Art and the Brain:

Plasticity, Embodiment, and the

Unclosed Circle
By Amy Ione
ione@diatrope.com
Creativity, Innovations, Individuals, and Cultural
Communication
• Creativity is a complex, dispersed, and flexible
function that includes the brain and the nervous
system
• Creativity is not located in a discrete region of the
brain

Can we characterize art and the brain in terms that

encompass our changing biological nature, external
environmental factors, culture, and individuality?
 Outline
• Introductory Romp
– The long reach of Art and Science Connections:
– Did Rembrandt and Descartes Know One Another?
– Thomas Willis and Christopher Wren
– William Hogarth
• Conceptualizing Electricity: Bootstrapping
When we look at a beautiful landscape or listen to music, when
we express emotion, and when we ponder new information,
we now know that these processes are based on minute
electric signals flowing within the electric circuits of our
nervous systems.
• Truncated case study: Awakenings
 Imhotep
Artist, Physician, Innovator
Edwin Smith Papyrus: Anatomical Pyramid of Djoser (Step Pyramid):
Observations, Ailments, and Cures Saqqara Egypt in 2630 – 2611 BC
 The Unclosed Circle:
Models without “Parts and the Whole”

Woman with a Teardrop (sagittal section

Self-Portrait with Brain in Wax, 1750s, showing brain and brain stem), 1784.
Anna Morandi Manzolini (1714-1774) Andre Pierre Pinson (French, 1746-1828)
Neuropsychology: Mind and Body
René Descartes (1596–1648) Thomas Willis (1621–1675)
Father of Modern Philosophy Father of Modern Neurology
 Innovation, Philosophy, Medicine
Descartes: Father of Modern
Philosophy
[T]he knowledge, I think, therefore I am
[cogito ergo sum], is the first and most
certain of which occurs to one who
philosophizes in an orderly way
René Descartes, Principles of Philosophy,
1644: Part I, Article 7).
Willis: Father of Modern
Neurology
I determined . . .not to pin my faith on the
received Opinions of others, nor on the
suspicions and guesses of my own mind,
but for the future to believe Nature and
ocular demonstrations: Therefore
thenceforward I betook my self wholly to
the study of Anatomy: …I addicted my self
to the opening of Heads…
Thomas Willis, Cerebri anatome,
(1664/1978: 54).
 The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (1859)
Evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent
through a branching pattern of evolution.

Franz Brentano (1838–1917) Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

Students: Edmund Husserl, Trained with Johannes
Alexius Meinong, Christian Muller and Helmholtz.
von Ehrenfels, Rudolf Students: Edward B.
Steiner, T.G. Masaryk, Titchener, G. Stanley Hall,
Sigmund Freud, Kazimierz Oswald Külpe, Hugo
Twardowski and others. Münsterberg, and others.

1874: Psychology from an 1874: Principles of

Empirical Standpoint Physiological Psychology

Franz Brentano is best known for his
reintroduction of the concept of intentionality
— a concept derived from scholastic
philosophy. He also developed original accounts
of consciousness, judgment, truth, existence,
substance, part-whole relations, emotion,
value, beauty, and other central philosophical
notions
Wilhelm Wundt is best known for
establishing the first psychology lab
in Liepzig, Germany, generally
considered the official beginning of
psychology as a field of science
separate from philosophy and
physiology.
Descartes and Willis
 Rembrandt’s Medical Painting
Did Rembrandt and Descartes Know One Another?
• Descartes resided in the Netherlands from 1629–1649 and lived
just a short distance from Rembrandt’s house in Amsterdam from
1634–1635.
• There is even an 18th century record of a drawing of Descartes by
Rembrandt, which was unfortunately lost (Westermann 2000).
• They moved in the same circles.
– Constantijn Huygens (1596–1687), who was secretary to the Prince of
Orange and also a Golden Age poet and composer, was the father of
the scientist Christiaan Huygens. The younger Huygens was both a
friend of Descartes’ and among Rembrandt’s earliest patrons.
– Frans van Schooten (1615–1660), who knew Descartes and
popularized his work, was the brother of the painter Joris van
Schooten (c. 1587–1651), one of Rembrandt’ teachers (van Leeuwen
1672).
• Descartes studied emotion and Rembrandt’s skill in depicting
emotional qualities is legendary. Painting affective qualities was
also a goal of art in his time.
• Both were involved with dissection.
 Anatomy Lessons
Rembrandt: The Anatomy Lesson Rembrandt: The Anatomy Lesson
of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632) of Dr. Deijman (1656)
 Trepanation:
A surgical intervention in which a hole is drilled or scraped into the human skull,
exposing the dura mater to treat health problems related to intracranial diseases.

