Week 7: Neuroscience & Art

After looking at the interaction between body and art, this week professor Vesna leads us through the relationship between art and consciousness. "Despite the intricacy and complexity, its (neuroscience's) substance and technical details, neuroscience research engages the interest and curiosity of the general public". Actually, it is not only the general public, artists have always "been fascinated with the idea of mind".

I was amazed by artists's visualization of neurons, which is an electrically excitable cell that process and transmits information. They are creating masterpieces with the combination of technology and art. Artist Suzanne Anker and neuroscientist Giovanni Frazzetto have started a project that trigger my particular interest. Their fascinating and elegant "The Butterfly in the Brain" uses three-dimensional Rorschach inkblot, brain scans and images of butterfly wings to "explore the imagery of symmetric structure of brains".  Suzanne Anker creates this kind of "nuanced variation that gives the audience a subtle optical illusion even though the butterflies are identical.

In part II of professor Vesna's lecture, she talked about unconscious mind and dreams. She introduced that there are 95% percent of the dreams is forgotten. Significant scientists like Freud have made their  enormous contributions to the research of unconscious mind. Talking about dreams and people's concern about dreams, I come up with a famous movie called "Inception". In inception, director Norlan explored "the idea of people sharing a dream space" and the ability to access somebody's unconscious mind. The movie is intertwined between reality and dream space, showing the mysterious and intricate level of unconscious mind. It is a great resource for general public, including me to have time thinking about our own dreams.

In the video lecture, I also learned about the neuro-chemicals like cocaine and LSD that participates in neural activity. Actually, I have the chance to know about LSD on my statistics class about experiment design. I read about statisticians's experiments on subjects using LSD. Statisticians want to test the effect of LSD on physical performances like running and jogging. It turns out LSD have a significantly negative effect on subjects moving ability, not to mention physical performances. I understand scientists' effort of exploring neuro-chemical on brains and consciousness. Sometimes the result might be horrible and get out of control.



Citations:
[1] Benedict, Campbell. "5min Tutorial on Brain Science - ChaLearn Connectomics Challenges." 5min Tutorial on Brain Science - ChaLearn Connectomics Challenges. Web. 16 May 2016.

[2]Christopher, Bergland. "The Neurochemicals of Happiness." Psychology Today. Web. 16 May 2016.

[3]Frazzetto, Giovanni, and Suzanne Anker. "Neuroculture." Nature Reviews Neuroscience Nat Rev Neurosci 10.11 (2009): 815-21. Web.

[4]Regine. "BRAINWAVE: Common Senses." We Make Money Not Art. 2008. Web. 16 May 2016.

[5]"Inception." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 16 May 2016.

[6]"Neuron." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 16 May 2016.

[7]"Ran 4.3 Miles on Acid, Lsd Today. Exercise While Tripping? • /r/Drugs." Reddit. Web. 16 May 2016.

[8]Vesna, Victoria. Lecture. “Conscious / Memory (Part 2).” 16 Nov 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Xlg5wXHWZNI>

[9]Vesna, Victoria. Lecture. “Conscious / Memory (Part 3).” 16 Nov 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=E5EX75xoBJ0>