AUTHOR COPY Original Article Re-visioning the past: Neuromedievalism and the neural circuits of vision Ashby Kinch Department of English, University of Montana, Montana Abstract This article argues that contemporary neuroscientific theories of visual perception provide an important body of concepts through which medievalists can explore the intuitive insights exemplified in medieval visual theory and visual culture. postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies (2012) 3, 262–271. doi:10.1057/pmed.2012.18 Let me begin with a speculative definition of a non-existent entity: neuro- medievalism is the judicious use of the conceptual tools and research results of neuroscientific research as a means of constructing an enriched engagement with medieval culture. In the last two decades, major breakthroughs in neuroscience have contributed to an important, though subtle, shift from a passive, mechanical model of brain function to a model that emphasizes the biologically rooted, body-based characteristics of cognition (Merzenich and deCharms, 1996; Ramachandran and Blakeslee, 1998; Damasio, 1999, 2010; Schwartz and Begley, 2002). Computational models are still central to the working methods of neurobiology (Gallistell and King, 2009), which depend on an ability to calculate infinitesimal speeds of neural pro- cessing, but ‘computation’ no longer provides a coherent or convincing metaphor r 2012 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 2040-5960 postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies Vol. 3, 3, 262–271 www.palgrave-journals.com/pmed/