Professor Vesna begins this week by asking very intriguing
and stimulating questions regarding the human mind and how it functions and
processes information. The main question that is presented is, “What is
Consciousness?”. The fact that we are able to process information that is right
in front of us and then comprehend what is going on or being said is very
simple and at the same time very complex. Today it goes without question that
our brain is the control unit of our body. However, Professor Vesna explains
that in the past this understanding of the brain was not as obvious. Aristotle
the “father of psychology”, believed that the brain functioned as a “cooling
method for the blood and that all the real thinking went on in the heart”
(Vesna). This idea of the brain was corrected and proven to be incorrect by
scientists who studied the brain, especially Franz Joseph Gall. Franz Gall studied the brain and
helped illustrate how the brain functions and what it looks like. Through his findings and studies, he came up
with the practice of “phrenology”. This
was a practice that was focused on observing the human skull. It is through
Gall’s pictures that helped to illustrate how the brain works and see how it is
divided up into 27 separate organs.
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| Franz Gall and Phrenology ("Mind Knowledge") |
The ability to understand the brain and how it functions
allows us to grasp a better sense of how we as humans are able to process,
retain, gather, and communicate information. One example of how Neuroscientists
can see how the brain works is through the artwork of Suzanne Anker. She displays
the brain in a very unique way through the use of MRI images of the brain and
at the center of each image there is a butterfly. Anker’s images that display a
butterfly at the center of the brain combines the studies of science and art
and provide Neuroscientists with images that show the symmetry of the brain.
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| Suzanne Anker's image of the brain with the butterfly at the center |
In this week’s lectures, Professor Vesna mentions that the
brain has only been studied for a century. This is interesting to note because
it helps show how we will endlessly continue to discover and learn more about
the brain. This is shown in the article provided by the UCLA Newsroom, “How to
build a bigger brain”. This article illustrates the findings by researchers at
UCLA that, “the brains of long-term meditators were larger than in a similar
control group” (Wheeler). With the use of MRI images, the researchers were able
to discover both the size differences in brain structure and the differences in the amount of “grey
matter” in the brain.
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| UCLA Researcher's study of increasing the size of one's brain |
Sources:
Vesna, Victoria. Lectures Week 7. https://cole2.uconline.edu/courses/63226/wiki/unit-7-view?module_item_id=970446
Wikipedia. Phrenology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology
Wheeler, Mark. "For News
Media." How to Build a Bigger Brain / UCLA Newsroom. Web. 17 Nov.
2013. http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/how-to-build-a-bigger-brain-91273.aspx
Image 1: Suzanna Anker. http://oneartworld.com/artists/S/Suzanne+Anker.html?atab=works&image=11243
Image 2: Phrenology. http://www.historyofphrenology.org.uk/images.html
Image 3: Wheeler, Mark. "For News
Media." How to Build a Bigger Brain / UCLA Newsroom. Web. 17 Nov.
2013. http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/how-to-build-a-bigger-brain-91273.aspx
Jenna, You did a very good job explaining how professor Vesna introduced the concepts of the brain and how it works. With the help of Aristotle and Gall we can finally see the true facts about the brain and what purposes it serves to us. I thought you did a very good job Jenna !
ReplyDeleteHi, your analysis and explanations about the concepts of "Neurosci and art" are pretty impressive. I like you proposed the details in the lecture that how human's understandings of brain has been changed and developed. Like you said, thanks to modern technology like MRI images, we can know more about brains.
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