week 7

My natural thought about neuroscience and art revolved around the idea that one uses the brain to detect art in the world. When an individual looks at a piece of art, their brain processes the components and creates an idea about the artwork. Additionally, as art can often ring out emotion within a person, this is the brain and the neuroscience in action. The brain recognizing something as art is a very interesting phenomena.

After watching lectures, however, the part of this week that I found most intriguing was the history of how humans have learned to view the human brain. The recent development that has been made by scientists on human brain activity was very interesting as well but the way that it used to be viewed really caught my interest. Galen of Pergamon altered the view that was in place by Aristotle in the 100’s , but after that it seemed to have no real view changes or discoveries until more modern technology arose much later. Humans just lived their lives, intellectually, without knowing what was going on inside their heads for thousands on years- which seems insane to us, living in the world we experience now, knowing everything we know about neuroscience. 

I found the discussion of dreams in the lecture to be interesting as well. A lot of our art we create in the world, such as paintings, movies, or any media , arise from dream like ideas. In this way, neuroscience and brain activity, even in dreams, contributes to art. 

Citing:

Image 1: http://antiworldnews.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/sixteen-years-for-fifteen-seconds-how-long-should-you-view-a-work-of-art/

Image 2: http://legionofhonor.famsf.org/about/thinker

Image 3: http://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/kamikaye/lucid-dream-world-game-jam

-Cherry, Kendra. "Anatomy of the Brain". About.com Psychology. http://psychology.about.com/od/biopsychology/ss/brainstructure.htm

-Gardner, Howard. "Art, Mind, and Brain:." Google Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. <http://books.google.com/books?id=2BMDYRRF1WcC>.

-LaBerge, Steven. "Lucid Dreaming". http://www.lucidity.com/SleepAndCognition.html

-Ramachandran, Vilayanur. "VS Ramachandran: 3 Clues to Understanding Your Brain." TED: Ideas worth Spreading. N.p., Mar. 2007. Web. 17 Nov. 2013. <http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html>.

-Vesna, Victoria. "Neuroscience and Art." Lecture. 17 May 2012. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.