"The story Modern tells ranges from eighteenth-century brain anatomies to the MRI; from the spread of phrenological cabinets and mental pieties in the nineteenth century to the discovery of the motor cortex and the emergence of the brain wave as a measurable manifestation of cognition; from cybernetic research into neural networks and artificial intelligence to the founding of brain-centric religious organizations such as Scientology; from the deployments of cognitive paradigms in electric shock treatment to the work of Barbara Brown, a neurofeedback pioneer who promoted the practice of controlling one's own brainwaves in the 1970s. What Modern reveals via this grand tour is that our ostensibly secular turn to the brain is bound up at every turn with the 'religion' it discounts, ignores, or actively dismisses. Nowhere are science and religion closer than when they try to exclude each other, at their own peril"-- Provided by publisher.

Introduction -- Synaptic gap : measuring religion. Thinking about cognitive scientists thinking about religion -- Synaptic gap : the information of history. Neither matter nor spirit : toward a genealogy of information -- Synaptic gap : too much too soon. Imagining the neuromatic -- Synaptic gap : white machinery. Histories of electric shock therapy circa 1978 -- Synaptic gap : belief molecules. Conclusion : the elementary forms of neuromatic life.