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Week 7 | Neuroscience + Art


This week Professor Vesna provided insights on how neuroscience has influenced art. A question that intrigued me from lecture was: how did consciousness come to be? I learned that Aristotle, Ancient Greek philosopher, thought that the brain was a cooling mechanism for the body and that actual human thinking occurred in the heart. Franz Joseph Gall, a German scientist, later debunked this idea and founded phrenology: the determination of an individual's potential by feeling bumps on the head. This ultimately led people to believe that the size of a person's head was correlated to their intellect. Gall was convinced that mental functions were localized in specific regions of the brain and that human behavior was dependent upon these functions. 


While phrenology was eventually disproven, Gall's concept of localized function In the brain was proven correct by Pierre Paul Broca, a French physician. Gall was also the first to identify the gray matter of the brain which contained active tissue and neurons, and white matter of the brain which contained conductive tissue and ganglia.


 These insights about consciousness naturally led some to wonder about the unconscious mind. Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were two scientists that researched this concept extensively, which ultimately led to Jung's theory of the collective unconscious.

David Cronenberg, a Canadian filmmaker, has drawn inspiration from the concept of the unconscious mind and has featured it in many of his films. In his film, A Dangerous Method, he also included a combination of Freud’s as well as Jung’s philosophies.



 It's amazing to see how neuroscience has influenced art in today's society.


Works Cited
“David Cronenberg.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 16 May 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cronenberg.
“Franz Joseph Gall.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 Mar. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Joseph_Gall.
School, English. “Phrenology by English School.” Pixels, pixels.com/featured/phrenology-english-school.html.
Vesna, Victoria. “Biotech Intro NEW.” YouTube, UC Online, 26 Mar. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvp924_pbgc&feature=youtu.be.
“What's the Matter?” Hydrocephalus Association, www.hydroassoc.org/whats-the-matter/.

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