House of Mind

"Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind" - Jeffrey Eugenides

  • 31st October
    2012
  • 31
Dialogues Lecture: Artist Chuck Close and the Science of Face Blindness

How does a portrait artist paint if he has face blindness? Thousands of neuroscientists had the opportunity to ask artist Chuck Close this question during his keynote address at Neuroscience 2012 in October.

Close has produced iconic works of art while coping with serious impairments of body and brain: he experienced a spinal artery collapse and subsequent paralysis in 1988, and has the disorder prosopagnosia, sometimes known as “face blindness,” where the ability to recognize faces is impaired. In 2000, he was awarded the highest honor conferred by the United States on an artist: the National Medal of Arts. Watch his lecture to learn the skill behind his art.

Click on the link above for the full lecture :)

  • 13th April
    2012
  • 13

expose-the-light:

Beauty & Brains: The Best of the Art of Neuroscience

1. Music From Your Brain

Santiago Ramon y Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience, first captured the elegant beauty of branching neurons in his simple ink drawings 100 years ago. These entries for the 2012 Art of Neuroscience competition in the Netherlands use modern imaging techniques to show how far our view into the brain has come.

The competition’s winning entry was a video that used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to visualize brain function and anatomy. Also keep an ear on the soundtrack, which was composed by assigning each brain activity pattern to an instrument. The instrument’s pitch varies with intensity of brain activity—raw thought translated into music.

2. Psychedelic Neurons

This brain slice from a human autopsy has taken on vivid color in the hands of a neuroscientist: green from infection by a lentivirus, red for neurons, blue for the nuclei of brain cells. Red and blue were introduced with a technique called immunohistochemistry, which uses antibodies that bind to specific proteins in order to highlight certain cells or parts of cells.

3. Inspired by Rothko

Neurons in the prefrontal cortex are naturally organized in layers, which are highlighted by these Rothko-esque blobs of color. The neurons are stained with a chemical called biocytin.

4. From Dead Brain to Living Color

These astrocytes and neurons grew out of stem cells that originally came from a dead human brain. The different types of resulting brain cells were then stained in the fluorescent colors seen here.

(via scinerds)

  • 26th October
    2011
  • 26
  • 31st March
    2010
  • 31
The picture above is an artistic representation of the number pi done by a patient of a rare disease called frontotemporal dementia (FTD).  Frontotemporal dementia is a disease that selectively affects certain parts of the brain, particularly the frontal lobe, a brain area associated with higher executive functions such as planning and analysis. The disease has different forms, 2 of them which result in the loss of language (aphasia). For some individuals the cause seems to be an abnormal form of the tau protein, a protein that stabilizes microtubules (microtubules are one of the major components of the cytoskeleton). In other words, tau proteins help stabilize the cytoskeleton in the central nervous system. When tau proteins are deficient or defective, neuronal cell bodies shrink and degenerate due to the lack of proper microtubule stabilization. Thus, abnormal tau proteins are associated with various forms of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s.  The early symptoms of FTD include memory loss and for some patients, unexplainable surges of creativity. The loss of neurons in the frontal lobe is thought to be compensated by an enhancement in posterior regions of the brain associated with visual-spatial orientation and vision such as the parietal and occipital lobes. Thus, some patients with FTD develop artistic abilities when frontal brain areas decline and the posterior regions take over, which they describe as experiencing torrents of creativity. In healthy individuals, the frontal lobe is usually dominant and suppresses posterior regions. Patients that have FTD have been known to become skilled at creative endeavors such as landscape design, playing musical instruments that they had never previously tried to play and painting.  Art galleries of patients with FTD: members.shaw.ca/adms memory.ucsf.edu/Art/gallery.htm Source: Blakeslee, S. 2008. A Disease That Allowed for Torrents of Creativity. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/health/08brai.html

The picture above is an artistic representation of the number pi done by a patient of a rare disease called frontotemporal dementia (FTD). 

Frontotemporal dementia is a disease that selectively affects certain parts of the brain, particularly the frontal lobe, a brain area associated with higher executive functions such as planning and analysis. The disease has different forms, 2 of them which result in the loss of language (aphasia). For some individuals the cause seems to be an abnormal form of the tau protein, a protein that stabilizes microtubules (microtubules are one of the major components of the cytoskeleton). In other words, tau proteins help stabilize the cytoskeleton in the central nervous system. When tau proteins are deficient or defective, neuronal cell bodies shrink and degenerate due to the lack of proper microtubule stabilization. Thus, abnormal tau proteins are associated with various forms of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s. 

The early symptoms of FTD include memory loss and for some patients, unexplainable surges of creativity. The loss of neurons in the frontal lobe is thought to be compensated by an enhancement in posterior regions of the brain associated with visual-spatial orientation and vision such as the parietal and occipital lobes. Thus, some patients with FTD develop artistic abilities when frontal brain areas decline and the posterior regions take over, which they describe as experiencing torrents of creativity. In healthy individuals, the frontal lobe is usually dominant and suppresses posterior regions.

Patients that have FTD have been known to become skilled at creative endeavors such as landscape design, playing musical instruments that they had never previously tried to play and painting. 

Art galleries of patients with FTD:

members.shaw.ca/adms

memory.ucsf.edu/Art/gallery.htm

Source: Blakeslee, S. 2008. A Disease That Allowed for Torrents of Creativity. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/health/08brai.html