From Photography to Fmri: Epistemic Functions of Images in Medical Research on Hysteria

Hysteria, a mysterious disease known since antiquity, is said to have ceased to exist. Challenging this commonly held view, this is the first cross-disciplinary study to examine the current functional neuroimaging research into hysteria and compare it to the nineteenth-century image-based research into the same disorder. Paula Muhr’s central argument is that, both in the nineteenth-century and the current neurobiological research on hysteria, images have enabled researchers to generate new medical insights. Through detailed case studies, Muhr traces how different images, from photography to functional brain scans, have reshaped the historically situated medical understanding of this disorder that defies the mind-body dualism.

Paula Muhr is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for History of Art and Architecture, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and a visual artist. She studied visual arts, art history, theory of literature, and physics before receiving her PhD in visual studies from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and a postgraduate diploma in fine arts (Meisterschülerin) from the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig. Her transdisciplinary research is at the intersection of visual studies, image theory, media studies, science and technology studies (STS), and history and philosophy of science. She examines knowledge-producing functions of new imaging and visualisation technologies in natural sciences, ranging from neuroscience over medicine to physics.