Week 7: Neuroscience + Art

The brain is such an amazing organ to study, making this week’s discussion of the connection between neuroscience and art very intriguing. Before much was known about the brain, Aristotle proposed that the brain was actually the cooling system for the blood and the real thinking went on in the heart, which I thought was very interesting. As more information was discovered concerning the brain, new proposals appeared. Franz Joseph Gall founded the study of phrenology, which involves measuring the shape and bumps of one’s skull to predict mental straits. He thought the brain was divided into many different organs, each with a different function. In this way, the field of phrenology was like the ancient form of the field of brain mapping.

Phrenology chart of the brain.

The discussion of consciousness and unconsciousness brings up many interesting questions that are often difficult to answer. Carl Jung was a psychiatrist who proposed two types of unconscious: the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious is a collection of material that was once conscious but has been forgotten or repressed. This reminded me of the fact that our mind can not invent faces, so in our dreams, we see real faces of real people that we have seen at some point in our lives - are these faces in our collection of personal unconscious material? The collective unconscious, on the other hand, contains the accumulation of inherited psychic structures, and is not shaped by personal experience. This type of unconscious was a bit harder for me to grasp and understand, and I think would be interesting to research further.

Image that portrays different types of the conscious and unconscious mind.

One last topic that really interested me was psychedelic drugs, but specifically Project MKULTRA, an illegal government human experiment that used a variety of methodologies to manipulate individual mental states and alter brain functions. Psychedelic drugs trigger psychedelic experiences, often leading to extremely simulated imagination and hallucinogenic effects. However, in Project MKULTRA, such extreme measures were used that led to sever psychological torture, and many subjects died during the experiment. It is very intriguing and also scary the ways mind control can be used, especially since as Professor Vesna mentioned, mind control may be inevitable.

Artistic interpretation of psychedelic drugs on the brain.

References:

“Carl Jung and the Collective Unconscious Theory.” Break Through, breakthroughholistictherapy.com/shadow-integration-work/carl-jungs-collective-unconscious/.

Helou, Fouad. “Psychedelics and The Brain.” Graphite Publications, 8 Oct. 2014, graphitepublications.com/psychedelics-and-the-brain/.

Van Wyhe, John. “Phrenological Images.” History of Phrenology on the Web, www.historyofphrenology.org.uk/images.html.

Vesna, Victoria. “Neuroscience-pt1.Mov.” YouTube, 17 May 2012, youtu.be/TzXjNbKDkYI.

Vesna, Victoria. “Neuroscience-pt2.Mov.” YouTube, 17 May 2012, youtu.be/TFv4owX3MZo.

Vesna, Victoria. “Neuroscience pt3.” YouTube, 16 May 2012, youtu.be/E5EX75xoBJ0.