Neurosemiotics
Neurosemiotics is a pluralistic framework aimed to describe and explain semiosis as an emergent socio-biological phenomenon (García & Ibáñez, 2022a). It has been described as a subfield of biosemiotics that encompasses most work conducted within cognitive neuroscience (Bouissac, 1998). Yet, non-trivial differentiations can be traced between neurosemiotics and biosemiotics at epistemological, theoretical, methodological, and translational levels (García & Ibáñez, 2022a; Kull & Favareau, 2022).
Precursors of the field can be found in early medical semiotics (Sprengel, 1815), Jakob von Uexküll’s (1909) Umwelt theory, and Kurt Goldstein’s (1878–1965) neuropsychiatric formulations (Andersch, 2016). Yet, the term ‘neurosemiotics’ did not emerge until the early 1970s (Bouissac, 1987), with its first appearance in print dating back to 1971 (Arthur, 1971). Since then, reflections on neurosemiotics have been advanced in a few papers (Bouissac, 1979), special issues (Sergent, 1985), handbooks (Cariani, 2015; Favareau, 2010; Müller & Wolff, 2003; Nöth, 2000), and encyclopedias (Bouissac, 1998; Brier, 2007; Jorna, 2009; Wallentin, 2007). Yet, these mentions have been mostly brief and generalistic, with only a few volumes focusing centrally on the field (García & Ibáñez, 2022b; Grzybek, 1993; Tsvetkov & Pereguda, 2019).
Recent incarnations of neurosemiotics underscore a transdisciplinary ethos, aimed to track convergences across the neurocognitive, sensorimotor, visceral, hormonal, genetic, contextual, and cultural factors that jointly shape individual and social semiotic experiences (García & Ibáñez, 2022a). Inherent in this program is the goal of overcoming the “two cultures” divide demarcating the social and the natural sciences (Ibáñez et al., 2017; Snow, 2012). Neurosemiotics blurs epistemological and methodological distinctions between these traditions, highlighting their overlaps and continuities in search of theoretical, empirical, and translational innovations. This goal profits from tools hatched within neuropsychology (e.g., anatomo-clinical correlations), behavioral science (assessments of outward performance), neuroscience (e.g., brain imaging, brain stimulation), biology (e.g., animal communication), cognitive science (e.g., behavioral and kinetic measures), linguistics (e.g., text analysis), and social sciences (e.g., sociopolitical analysis) (García & Ibáñez, 2022b).
The latest effort to crystallize this vision can be found in the Routledge Handbook of Semiosis and the Brain (García & Ibáñez, 2022b), dealing with neurobiological aspects of semiotic phenomena as varied as lexico-semantic processing, syntax, discourse comprehension, bilingualism, sign languages, empathy, moral cognition, social interaction, friendship, ideology, religion, face recognition, music, tool use, interoception, and the construal of self. The eclectic nature of this list attests to the wide, ambitious scope of neurosemiotics as thriving intellectual arena.
Long Entry Forthcoming.
Bibliography
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