From websites and smartphone applications to wearable devices, mental health has become increasingly understood and managed through technologies. One of the results of these digital developments has been an approach to mental health that encompasses the body in its totality. In this frame, it is not enough to consider mental health as a matter for the brain and/or the mind, the body and the datafication of the body are harnessed to provide an apparently more holistic picture of mental health. This chapter examines the approach to mental health as a matter for the ‘total body’ using the digitalisation of the vagus nerve as a case study. Part of the microbiome-gut-brain axis, the vagus nerve has been positioned as a potent site for producing mental wellness in recent years. A combination of wellness and social media discourse, self-help material, and technologies has produced labour on the vagus nerve as essential for mental health. The chapter seeks to explore how mental health becomes framed as a form of technology-enabled bodily attunement through wearable technologies that target the vagus nerve.

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Digitalising the Vagus Nerve: Critical Mental Health and the ‘total body’

  • Jacinthe Flore

摘要

From websites and smartphone applications to wearable devices, mental health has become increasingly understood and managed through technologies. One of the results of these digital developments has been an approach to mental health that encompasses the body in its totality. In this frame, it is not enough to consider mental health as a matter for the brain and/or the mind, the body and the datafication of the body are harnessed to provide an apparently more holistic picture of mental health. This chapter examines the approach to mental health as a matter for the ‘total body’ using the digitalisation of the vagus nerve as a case study. Part of the microbiome-gut-brain axis, the vagus nerve has been positioned as a potent site for producing mental wellness in recent years. A combination of wellness and social media discourse, self-help material, and technologies has produced labour on the vagus nerve as essential for mental health. The chapter seeks to explore how mental health becomes framed as a form of technology-enabled bodily attunement through wearable technologies that target the vagus nerve.