One Day in the City

Dr Hugo Spiers is a lecturer in the Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences Department at University College London. His research group investigates how our brain constructs representations of the world and uses them to navigate the present, imagine the future and remember the past.

Abstract: 'What I want to know doesn't appear in the A-Z': neuroscientific and literary approaches to psychogeography in the work of Will Self

Recently we have seen a “neurorevolution”, which claims that insights into the functioning of the human brain will lead not only to novel technology, but to a radical transformation of our sense of what it is to be human. This neurobiological turn has influenced anti-scientific disciplines, such as art history and English studies, whilst also generating scepticism and hostility from certain corners of traditional arts and humanities subjects. We would like to address this by focusing on the ways in which neuroscience and literature map and help us understand cities, and London in particular. Our case study is one of the most provocative contemporary authors, Will Self, whose work has given us textual Londons inflected by an idiosyncratic, surreal imagination and linguistic pyrotechnics. Spiers will talk about results from a recent experiment with Self, who underwent various tests in Soho and an MRI scan as part of research following up on how London’s black cab drivers use their brain to navigate London’s labyrinth of streets. Groes will discuss Self’s London psychogeographies from a literary and historical angle. Whilst discussing findings from their own disciplinary perspectives, Groes and Spiers will also aim to find common ground, amid the seductive snares of neurorealism and neuroscientism.