Week 7: Neuroscience and Art

The brain can be expressed in many ways though art. Neuroscience has become a field that is not only scientific but artistic as well, and very prevalent in society. As Frazzetto and Anker write about in “Neurocultre,” the scientific information being produces in the labs is being used in so many other places like our “daily lives, social practices, and intellectual discourses” (Frazzetto and Anker 815). I have not thought to deeply about how much we are thinking about how our brain works and how the knowledge is being used in so many fields. Using art to express the findings in the neuroscientific world can help to educate the general public as well. For example one of the videos showcased in this week’s lecture is a song by The Amygdaloids called “Fearing,” which talks about fear, how it is felt, what it is, and what is does to an individual. There are many artists who sing about different feelings, and what those feelings do to them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMI3hbgRj6o

There are experiments done based on research done on the brain. For example there is a group involved in something called The Global Consciousness Project, which researches the many states people are in thought the world, trying to find connections between the different states of consciousness. Different thoughts and emotions provide different outputs of energy, which is measured to find different descriptors of what consciousness can be. A thought experiment called Schrödinger’s Cat, tries to measure the state of the object when it is in suspended animation. The observer has to make the call is the object, in this case a cat) is dead or alive when the box with the cat inside is exposed to the observer. There is argument whether this observation is a true measurement of the cat’s state, because the cat, if it survives, thinks he was completely alive the whole time however to the outside observer the animal looked dead. Roger Penrose brings the third culture into this topic, which is a valid observation. He talks about how measuring something in relation to consciousness has to be with something more than just numbers, which would involve not only scientific thought but artistic input as well.

The neuron connection is the brain are expressed through art work as well: 

Sumi-e paining by Dr. Dunn

Todd Carpenter's "ISOTHUJONE"

Bibliography

Brockman, John. "The Third Culture - Chapter 14." The Third Culture - Chapter 14. Simon & Schuster, 1995. Web. 14 May 2016. <https://www.edge.org/documents/ThirdCulture/v-Ch.14.html>.

Feelings. Perf. The Amygdaloids. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMI3hbgRj6o

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

"The Global Consciousness Project." Global Consciousness Project: Introduction. 

Web. 14 May 2016. <http://noosphere.princeton.edu/gcpintro.html>.

Vankin, Deborah. "Todd Carpenter on Art, Neuroscience and Seeing the Light." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 28 Aug. 2015. Web. 14 May 2016.

Vesna, Victoria. "Unit 7 Veiw." UC Online. Web. 14 May 2016. 

<https://cole2.uconline.edu/courses/484297/pages/unit-7-view?module_item_id=8599411>.

"Schrödinger's Cat." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Web. 14 May 2016. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger's_cat>.

Woollaston, Victoria. "A Beautiful Mind: Japanese-style Art Inspired by Neuroscience Reveals Grey Matter in Much More Colourful Glory." Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 15 Dec. 2014. Web. 14 May 2016.