Week 7 Assignment

Week 7 Assignment

Neuroscience and Art

     This week I found the discussion topic very interesting and I thought that Suzanne Anker gave me the best idea about what to expect from a combination of Neuroscience and Art. One of the works of hers that I found to be very intriguing was her artwork depicting scans of the brain combined with inkblots and butterflies. I thought this was very cool because you do not often see art being made out of scans of the human body. I think about x-rays and MRIs and I begin to imagine all of the types of art you can create with those pictures. I think that Suzanne is a genius for combining the two elements and making it work as a piece of art.

     Another feature this week that interested me was Christopher deCharm's TED talk about the brain and how parts of our brain control parts of our body. The talk was in 2008, 10 years ago, and he said, "Soon we will be able to see our brain activating when we try to control certain areas of our body." He is saying that we can have an active scan of our brain going while we are moving about so that we can see what parts of our brain are being activated by specific movements. I think that this is really cool and the fact that this kind of technology has not been made popular yet just goes to show how much time and effort probably goes into something like this.

     I think that I have learned a lot about Neuroscience and how art can be applied in this week's discussion. I stop and think about how the two are different and it is incredibly obvious. Anyone can paint lines on a brain scan, or try to create a work of art based off a neurological depiction. But the amount of money, time, and effort it takes to make that brain scan or that x-ray is incredibly high and the difference between art and neuroscience is pretty noticeable. Still, that does not mean that the two cannot work well together. You can obviously see in Anker's artwork that art can be combined with almost anything and it will come out great. 

Anker, Suzanne. “Bio Art Lab.” Suzanne Anker, suzanneanker.com/bio-art-lab/.

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

deCharms, Christopher. “A Look inside the Brain in Real Time.” TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, 

Badhwar, Amanpreet, and Estrid Jakobsen. “The Interplay between Neuroscience and Art.”Organization for Human Brain Mapping, 3 June 2017

Vesna, Victoria. "Neuroscience" YouTube. Lecture. May 16, 2012. May 16, 2018.