This course provides an overview of recent controversies surrounding cognitive neuroscience and the implications of recent advancements for psychiatry, industry, policy and other areas of social life. It will present key studies in social and cultural neuroscience from the last two decades and examine the potentials and limitations of predominant methodologies, particularly neuroimaging. The course will present the interdisciplinary project of critical neuroscience as a framework and set of tools with which to critically analyze interpretations of neuroscience data in the academic literature, their representation in popular domains and more broadly, the growth of neurocultures since the Decade of the Brain. The course will provide a forum to problematize, and consider alternatives to, neurobiological reductionism in psychiatry, areas of neuroethics, cultural neuroscience and neuropolicy, attending to the models, metaphors and political contexts of mainstream brain research. It will also explore various avenues for engagement between neuroscience, social sciences and the humanities.