“I felt an urge to look at—and possess—the portraits of my brain that had captivated the attention of so many doctors and served the shareholders of so many drug companies. I wanted to see myself as they had seen me.”

At the beginning of the new millennium, Jakob Senneby squinted at a grayscale image of his brain while a doctor traced a series of white blobs on the screen. His doctor told him that these figures, captured by an MRI scan, were “white spots”: signs of damage to the nervous system that are associated with multiple sclerosis. In the following years, Senneby—one half of the artist duo Goldin+Senneby—cycled through experimental and largely ineffectual treatments, tracking the progress of the disease with each scan, with each crop of “attacks” launched by his immune system. As he lost faith in the drugs, Senneby learned that the white spots have proven to be a source of immense, hidden value: a booming economy is based on visualizing, counting, and measuring the spots in the development of pharmaceuticals. The drugs have become more and more successful in treating the white spots in the image, but not in addressing the onset of permanent disability—the most critical consequence of the disease. Nevertheless, the value of the market for treatments has reached nearly $30 billion per year.

”Regions of Interest” is an essay on living as a medical specimen and reckoning with the booming market for images of diseased brains. Published in Triple Canopy, issue #28, October 2023.

READ: ”Regions of Interest”

LISTEN TO: Regions of Interest” (audio recording)