Understanding brain and mind: representations of neuroscience in Swedish mass media

Findings from the neurosciences and their implications are subjects that are discussed and debated outside the specialised research context and by people that are not themselves part of the neuroscientific community. The article presents an empirical study of the ways that neuroscientific knowledge is represented in mass media. A sample consisting of all texts published in a major daily Swedish newspaper during one year that addressed the brain and neuroscience (n=202) was subjected to a qualitative analysis to elucidate how the brain and the relationship between brain and mental phenomena were represented. The results show that both objectifying and subjectifying representations of the brain are prevalent in the data. The representations of the relationship between brain and mind involves localisation of mental phenomena to structures and processes of the brain, explicit and implicit reductionist interpretations of neuroscientific findings as well as an element of identification where the brain is represented as something that defines the person. The results also highlight the role of metaphor and metonymy in these representations. In the discussion, the understanding of brain as an object susceptible to external influence and the notion of a double subjectivity are related to views on moral responsibilities.