Week 7: Neuroscience + Art

This week's topic covers the intersection of neuroscience and art, and out of all the concepts we've covered during this course, I think this is my favorite so far.

I have always been fascinated by the brain. However, I often find myself confused and tangled in my thoughts about how dreams work and the differences between the unconscious mind vs. the subconscious. I enjoyed Siddharth Ramakrishnan's talk about how our minds process and visually interpret the world around us. He gave some insight into how different minds process and visualize things differently, which was interesting. This reminded me of those optical illusions where two images are present, but you will only see one of them depending on your brain. 

"The Young Girl - Old Woman" optical illusion

Brainbow

As described in "Neuroculture," research about neuroscience has become a common interest because neuroscience can explain "the underpinnings of our individuality, such as emotions, consciousness, the way we make our decisions and our socio-psychological interactions" (1). Neuroscience offers insight into ourselves, which is often hard to obtain. 

I hadn't considered the overlap of neuroscience and art until now, but I think it's captivating. The "brainbow" that Professor Vesna lectured on interested me because of how intricately beautiful it is. Brainbow is the term used to describe the way that individual neurons are studied by using fluorescent proteins. Scientists can choose to express different ratios of fluorescent proteins, which allows them to distinguish between other neurons. This method of research is 1) a significant contribution to neuroscience 2) super cool looking. 

I think that with time people will only become more interested in neuroscience. I am excited to continue learning about the brain as new research comes out, and I can assume others will be too because it is a fascinating thing to understand why you are who you are.

Sources

“Brainbow.” Brainbow | Center for Brain Science, cbs.fas.harvard.edu/science/connectome-project/brainbow.

Cherry, Kendra. “The Structure and Levels of the Mind According to Freud.” Verywell Mind, 9 Dec. 2020, www.verywellmind.com/the-conscious-and-unconscious-mind-2795946.

Deutsch, David. “A New Way to Explain Explanation.” TED, www.ted.com/talks/david_deutsch_a_new_way_to_explain_explanation.html.

Frazzetto, Giovanni, and Suzanne Anker. “Neuroculture.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience, vol. 10, no. 11, 2009, pp. 815–821., doi:10.1038/nrn2736.

“How to Build a Bigger Brain.” How to Build a Bigger Brain - U Magazine - UCLA Health - Los Angeles, CA, www.uclahealth.org/u-magazine/how-to-build-a-bigger-brain.

“Neuroscience-Mark Cohen.mov.” YouTube, 12 May 2012, youtu.be/eDq8uTROeXU.

“Neuroscience-pt1.Mov.” YouTube, 17 May 2012, youtu.be/TzXjNbKDkYI.

Published by angelikaandclaudia View all posts by angelikaandclaudia, et al. “Conscious Mind Versus Subconscious Mind.” Educationforlifeourblog, 21 Dec. 2015, educationforlifeourblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/21/conscious-mind-versus-subconscious-mind/.