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. Dunn’s eye seems attuned to the dazzling beauty packed into the cellular architecture of each square millimeter of our nervous system, architecture that repeats itself all around us.

The neuronal imagery in Dunn’s paintings appears to draw some influence from the early 20th century drawings of stained neurons by foundational figures like Santiago Ramon y Cajal (find our essay on the young Cajal here). Yet Dunn’s work presents another clear influence, one that the artist himself discusses in the interview below. He is a deep admirer of a diverse range of pan-Asian artwork, and in his work this influence has made for elegant renderings of individual neurons and larger regions that exhibit both what Dunn calls the “raw and bold” quality of some Japanese and Chinese ink drawing traditions as well as their “simple, emotional, and direct” nature.

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INTERVIEW WITH GREG DUNN

1. Where do you interests in the brain and in pan-Asian art originate?

I’ve always been interested in psychology and philosophy, and I suppose that was where my early interests lay.  I’ve always been a pretty introverted person, so I spend a lot of time in my thoughts.  Suffice to say, I am often puzzled by whats going on in there!  As my scientific interests developed, I realized that really any biological system can be fascinating. However, what sets the brain apart is that it is the apparatus through which we experience the world.  Every single human activity has a neurological story to it.  If you’re a scientist because you want to understand yourself, as I am, then it doesn’t make sense to look any place else.

I honestly don’t remember when my interest in Asian art began, but I suspect that it may have been in reaction to overexposure to Rennaissance art on one Europen trip or another I took with my family as a kid.  In contrast to a lot of the art produced in Europe, Asian art was so simple, emotional, and direct. There was breathing room on the canvas, and the techniques were so raw and bold.  It is the kind of art that just punches you in the gut with its immediate, visceral impact.

2. How did your tastes for pan-Asian art and your interest in the brain merge? What is it about these techniques and aesthetics– particularly in Japanese scroll and screen painting– that fit your aesthetic interpretation of the brain?

Neural forms and Asian painting styles collide in a completely natural way, and I am so fortunate that I found this out for myself because it has led to a very satisfying career as an artist/scientist. Neural forms are naturally elegant and spontaneous, characteristics that also describe the more traditional forms of Asian sumi-e painting- branches, grasses, etc.  All that is required to connect the dots is the realization that you need to crank down your awareness to the micron scale to see that nature has very similar forms across different scales of magnitude.  The branching form of a dendrite is nearly identical to the form of a branching tree, a series of cracks in the pavement, the movement of rivers and streams as viewed from space, or a lightning bolt.   I wouldn’t be surprised if the form were represented on a cosmic level as well.  It is a fractal solution to the Universe.

3. First seen in slides and in medical imagery, do the images of neurons and glia in the brain change at all in your mind once you start working with their forms in an artistic setting? Do you have any examples of such a change?

My perception of the brain regions and the cells within them are always changing as I paint. This is because I’m always trying to walk a line between photorealism and interpretation.  Using photomicrographs as a hard reference  can be useful because it helps to hammer down the anatomy correctly, but it can rob the painting of sponteneity.  It also robs the painter of the almost meditative discipline of learning how to emulate the random movements and branching of neurons, a deceptively difficult skill.  The brain is always wanting to generate or pick out patterns in things, and it is a real challenge to try to avoid that tendency.

4. What has this artistic interpretation of brain structures done to your conception of the brain and its small units of processing? How has this artistic practice influenced your academic life, if at all?

It has really given me an appreciation for how utterly chaotic the microstructure of the brain is.  For clarity’s sake, I usually paint only a few neurons on a canvas to emphasize their form without obscuring it with too many lines, but the brain doesn’t look like that at all.  There’s a cliché in neuroanatomy about how each brain region claims only so much “real estate,” and that all of the processing units must be crammed into a very small space.  Put together 100 billion neurons, each making up to thousands of synapses with one another, and the evolutionary limit on head size and you’ve got one densely packed little organ indeed.  It is an unfathomable mess on the one hand, and exquisitely ordered on another.  If these realizations have affected my academic life at all, it is in what a difficult organ it is to study!  So heterogenous and complicated, it is a mighty challenge to understand the workings of just one neuron, let alone a whole brain full of them.

