Week 7 Blog Post DESMA 9

There are many interesting links between neuroscience and art. It is amazing how far we’ve come in the relatively new field of neuroscience. In the late 1700s, Franz Joseph Gall, who was a schoolboy at the time, noticed that his classmates that could memorize long passages with ease all seemed to have prominent eyes and large foreheads [4].

[3] From this he inferred the origins of phrenology; the idea that neural abilities were indicated by external features of the skull and different organs in the brain. Another important figure in this field is Santiago Ramón y Cajal, who is dubbed the father of modern neuroscience. This would be a surprising fate as he was raised in the preindustrial Spanish countryside, far from any labs. However, it seems that the connection to nature that this environment endowed him with would give him a unique perspective from other scientists at the time. In his autobiography, he wrote, “I regret that I did not first see the light in a great city” [2].
[2]

However, his long connection with art and nature perhaps made him better suited to discover the basic, tree-like units of the brain.

Dreams are a wonderful landscape for both artists and scientists. This further shows the interconnected relationship between the two. Salvador Dali had a way of lifting ideas from his subconscious to inspire his art; where he would hold a key over a plate as he fell asleep, in order to wake himself just as his mind entered a state of sleep [5].

[1]

Sigmund Freud, a pioneer in modern psychology, believed dreams to be an important aspect of the unconscious mind, which would be a large area of his work [3]. There are other, less serious, intersections between neuroscience and art, like the song Fearing from The Amygdaloids; where they play along with lyrics that discuss how our fear response has been stamped into our brains by evolution [1].



Works Cited

[1] Amygdaloids, T. (2010, July 14). Fearing - the amygdaloids. Youtube. Retrieved May 12, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMI3hbgRj6o 

[2] Ehrlich, B. (2022, April 1). The father of modern neuroscience discovered the basic unit of the nervous system. Scientific American. Retrieved May 11, 2022, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-father-of-modern-neuroscience-discovered-the-basic-unit-of-the-nervous-system/ 

[3] The interpretation of dreams. Freud Museum London. (2022, March 16). Retrieved May 11, 2022, from https://www.freud.org.uk/education/resources/the-interpretation-of-dreams/#:~:text=For%20Freud%2C%20dreaming%20is%20a,powerful%20role%20in%20human%20life. 

[4] Magazine, S. (1997, October 1). Facing a bumpy history. Smithsonian.com. Retrieved May 11, 2022, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/facing-a-bumpy-history-144497373/ 

[5] Sussex Publishers. (2015, February 20). How to dream like salvador dali. Psychology Today. Retrieved May 11, 2022, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dream-factory/201502/how-dream-salvador-dali


Images Cited

[1] Dali, S. (1970, January 1). The great masturbator, 1929. www.wikiart.org. Retrieved May 11, 2022, from https://www.wikiart.org/en/salvador-dali/the-great-masturbator-1929 

[2] Noë, A. (2017, January 20). The art of the brain, on exhibit. NPR. Retrieved May 11, 2022, from https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/01/20/510528975/the-art-of-the-brain-on-exhibit 

[3] Wills, M. (2019, May 31). Walt Whitman, America's phrenologist. JSTOR Daily. Retrieved May 12, 2022, from https://daily.jstor.org/walt-whitman-americas-phrenologist/



 

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