Visual art and neuroscience are stitched together in a new gallery show in New York City at MUSECPMI, and the results are a mixed bag of intriguing syntheses and frustrating shortcomings. Noah reviews “Seeing Ourselves.”
The New York City-based group NeuWrite hosted a public debate on minds, maps, and the future of neuroscience between Sebastian Seung of M.I.T. and Anthony Movshon of NYU. The debate was a barometer of where neuroscience stands in the 21st century.
The philosopher Alva Noë published an essay in the New York Times’ Opinionator blog section that is very critical of what neuroscience has to offer when it comes to understanding art. Noah Hutton offers an alternative point of view in the form of a paragraph-by-paragraph response to Noë’s essay.
Charles Butter’s new book “Crossing Cultural Borders: Universals in Art and Their Biological Roots” is an art historical study of the human impulse to create, seen through the lens of perceptual neuroscience.
Greg Dunn is a visual artist and has a Ph.D in neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania. It’s not so easy to tell at first glance whether Dunn is painting a branching pattern of a plant or that of a neuron. But maybe that’s the point.
The New York City-based group NeuWrite hosted a public debate on minds, maps, and the future of neuroscience between Sebastian Seung of M.I.T. and Anthony Movshon of NYU. The debate was a barometer of where neuroscience stands in the 21st century.
Two things happened on the last Saturday in October. The first snow of the season came. That was the first thing that happened, and unfortunate too, because there’s a leak in the boiler in my building, so gas doesn’t have the necessary pressure to make it up five flights of pre-war pipes. At least that’s [...]
We are proud to present the Year Two update to director Noah Hutton’s 10-year film-in-the-making that will chronicle the progress of The Blue Brain Project, Henry Markram’s attempt to reverse-engineer the brain, one neuron at a time.
Greg Dunn is a visual artist and has a Ph.D in neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania. It’s not so easy to tell at first glance whether Dunn is painting a branching pattern of a plant or that of a neuron. But maybe that’s the point.
Elizabeth Jameson found her art when her own brain lost one of its most basic functions. We are proud to feature an online gallery of some of her brand new works.
The presence of adult neurogenesis– the birth of new neurons in the mature brain– is a fairly recent revelation in neuroscience. In our third Art of Neuroscience gallery, we present stunning images of newborn cells in the adult brain.
The philosopher Alva Noë published an essay in the New York Times’ Opinionator blog section that is very critical of what neuroscience has to offer when it comes to understanding art. Noah Hutton offers an alternative point of view in the form of a paragraph-by-paragraph response to Noë’s essay.
Contributor Ben Ehrlich examines patterns throughout all life stories, including those of Santiago Ramon y Cajal and the neuron he discovered.
Jeremy Fordham explores the cognitive effects of playing Tetris: how the classic puzzle game forces the brain to tackle complex, time-sensitive problems with greater and greater efficiency.
To kick off our new season of The Beautiful Brain Podcast, host Noah Hutton sits down with Carl Schoonover, author of “Portraits of the Mind,” to talk about how we have imaged the brain from antiquity to the present.
In this month’s podcast we proudly present a conversation with the outspoken artist and author Garry Kennard. Kennard, the founder of artandmind.org, and has hosted many conferences and festivals that have brought together leading thinkers in the fields of art and brain research.
In this month’s podcast, Noah Hutton speaks with British artist Andrew Carnie, whose current installation at the GV Art Gallery in London uses slide projections to explore the evolving narrative of the brain.
Sam McDougle explains the purported evolutionary relevance of that horrible nails-on-chalkboard sound.
Interesting new reasearch suggests that individuals perceive different “amounts” of free will in themselves vs. others.
Language, upright posture, tool-making — these are examples of commonly cited “human-specific” behaviors. But how unique are these behaviors to us clever, hairless apes? New research on a bird from the South Pacific shows that some humbling evolutionary parallels can be lightly drawn between human and nonhuman tool-using behaviors.
Visual art and neuroscience are stitched together in a new gallery show in New York City at MUSECPMI, and the results are a mixed bag of intriguing syntheses and frustrating shortcomings. Noah reviews “Seeing Ourselves.”
Charles Butter’s new book “Crossing Cultural Borders: Universals in Art and Their Biological Roots” is an art historical study of the human impulse to create, seen through the lens of perceptual neuroscience.
Jeremy Finch reviews “The Buying Brain”, in which author A.K. Pradeep explores the budding field of neuromarketing and describes its current and future applications.
In 1920, the Nobel Prize-winning “founder of modern neuroscience” Santiago Ramón y Cajal wrote Charlas de café (Café Chats), a popular book of aphorisms and meditations inspired by his years of participation in tertulias, or Spanish salons. Contributing editor Ben Ehrlich has been working on an original translation into English, parts of which have just been published by the literary magazine New England Review. As always, the new issue of NER features great poetry, fiction, and non-fiction (including, incidentally, a re-discovered translation of “Rome: First Impression” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whom Cajal revered). Half of the Café Chats piece, selected from two chapters “On Glory, Death, and Immortality” and “On Sorrow and Old Age,” can be seen online here. Selections two other two chapters, “On Genius, Talent, and Stupidity” and “Thoughts on Pedagogical and Educational Tendencies,” can be found in the print edition.
“It is a moving sight to watch on summer mornings as young bees gather honey for the exhausted and dying workwomen who, before their eyes grow dim, receive a passionate kiss from the sun, our father of life. Hear the anxious cry of the dying—“Light, more light!”—from the great Goethe to the humblest creature. Might this universal plea signify an optimistic prophecy? After death’s darkness, will the sun of immortality rise? It is comforting to hope and to believe so.”
Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Café Chats (translated by Benjamin Ehrlich)