5. Do you believe the brain will ever understand itself, or is it vastly too complex to ever fully comprehend its own function, even through all the tools of modern science?

I had this conversation when I was just starting grad school with a friend of mine who recently finished his PhD, and it really stuck with me.  There are some astounding geniuses out there that are making huge progress for us all.  But one day, when imaging technology, data acquisition, supercomputing, etc reach the point when some of the really deep questions can be answered, I’m not sure how a human being can really grasp the avalanche of data.  Even if a brain could fully understand itself, it seems impossible to me that it would be through the mediums of graphs, tables, connectivity diagrams, and all of that that would be the inevitable output.  I’m personally not interested in that these days anyway.  For me, it seems that a more relevant and rewarding approach of self discovery lies in personally developing an intuitive approach to understanding the brain.  To understand my own brain I seriously practice meditation, the science of observing the mind.  That is where I will be spending my future years of scientific inquiry, and hopefully I’ll understanding something or other by the end of it all.

6. Beneath all, what do you find beautiful about the brain?

6. It is literally the most complicated object in the known Universe!  The tremendous knot of cells when connected in a certain way gives rise to a strange sense of “I” that is able to ponder and learn things about its environment.  It is an utter miracle, and is at the root of why we are conscious beings able to appreciate this world and all of its beauty. How can you not love it?!

For more information or to order prints, paintings, or to commission custom work, visit Greg Dunn’s website.

Elizabeth Jameson found her art when her own brain lost one of its most basic functions.

After suddenly finding herself unable to speak, Jameson was diagnosed with MS in 1991. She soon came to know the geography of her own mind through countless MRI sessions.

Jameson felt a hunger to step beyond her career as a lawyer and reinterpret this medical imagery, adding an artistic treatment to her brain scans in what has become a unique form of portraiture. Jameson writes that her MS inspires her “to create images that provide new insights into the brain and, at the same time, makes medical imaging and its representative humanity more accessible to both medical professionals and others who view these revealing pictures.”

Most recently, the Harvard Center for Brain Science commissioned the installation of four of Jameson’s paintings. We are proud to feature Jameson’s work in this exclusive online gallery as well as an interview with the artist below. Check out her previous gallery on this site for more images.

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INTERVIEW WITH ELIZABETH JAMESON

How did you arrive at your present moment as an artist who is deeply engaged with her own brain and the brains of others?

I became fascinated by the brain when I suddenly lost my ability to talk. It happened when I was playing with my children at a local park.  I had no pain but, with absolutely no warning, I found I could not speak. The next week, surgeons removed a part of my brain in order to determine the origin of my aphasia. I was subsequently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Since then, in order to monitor the progression of the disease, I have spent many hours in the darkness of the scanning machine, during innumerable MRIs (brain scans).

My diagnosis and treatment gave rise to a keen interest in medical technology and inspired me to create images that interpret the medical images in a new light. For the anxious patient, the MRI images can appear ugly and frightening—a bunch of black and grey pixels spelling out their fate. I felt a strong urge to reinterpret these images—to use them to explore the wonder and beauty of all brains including those with a disease. My images create an artist’s view of imaging technology–one that is both accessible to those who view these revealing pictures as either subject or doctor and also one that, I hope, captures some of the feeling and emotions evoked by these kinds of medical images.

I discovered art after my diagnosis. Prior to this time, I was a civil rights lawyer.

Describe one or two of the works we see in the online gallery. Where is it derived from and what led you to select this particular imagery? How does the image of the brain– first seen through medical imagery– change once you start working with it?

My artwork derives largely from my own MRI or brain scans. My two favorite etchings, Valentine andEmerging, deal with the exquisite nature of the structures of the brain.

