Wired: Early Intervention and the 'Neuromolecular Gaze'

Beginning with an interview with the then UK prime minister, Tony Blair, in 2006, the article critically explores how the discourse on early intervention has evolved over the past ten years. Ideas circulating around early intervention have been revitalised by neuroscience and the new prominence of what has been termed the 'neuromolecular gaze'. This 'gaze', aided by new imaging technologies, is now playing a substantial role in promoting neuroscience. Moreover, neuroscience has been deployed by spokespeople from across the mainstream political spectrum and within academia to amplify the argument that early intervention into the lives of children and families is vital. At least two elements need further critical exploration: first, the assertion that a child's brain is irrevocably 'wired' before the age of three; second, how this, apparently, 'objective' and 'scientifically grounded' approach is dialectically enmeshed with doxic and gendered ideas associated with attachment theory.