WEEK 7: Neuroscience + Art

 

(Bartolini and Franck Polleux )

          This week’s course was extremely insightful and helped me gain a new sense of appreciation for the importance of collaboration between neuroscience and art. The blog below will discuss how neuroscience can be used to enhance artistic perspective, and how art has led to breakthroughs in neuroscience. Additionally, I will also discuss how there continues to be resistance to the collaboration of these two disciplines. 

(Taylor) 

         “Through neuroscience, we develop a specific understanding of the models of the world that the brain uses to make sense of incoming visual data” (Blaszczyk).   Dr. RamaKrishnan in his lectures discusses how visual perception can be manipulated using this knowledge of neuroscience. I particularly appreciate his example of how we perceive things differently when words are associated with them. For example, seeing chicken fingers without the word “fun” and seeing a human figure with the word “fun”.  It made me think about how marketing artists use this scientific knowledge to target audiences better. Additionally, artists too could use this information to create multifaceted artworks. 

(Volodko) 

          Art too could lead to the development of neuroscience. For example, “Proust beat neuroscientists to the punch in discovering that memory is faulty and always changing” (Max). Although there is no documented evidence of this, I believe that Proust could have inspired neuroscientists. Additionally, it is well known that some early neuroscientists often “drew what they saw. These artistic renderings played a critical role in helping researchers grapple with the mysteries of our most vital organ” (Leman).  Hence, we see that if it weren’t for these drawings much of the discoveries made in neuroscience would not have been possible. 

        “The last decade or so has seen substantial interdisciplinary activity between the arts and sciences”  (Pepperell). However, as Dr. Ramakrishnan elaborated in his lectures, there is still significant resistance to collaboration between the two disciplines. He described how scientists often dismiss artistic collaborations and how humanities majors (for example- gender studies) want to label themselves non-scientists. I find this very saddening, especially given the advantages that could be made with collaboration. I hope these attitudes change with time. 

WORKS CITED: 

Blaszczyk, Connie. “3Q: The Interface between Art and Neuroscience.” MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 16 Apr. 2019, news.mit.edu/2019/3-questions-sarah-schwettmann-interface-between-art-and-neuroscience-0416#:~:text=Neuroscience%20and%20art%2C%20therefore%2C%20each,sense%20of%20incoming%20visual%20data. 

Max, D. T. “Swann's Hypothesis.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 4 Nov. 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/books/review/Max-t.html. 

Pepperell, Robert. “Connecting Art and the Brain: An Artist's Perspective on Visual Indeterminacy.” Frontiers, Frontiers, 30 July 2011, www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2011.00084/full. 

Leman, Jennifer. “The Brain in Images: Top Entries in the Art of Neuroscience.” Scientific American, Scientific American, 29 July 2019, www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-brain-in-images-top-entries-in-the-art-of-neuroscience1.  

RamaKrishnan, Siddharth. “Mind's Eye Course.” 10 May 2021.

Bartolini, Francesca, and Franck Franck Polleux . Cell Biology of Neurodegeneration, 2019, italianacademy.columbia.edu/event/cell-biology-neurodegeneration. 

Taylor, Jim. Perception Is Not Reality, 5 Aug. 2019, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-power-prime/201908/perception-is-not-reality. 

Volodko, Natalia. Human Brain. 2021, www.123rf.com/photo_494891_human-brain.html.