Emerging is a cropped image of my frontal lobe and inter-hemispheric fissure. In this image, my brain and the skull are emerging from  the quiet of my interior self and entering into the world outside. This image captures the mystery and magic of the brain and asks us to meditate on where the brain is going on its journey.

Valentine I is another cropped image – this time of my brain stem, cerebellum and corpus callosum.  I chose this portion of the brain because of its shape– the structure that echoes that of the human heart. I use warm and cool colors in my work to evoke the emotions that I feel when I immerse myself in the interior of the brain, and to express my happiness in discovering the image of the heart within the interiors of my brain.

What do you find beautiful about the brain?

I continually find myself humbled and awed by the layer upon layers of mysterious and imponderable structures that comprise the brain. I find beauty in its mystery.

Do you think the brain will ever understand itself, or is this organ too vastly complex to grasp its own workings?

I am comforted by the fact that I believe my brain knows exactly what it is doing. I have never felt that I needed to fight my disease or the repercussions of having an imperfect brain. Instead, I use my art to celebrate the brain. Without multiple sclerosis, I would never have thought so deeply about this incredibly vital organ. In fact, without MS I would never have discovered my passion for art.

You write that your MS inspires you to create images that provide new insights into the brain. What are the nature of these new insights? Are they insights that can only be achieved through art?

MRIs produce images of a brain that are naked and without emotional context, without passion or sadness, without all the frailties, humor, and idiosyncrasies that make us who we are. I feel I am enormously lucky that my art allows me to spend my time hunting for images where I can find beauty and sensuousness, as well as perplexing complexity.

More generally, do you see an ultimate division between the ambitions of science and of art, or do you feel they are exploring the same issues at their cores?

I really don’t know. I imagine scientists are trying to discover the mysteries of the brain, while I am trying to present and interpret the beauty in that mystery.  I like to think that we are all approaching the study of the brain with the same degree of humility and awe.

Neurogenesis– the creation of new neurons in the brain– was conventionally believed to only occur in the growing brains of infants and children.  In the 1960s, data started appearing that showed the birth of new neurons in adult, fully formed brains.  Now, 40 years later, adult neurogenesis is one of the more robust fields of study in the neurosciences.

Jason Snyder studies adult neurogenesis in Heather Cameron’s lab at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, MD.  Snyder’s research focuses on neurogenesis in the hippocampus, highlighting the role of these new neurons in such fundamental behaviors as memory formation and learning.

In his earlier days, Snyder was a student of electrophysiological techniques for studying the brain, and admired the simple, elegant aesthetic of the technology: “I remember pasting a voltage waveform on my bedroom wall because…those curves were beautiful!”

We’re delighted to have some exclusive images from Jason Snyder’s microscope.  He has a sharp eye for the compelling, unusual forms of brain tissue and uses a beautiful array of staining techniques to highlight young neurons and answer questions relating to neurophysiological results of neurogenesis.

In deciding how to crop these images and which colors to use to visually distinguish certain cells from the surrounding chaos of brain tissue, Snyder’s work toes the line between a hard science goal with great explanatory value and a more artistic mentality in the science’s visual presentation. The art and science go together: a stunning visual can make for a stunning revelation about the structure and function of cells and regions of the brain, and can emotionally move us with its sheer beauty, perhaps steering us towards a lifetime of studying the brain.

Enjoy the gallery below, which presents views of neurogenesis from different regions across the brain and at various magnifications. Jason truly embodies the pursuits of our Art of Neuroscience gallery series.

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For more of Jason’s work, check out his blog, Functional Neurogenesis.

Scenes of nature have often been inspiration for human works of art, from prehistoric cave paintings to Rubens’ country landscapes.  Now, modern technology has taken us from these large scenes  of nature – rolling hills and buffalo-speckled plains – to the imperceptibly small scenes of nature:  The microscopic inner workings of our body.  We have featured art by artists inspired by these tiny scenes, specifically the scenes in our brains, but in The Art of Neuroscience series we are featuring “art by scientists.”

