The travelling vision and the wave of Big Neurosciences: What circulates when there is no model?

During the last decade, several large-scale projects in brain research were launched around the world. This “wave of Big Neurosciences” calls into question the framework of the circulation of policy model since no specific model is identifiable. To grasp this “wave,” this paper conducts a comparative study (the EC, the US, South Korea) by drawing upon the framework of travelling vision and sociotechnical imaginary. The study demonstrates that (1) the travelling vision of Big Neuroscience has inspired local actors and encouraged them to elaborate large-scale projects; (2) the vision of Big Neuroscience has differently been interpreted by the local actors and reformulated throughout the negotiation with institutions embedding particular imaginaries, which entailed diverging large-scale projects in each case. The findings suggest that the travelling vision and the wave of Big Science have reinforced technological solutionism and existing dominant imaginaries, which would hurt democracy by allowing their promoters to bypass inclusive social debates.