ABSTRACT
The success in our societies of medical visualisation technologies has given unprecedented import to the inside of the human body. Going beyond strictly biomedical areas, these technologies, especially neuroimaging, penetrate the socio-cultural and legal fi eld (Dumit 2004; Ortega and Vidal 2011; Simpson 2012). In popular culture too, medical imaging exerts a unique attraction ( Joyce 2005, 2008; van Dijck 2005; van Vall and Zwijnenberg 2009). Even those who have never been subjected to a computerised tomography (CT) scan or a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan are delighted with the medical images shown on television, on the computer screen or in scientifi c popularisation magazines. Positron emission tomography (PET) colour images of functioning brains have become as popular as Andy Warhol’s portraits of Marilyn Monroe or Mao Tse Tung, to which they bear a certain chromatic likeness.