In our second volume of The Art of Neuroscience, we’ll take a peek into another newly developed neuron-labeling method that yields some rather striking images while also helping to elucidate the architecture of the brain.

Fluorescent microscopy works by labeling cells with specific markers that cause them to glow certain colors when bathed in a special wash of chemical agents (fluorophores).  These “markers” are usually genetic markers, and by tinkering with the genome of a host animal, the markers – and thus the colors produced by cells under the microscope – can be altered.  Driven by a desire to map the vast web of neural connections in the mouse brain,  Jeff Lichtman and his team at Harvard developed a fluorescent staining technique affording them a sizeable palette with which to paint neurons.

The genetic system they used is called the Cre/lox system. Cre is an enzyme responsible for deleting sections of DNA that are adjacent to lox alleles.  By splicing in a handful genetic markers that are responsible for different fluorescent colors (green, yellow, red, etc) in various places near the lox sites, a game of genetic roulette was played – depending on the position of different fluorescent color-producing genes in relation to the lox enzymes, a myriad of colors would ultimately be produced in the target neurons (i.e. red green green yellow, red red red green, red yellow yellow yellow, etc).

Lichtman cleverly dubs the technique “Brainbow,” and explains its application to discovering neuron connections:

The ability of the Brainbow system to label uniquely many individual cells within a population may facilitate the analysis of neuronal circuitry on a large scale… This labeling appears well suited for visualization and tracing of large numbers of neurons and their connectivity…color differences between neurons provide a way to sort their processes while tracing through sections, to directly visualize their putative synaptic interactions, and to distinguish the neurons that converge onto a postsynaptic cell.

The gallery below shows a sampling of the lush, elegant views of neural networks provided by the Brainbow technique.

If Monet was a neuroscientist he would surely be partial to this cutting-edge method.

Images/Jean Livet, Tamily A. Weissman, Hyuno Kang, Ryan W. Draft, Ju Lu, Robyn A. Bennis, Joshua R. Sanes & Jeff W. Lichtman. “Transgenic strategies for combinatorial expression of fluorescent proteins in the nervous system,” Nature. Vol. 450, (November 2007), Pages 56-63.

In our first installment of The Art of Neuroscience, a recurring online gallery series here at The Beautiful Brain that will feature outstanding images of the brain produced by science, we are given a taste of a newly developed neuron-staining technique that reveals entire, glowing networks of neurons.  By using protein markers derived from the rabies virus, James  Marshel, Takuma Mori, Kristina Nielsen and Edward Callaway, of The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California, were able to label the networks of neurons each cell relies on to manage its activity.  While neurons only have two destinies at a given moment – fire or don’t – they collect information from thousands of other neurons to make their decision.

The researchers were able to do this because of the nature of rabies – it follows a “retrograde” infection pathway, infecting one neuron and subsequently all the neurons giving it orders upstream.  By using striking fluorescent dyes, Marshel et al labeled the rabies proteins and illuminated these webs of neurons:

“Each single neuronal network exists in a tangled web of as many as trillions of connections between billions of neurons spanning the entire brain, confounding attempts to identify detailed circuits and relate circuits to functions in vivo. We sought to overcome this logistical barrier and facilitate the direct analysis of the fine-scale structure and function of single neuronal networks by developing and validating a robust and reliable technique to target a single neuron and its monosynaptic inputs for independent gene expression and detailed cell labeling (Marshel et al, 2010).”

Images/ Marshel, James H., Mori, Takuma, Nielsen, Kristina J. and Callaway, Edward M. “Targeting Single Neuronal Networks for Gene Expression and Cell Labeling In Vivo,” Neuron. Vol. 67 Issue 4, (August 2010), Pages 562-574.

British artist Andrew Carnie, the focus of this month’s Beautiful Brain Podcast, often creates work that is time-based in nature, involving 35mm slide projections onto complex screen configurations.

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