients
who have serious mobility and communication difficulties and who therefore need intensive care. The
BCIs have as a horizon the effective modulation of the brain, the stimulation or inhibition of some of its
most basic capacities by controlling the most fundamental parts, in order to make it possible for people
to directly control (through the brain) orthoses, mechanical prostheses, computers , in short, a variety of
things that are made of software and hardware. Such modulation implies the production of technologies
that produce a material encounter between neurons and computers; an effective translation, from one
scope to another, of the person's intentions and the possibilities of application of the artifact in constant
feedback, resulting in the brain's incorporation of a new skill and a new body perception. Such
possibilities are not always imitative of what a human is, they can be extensive, aiming to promote more
than optimal health. That is, in certain situations, the control made possible by the BCIs is allied with an
idea of autonomy, understood as solidarity with the “vulnerable”, aiming at rehabilitation; in others by
the bias of competition among the “normal”, aiming at performance gains. With this in mind, following
Hugh Lacey, we ask ourselves: what are the values built by Brazilian scientists working in Research and
Development (R&D) in BCIs and how they influence the conduction of their agendas; how they relate
to the social value of control; and how they perceive (or not) the tension between different ideas of what
autonomy is for the human being. For this, we use the “language of co-production” formulated by
Sheila Jasanoff, aiming to empirically understand how technoscience (the BCIs) and cognitive and
social values are mutually produced, especially control and autonomy. Our focus, due to the type of
research carried out in Brazil, is the therapeutic and potentially rehabilitative use of CHFs, carried out
particularly in Public Universities. The methodology of the work is predominantly qualitative, for which
conducting semi-structured interviews with leading scientists, building a topography of scientific
knowledge circulation networks and analyzing the content of scientific literature are central instruments.

BANKING MEMBERS:
Externo à Instituição - Bráulio Silva Chaves - CEFET/RJ
Externo ao Programa - 1206942 - CLAUDIO FORTES GARCIA LORENZO
Presidente - 1642428 - FABRICIO MONTEIRO NEVES
Interna - 2529076 - SAYONARA DE AMORIM GONCALVES LEAL
Interno - 1569541 - TIAGO RIBEIRO DUARTE