Mutant mice: experimental organisms as materialised models in biomedicine.

Animal models have received particular attention as key examples of material models. In this paper, we argue that the specificities of establishing animal models-acknowledging their status as living beings and as epistemological tools-necessitate a more complex account of animal models as materialised models. This becomes particularly evident in animal-based models of diseases that only occur in humans: in these cases, the representational relation between animal model and human patient needs to be generated and validated. The first part of this paper presents an account of how disease-specific animal models are established by drawing on the example of transgenic mice models for Alzheimer's disease. We will introduce an account of validation that involves a three-fold process including (1) from human being to experimental organism; (2) from experimental organism to animal model; and (3) from animal model to human patient. This process draws upon clinical relevance as much as scientific practices and results in disease-specific, yet incomplete, animal models. The second part of this paper argues that the incompleteness of models can be described in terms of multi-level abstractions. We qualify this notion by pointing to different experimental techniques and targets of modelling, which give rise to a plurality of models for a specific disease.

Colorful brains: 14 years of display practice in functional neuroimaging.

Neuroimaging results are typically graphically rendered and color-coded, which influences the process of knowledge generation within neuroscience as well as the public perception of brain research. Analyzing these issues requires empirical information on the display practice in neuroimaging. In our study we evaluated more than 9000 functional images (fMRI and PET) published between 1996 and 2009 with respect to the use of color, image structure, image production software and other factors that may determine the display practice. We demonstrate a variety of display styles despite a remarkable dominance of few image production sites and software systems, outline some tendencies of standardization, and identify shortcomings with respect to color scale explication in neuroimages. We discuss the importance of the finding for knowledge production in neuroimaging, and we make suggestions to improve the display practice in neuroimaging, especially on regimes of color coding.

[LONI & Co: about the epistemic specificity of digital spaces of knowledge in cognitive neuroscience]. / LONI & Co: Die epistemische Spezifität digitaler Wissensräume in der kognitiven Neurowissenschaft.

In the neurosciences digital databases more and more are becoming important tools of data rendering and distributing. This development is due to the growing impact of imaging based trial design in cognitive neuroscience, including morphological as much as functional imaging technologies. As the case of the 'Laboratory of Neuro Imaging' (LONI) is showing, databases are attributed a specific epistemological power: Since the 1990s databasing is seen to foster the integration of neuroscientific data, although local regimes of data production, -manipulation and--interpretation are also challenging this development. Databasing in the neurosciences goes along with the introduction of new structures of integrating local data, hence establishing digital spaces of knowledge (epistemic spaces): At this stage, inherent norms of digital databases are affecting regimes of imaging-based trial design, for example clinical research into Alzheimer's disease.