Trepanation is perhaps the oldest surgical

procedure for which there is
archaeological evidence,
Rembrandt: The Operation
(Touch), 1624
 The Oxford Philosophical Club:
Experimental Science, Art, and Innovation
 Christopher Wren (1632–1723)
Artist and Scientist
Willis Brain St. Paul’s Cathedral
William Hogarth (1697–1764)
William Hogarth Credulity, Superstition
and Fanaticism (1761) is a
(1697–1764) satirical print by the
English artist William
Hogarth. It ridicules
secular and religious
credulity, and lampoons
the exaggerated religious
“enthusiasm” (excessive
emotion) of the Methodist
movement. The text of the
preacher’s page reads: “I
speak as a fool.”
 Electricity: John Wesley (1703–1791)
Studied theological significance of
the electric fire and helped to
pioneer the use of electric shock
for the treatment of illness
“The passions (emotions) have a greater
influence on health than most people
are aware of. All violent and sudden
passions dispose or actually throw
people into acute diseases. Till the
Founder of the evangelical passion, which caused the disease is
movement known as Methodism. calmed, medicine is applied in vain.”
Electricity: Jean Paul Marat (1743–1793)
• French Revolutionary painted by
Jacques-Louis David.
• David was the president of the Jacobins’
Club, the most prominent French artist
at that time, a close personal friend, and
a member of the revolutionary council.
• Before 1789, Marat spent almost thirty
years as a successful physician and as an
experimental physicist, investigating the
properties of heat, light, and electricity.
• Corresponded with Benjamin Franklin.
• The Académie des Sciences, appalled by
his temerity in disagreeing with Newton
rejected his work.
• Goethe described Marat’s rejection by
the Academy as a glaring example of
The Death of Marat, 1793 scientific despotism.
 Francis Hauksbee (1660–1713)
• The Hauksbee electrostatic generator (~1705)
• Used to delight audiences who attended Royal
Society meetings in London in the early 18th century.
• The glass globe could be rotated rapidly by a hand-
cranked wheel, making it possible to generate an
electric charge by rubbing the glass globe with a
cotton cloth or by hand.
• While spinning the large wheel, Francis Hauksbee
placed his other hand over the rotating globe at the
top of the device (from which he had previously
pumped-out all the air).
• This caused the globe to produce a light which
stunned people who were used to reading by
candlelight or oil lamps. [If air remained in the glass
globe—instead of being evacuated— the Hauksbee
Source: Physico-Mechanical device would not produce light.]
Experiments, 2nd Ed., London 1719
Hauksbee Generator
 Electric Kiss and Flying Boy

I kissed Venus standing on a pitch. / It A boy suspended on silk cords was

pained me to the quick. / My lips trembled charged and attracted chaff, paper, etc., to
My mouth quivered, my teeth almost his hands.
broke
Georg Matthias Bose (1710–1761) Stephen Gray (1666–1736)
 Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797)
A Philosopher Lecturing on the An Experiment on a Bird in the
Orrery (1766) Air Pump (1768)
 Benjamin Franklin: The Modern Prometheus
• Immanuel Kant used the phrase “The
Modern Prometheus” to honor
Benjamin Franklin, who he saw as the
man who had brought fire down from
the heavens with his electricity
experiments.

• In 1752 Franklin proposed an

experiment with conductive rods to
attract lightning to a Leyden jar, an
early form of capacitor.

• Medical electricity theories: doubtful

about the usefulness of electrical
treatment for palsy and paralysis and
never promoted himself as an
electrical therapist.

