Week 7 | Neuroscience + Art |

The study of brain, mind, behavior, consciousness, otherwise known as neuroscience, is an “exploding field” as Vesna puts it, with neuroscientists attempting to solve age-old questions like “why do we behave the way we do?” and “how do we remember?” But what is the brain and how does it differ from the mind? Well, according to Professor Michael Levine, “the mind is what the brain does” being a “result of the overall activity of the brain”. Historically, the mind was thought to be something more abstract, maybe even a “soul”, while the brain itself is more simply thought to be a “complex organ specialized to carry out major acts of living” such as movement, reproduction, and adaptation (Levine).

Figure 1 - "An MRI scan highlights areas of activity"
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/29/neuroscience-guide-vaughan-bell

Having studied neuroscience and psychology here at UCLA, I had not heard of any direct connection neuroscience has to art so this week’s lecture has been an eye-opening lesson for me. In Art, Mind, And Brain, Howard Gardner explains the “mystery of artistic creativity” and its links to the development of the brain of a child to an “artistically stunted” adult. What I find most enjoyable about his book is the lack of scientific jargon; Gardner often describes his complex and scientific thoughts using layman terms. Gardner states that a child “does not fully appreciate the rules and conventions of symbolic realms”, whereas adults “[are] fully cognizant of the norms embraced by others”; what this means to me is that while artistic adults can be trained to think outside-the-box, children don’t even have a box to repress their thoughts and creativity in the first place.

Figure 2 - Howard Gardner's Art, Mind, And Brain: A Cognitive Approach to Creativity
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41Fu3XJJDQL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Another aspect of that intrigues me is the way neuroscience is used to actually create art. Vesna mentions an artist called Suzanne Anker who created a collection of works, “fMRI Butterfly”, in which images of butterflies were superimposed onto brain-scans, creating a “subtle optical illusion” (Vesna). In Science and Society: Neuroculture, Giovanni Frazzetto explains that these were not just optical illusions but somewhat of a test of “underlying neurological processes at work in perception”.

Figure 3 - Butterfly in the Brain, 2007 by Suzanne Anker
http://www.suzanneanker.com/artwork/?wppa-album=4&wppa-photo=275&wppa-occur=1

While not intentionally created as an art piece, the “Brainbow” has nevertheless showed the world how beautiful neuroscience can be. The “Brainbow” technique was developed by the Harvard Center for Brain Science in which “each individual nerve cell [was labelled] a different color to identify and track axons and dendrites over long distances” (Harvard CBS). The result is a colorful explosion of rain droplets which both intrigue and creep me out a little considering all of this is actually within our head. 

Figure 4 - Hippocampus CA1 by J. Lichtman
http://cbs.fas.harvard.edu/usr/connectome/brainbow/brainbow2.2.jpg

Citations

• Center for Brain Science at Harvard University. "Brainbow." Brainbow. Center for Brain Science at Harvard University, n.d. Web. 17 May 2015. <http://cbs.fas.harvard.edu/science/connectome-project/brainbow#>.
• Frazzetto, Giovanni, and Suzanne Anker. "Science and Society: Neuroculture." Nature Reviews Neuroscience 10.11 (2009): n. pag. Nov. 2009. Web. 17 May 2015. <http://www.suzanneanker.com/wp-content/uploads/2009-Anker-Suzanne-Giovanni-Frazzetto-Neuroculture-Nature-Reviews.pdf>.
• Gardner, Howard. Art, Mind, And Brain: A Cognitive Approach to Creativity. New York: Basic, 1982. Google. Web. 17 May 2015. <https://books.google.com/books?id=2BMDYRRF1WcC&dq=gardner+%22art+mind+and+brain%22&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=DYaIMCGy4j&sig=8yrvOMWISopSrN_fNXsYqUPJCgw#v=onepage&q=gardner%20%22art%20mind%20and%20brain%22&f=false>.
• Levine, Michael S., and Joseph B. Watson. Lecture 1 - Introduction to the Brian and Brief History. Los Angeles: n.p., n.d. PPT.
• Neuroscience-pt1.mov. Perf. Victoria Vesna. YouTube. YouTube, 17 May 2012. Web. 17 May 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=598&v=TzXjNbKDkYI>.