Week 7: Neuroscience + Art

Greg Dunn's brain scan

This week we were specifically looking at the human brain and how art comes from it in different ways. People use the image of the brain to create art like with the colorized brain scans that Greg Dunn created, but also everything that a person has ever thought comes from the brain. There is no way around that, the brain dictates every choice we make and that includes the creativity that we experience. People say phrases like “Should you follow your heart or your head?” but you could never actually follow just your heart.

I believe that the process of knowledge where one scientist, philosopher, or person claims something and it is believed to be true based on their evidence until someone else comes in and proves it to be untrue is an art form. Looking back on the history of what we were able to come up with and understand and watching how it has changed and developed over time as different brains have worked through it is like watching a person perfect their style of art. You can see the different strokes that they used to use and they way they chose colors, you can see how the brain would comprehend a question and provide an answer and then how other brains would argue that answer. It is art not from a specific person, but from the human brain. We were given the example of Schrödinger’s cat and that was a thought experiment that was supposed to contradict the Copenhagen interpretation and people agreed however over time physicists have proved Schrödinger wrong.

Schrödinger's Cat

Sources:

“Schrödinger's Cat.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Mar. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger's_cat.

Nemo, Leslie. “Watch the Human Brain Come to Life in This Stunning Piece of Art.” Scientific American, 21 June 2017, www.scientificamerican.com/article/watch-the-human-brain-come-to-life-in-this-stunning-piece-of-art/?redirect=1.

GREG DUNN DESIGN, www.gregadunn.com/.

“Your ‘Miracle’ Brain, in Full Color: Neuroscience Art.” Migraine Again, 6 Apr. 2019, migraineagain.com/neuroscience-art-miracle-of-brain-dunn/. 

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