Week 7 Neuroscience +Art
This week, we learned more about the interaction between art and science, specifically neuroscience. In the reading of “Neuroculture,” Giovanni Frazetto and Suzanne Anker summarized that neuroscience is not solely constrained within laboratories, but readily captures the attention of the public at large. Neuroscience portrayed in literature, film, works of art, the mass media and commercial product offers an opportunity to make the scientific community and the public aware of the social and ethical implications of the scientific advances in neuroscience (Frazzetto & Anker 2009).
A great example of an artist combining art and science to contribute to the idea of consciousness in neuroscience is Ramón y Cajal, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology. As the father of modern neuroscience, he described pyramidal cells, neurons that he discovered as these butterflied of the soul. Here is one of his painting of neuronal network.
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Santiago Ramón y Cajal Drawings
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Another example of combining art and science is Brainbow, a visualization tool which is particularly useful in the study of dynamic biological systems. Brainbow is a genetic cell-labeling technique where hundreds of different hues can be generated by stochastic and combinatorial expression of a few spectrally distinct fluorescent proteins. From 3 to ∼100 colors can be generated by Brainbow (Weissman, Tamily & Pan 2015)
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| Imagine this: A team of 15 neuroscientists is to get R900-million in start-up funding for a project that could find a cure for diseases such as Alzheimer's, as well as a range of mental disorders. (Harvard University)https://bhekisisa.org/article/2013-06-28-00-theres-gold-at-the-end-of-the-brainbow |
We also discuss the idea of consciousness and unconsciousness. So I read the Global Consciousness Project (GCP), which is an international effort involving researchers from several institutions and countries, designed to explore whether the construct of interconnected consciousness can be scientifically validated through objective measurement. The project demonstrated that human consciousness interacts with random event generators (REGs), apparently causing them to produce non-random patterns. Here is a YouTube video about the project.
The Global Consciousness Project - Ph.D. Roger Nelson
However, while I believed that scientific breakthrough is mostly beneficial to the humankind, it is also fascinating to learn the perspective of Carl Jung, who thought that the industrial revolution also played a significant role in the emergence of the spiritual problem. He believed that methods of science could be used to remodel society, which can result in an increase in uniformity and a drastic decrease in the importance of the individual (Jung 1928).
References:
“Carl Jung and the Spiritual Problem of the Modern Individual.” Academy of Ideas, 1 Jan. 2019, academyofideas.com/2017/06/carl-jung-spiritual-problem-modern-individual/.
Frazzetto, Giovanni, and Suzanne Anker. “Neuroculture.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 1 Nov. 2009, www.nature.com/articles/nrn2736.
Nelson, Roger. “Global Consciousness Project: Introduction.” Princeton University, The Trustees of Princeton University, noosphere.princeton.edu/gcpintro.html.
Vesna, Victoria. “Neuroscience (Part 1).” Lecture. 19 May 2019
Weissman, Tamily A, and Y Albert Pan. “Brainbow: New Resources and Emerging Biological Applications for Multicolor Genetic Labeling and Analysis.” Genetics, Genetics Society of America, Feb. 2015, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4317644/.
I think your post had a lot of great examples that captured this week's topic. Particularly, I found the GCP interesting as it seems it would be rather hard to quantify consciousness. Jung's viewpoint, I think, is also powerful in being able to hone the power of science well.
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