• Today: Electrical stimulation to the

brain treatments for depression,
stroke, and other neurological
problems such as Parkinson disease.
 Galvani: Electrophysiology (the study of the
electrical properties of cells and tissues)
Electric fish aided in
studying the intrinsic
electricity that is
involved in fundamental
physiological processes
such as nerve
conduction and muscle
contraction. (De viribus
electricitatis, 1791)

To show conclusively that the generation of an electric current

did not require any animal parts, Volta put together a rather
messy stack of alternating zinc and silver discs, separated by
brine-soaked cloth. He built the pile, which consisted of as
many as thirty disks, in imitation of the electric organ of the
torpedo fish. Volta reported the first electric pile in 1800.
 Benjamin Franklin: The Modern Prometheus
• Immanuel Kant used the phrase “The
Modern Prometheus” to honor
Benjamin Franklin, who he saw as the
man who had brought fire down from
the heavens with his electricity
experiments.

• In 1752 Franklin proposed an

experiment with conductive rods to
attract lightning to a Leyden jar, an
early form of capacitor.

• Medical electricity theories: doubtful

about the usefulness of electrical
treatment for palsy and paralysis and
never promoted himself as an
electrical therapist.

• Today: Electrical stimulation to the

brain treatments for depression,
stroke, and other neurological
problems such as Parkinson disease.
 Frankenstein, or the Modern
Prometheus by Mary Shelley (1818)
 Biology and Art
• Animation process central to the book.
Luigi Galvani demonstrated what we now understand to be the
electrical basis of nerve impulses when he made frog muscles twitch
by jolting them with a spark from an electrostatic machine.

• Frankenstein had applied the leading principles of

Neoclassical aesthetics in creating the deformity.
“[M]y candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half
extinguished light, I saw the yellow eye of the creature open; it
breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. … His limbs
were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful.
Beautiful! — Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of
muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and
flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only
formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes …”
Two key questions drove the debates:
• First, how could life exist in so many types of
organisms that were organized so completely
differently, e.g., reptiles and humans?
• Second, what was the fundamental distinction
between living and dead beings
• Shelley aims to distill these debates in her book
pairing the approach that tried con control nature
(Humphrey Davy) with that of an experimentalist
who observes and catalogs nature (Erasmus
Darwin).
 Giovanni Aldini (1762–1834):
The Real Frankenstein?

Aldini's most famous public

demonstration of the electro-stimulation
technique of deceased limbs was
performed on the executed criminal
George Forster at Newgate in London in Screen shots from public
1803. demonstration in Young Frankenstein
by Mel Brooks, 1974,
 Frankenstein Today
“Frankenstein continues to influence the way we
confront emerging technologies, conceptualize
the process of scientific research, imagine the
motivations and ethical struggles of scientists,
and weigh the benefits of innovation with its
unforeseen pitfalls.”
Frankenstein Bicentennial Project 2015
 Frankenstein Today
• Evoked when discussions of bioengineering,
synthetic biology and other more recent
innovations speak of manufactured life forms.
• In Isaac Asimov's robot novels, the
Frankenstein complex is a term that he coined
for the fear of mechanical men.
• Recent experiments that produced biological
mutations and changed memories
 Electric Circuits of our Nervous Systems

When we look at a beautiful landscape or listen

to music, when we express emotion, and when
we ponder new information, we now know that
these processes are based on minute electric
signals flowing within the electric circuits of our
nervous systems.
EEG: A method to record electrical
activity of the brain along the scalp
Robin Williams and “Robin wanted chiefly to see me in
Oliver Sacks on the set of action, to see me in my own role as
explorer and physician — and, equally,
Awakenings to see the sorts of patients I had
worked and lived with in
Awakening.…[A]s we drove away,
Robin suddenly exploded with an
incredible playback of the ward,
imitating everyone’s voice and style to
perfection.…It constituted, I came to
think, the first step in his actorial
investigation; the one which provided
an intense and minute sensory and
motor corporeal image, which he
could then scan internally and analyse,
and then finally imbue with himself,
deepen, subjectivise.”

Oliver Sacks, Awakenings

 Awakenings
• Dr. Malcolm Sayer (portrayed
by Robin Williams) discovered
beneficial effects of the drug
L-Dopa.
• He administered it to catatonic
patients who survived the
1917–28 epidemic of
encephalitis lethargica.
• Leonard Lowe (played by
Robert De Niro) and the rest of
the patients were awakened
after decades of catatonia and
have to deal with a new life in
a new time.
Encephalitis Lethargica
EEG: A method to record electrical
activity of the brain along the scalp
Encephalitis Lethargica
 Oliver Sacks (1933–2015)
“The Poet Laureate of Medicine” — The New York Times
 Thanks.

Any questions?

Amy Ione
ione@diatrope.com