May 19, 2019 Week 7: Neuroscience and Art

May 19, 2019

Week 7: Neuroscience and Art

Aristotle

            Neuroscience, colloquially speaking, is the study of an individual's emotions, patterns, traits, and behaviors, as MedicalNewsToday puts it. Its roots can be traced back to Aristotle who first classified a distinction between "sense and reason." Although many of Aristotle's discoveries into this branch of science were flawed, his works inspired the modern "neuroculture" that Giovanni Frazzetto and Suzanne Anker describe. 


         
            Ramón y Cajal and Franz Joseph Gall, both influenced by Aristotle, revolutionized the understanding of the brain. Gall introduced his phrenology, which in essence said that we could learn about an individual's intellect and personality by looking at the shape of the skull. According to Mark Cohen, Gall went so far as to measure the bumps on someone's head, searching for indicators that could determine his subject's behaviors and actions. Cajal took a similar approach to Gall when he popularized his Neuron Theory. He believed that you could interpret the way neurons were connected by simply looking at their shape. His visual representations of the internal structures of the brain are breathtaking and speak to his background of an artist turned scientist. His work opened up gateways into seeing how changing a person's surroundings can influence the development of the brain, and eventually led to art therapy being classified as a type of psychological ailment remedy. For example, studies conducted by Harvard Medical School show that even just walking into a museum reduces one's anxiety levels by over 20%.

Drawing from Cajal's Butterflies for the Soul (a depiction of neurons in the brain)

            Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung went a step further than Cajal and Gall by distinguishing consciousness from unconsciousness. While Freud and Jung did collaborate, they arrived at two different schools of thought. Freud argued that personality was the driver of one's unconscious, while Jung advocated more for a collective human unconscious. 

           Most surprising to me in this week's lectures was learning that so many of these discoveries might not have been possible without the use of dangerous drugs. It was well documented that Freud was a cocaine addict and was under the influence when he arrived at many of his breakthroughs. Freud would draw much of what he would see in his hallucinations, allowing scientists, including himself, to study the effects cocaine and other drugs had on the brain. Some call these depictions art, but I view them as macabre. Additionally, Aldous Huxley experimented with LSD and was instrumental in sparking the counter-culture movement in the 60's and 70's. The relationship between neuroscience and art has had a dark past, but a bright future ahead. 

The brain of a person on cocaine

References

Vesna, Victoria. “Conscious / Memory (Part 1).” Lecture. 19 May 2019. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DLVQIwOn7o8.

Vesna, Victoria. Lecture. “Conscious / Memory (Part 2).” 19 May 2019. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Xlg5wXHWZNI.

Vesna, Victoria. Lecture. “Conscious / Memory (Part 3).” 19 May 2019. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=E5EX75xoBJ0.

Cohan, Mark. Lecture. 19 May 2019. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eDq8uTROeXU.

“Aristotle: The Journey of a Philosopher.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 23 Mar. 2014, www.iep.utm.edu/aristotl/.

Nordqvist, Christian. “Neuroscience: Overview, History, Major Branches.” Medical News Today, MediLexicon International, 26 June 2018, www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/248680.php.

Benedict, Joshua. “Aldous Huxley.” Aldous Huxley - Biography - The Author And His Times, somaweb.org/w/huxbio.html.

Herout, Lispen. “Psychology School Lessons | Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.” AllPsychologySchools.com, www.allpsychologyschools.com/psychology/freud-jung/.

Harvard Health Publishing. “The Healing Power of Art.” Harvard Health, July 2017, www.health.harvard.edu/mental-health/the-healing-power-of-art.

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

Art, Lionede. Aristotle. Photograph. 2015. https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/introducing-the-ancient-greeks/6939844.

National Institute on Drug Abuse. Cocaine. Photograph. 2019. https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/teaching-packets/brain-actions-cocaine-opiates-marijuana/section-iii-introduction-to-drugs-abuse-cocaine-opiat-5

Cajal, Ramón. Butterflies of the Soul. Photograph. 2017. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/cajals-butterflies-of-the-soul-9780195392708?cc=us&lang=en&.