This blog post originally appeared on the braiNY website. braiNY seeks
to raise the public profile of brain science through the efforts of
neuroscientists coordinated by the Greater New York City chapter of the Society
for Neuroscience
Worms and jelly beans. It may
seem difficult to find a connection between these two long-time favorites of
small children and the study of the brain. But as visitors to the braiNY tent
at the World Science Festival’s Ultimate Science Street Fair on June 2nd found
out, both have the potential to be powerful tools of investigation.
During Brain Awareness Week this year, Dana Alliance member Richard Restak, M.D., and three New Yorker cartoonists met at the Rubin Museum for a public discussion about humor and the brain. Those of us in the audience left with some key takeaways about how the brain processes humor and the benefits of cartoons: “Cartoons are great brain enhancers,” Restak said, because they make heavy demands on the organ. No stranger to the practical benefits of cartoons, Restak uses them in his neuropsychiatric practice as an evaluative tool to measure patients’ psychological well-being.
In a recent article for The American Scholar, Restak expands upon the Rubin Museum discussion, delving into the question, “Can humor help us better understand the most complex and enigmatic organ in the human body?”
Neuroscientists
say adolescence is “a wonderful time.” Beleaguered parents may disagree.
“The
adolescent brain isn’t broken or defective,” Dr. Jay Giedd told an audience at the
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) on Wednesday. “It’s
different from the child’s brain, and it’s different from the adult’s brain, but
those differences have many upsides.”
Don’t miss out on the opportunity to learn more about the teen brain at tomorrow evening’s panel discussion, “What Are They Thinking? Exploring the Adolescent Brain." The speakers are Jay Giedd, chief of the brain imaging unit in the child psychiatry branch at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH); Elaine Walker, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Emory University; and Elizabeth Albro, associate commissioner, National Center for Education Research, U.S. Department of Education. Alan I. Leshner, chief executive officer of AAAS and a former deputy director and acting director of NIMH, will make opening remarks.
The event is part of the free Neuroscience and Society series, sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Dana Foundation. It will be held at the AAAS auditorium in DC.
Visit the AAAS website for more information and to register.
Does
it matter if art is beautiful? Does interpretation depend on taste and culture?
These are some of the questions tackled by panelists at a recent World Science
Festival event, “Sunday at the Met: Arts and the Mind.” The topic was
the emerging and increasingly interdisciplinary field of neuroaesthetics. Moderated by Cooper Union
president and cognitive neuroscientist Jamshed Bharucha, experts in a variety
of fields came together for the discussion:
Luke Syson, art curator
at the Met, questioned how taste varies according to cultural upbringing and the
environment where a work is situated. He pointed out that aesthetic responses
to the man-made and natural world differ and that our “conscious awareness [of
art] is only the tip of the iceberg.”
