Who Needs a Paintbrush When You Can Use a Dead Fish?

Not CEREBRART but interesting. James Prosek; "Why are we so eager to draw these disciplinary walls?" http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/symbiartic/2013/04/17/who-needs-a-paintbrush-when-you-can-use-a-dead-fish/

CEREBRART - Prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosia is a disorder of face perception where the ability to recognize familiar faces (such as their immediate family members) is impaired, although the ability to recognize other objects may be relatively intact. Further, some impairments in recognizing facial expressions have been reported in a variety of diseases like Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia. I think that prosopagnosia and related disorders are caused by jumping between different chaotic attractors in the primate brain networks. The primate face is evolved evolutionary to be a beautiful attractor for the primate brain networks in a turbulent world of chaotic forest ecosystems representing important attributes such as attractiveness or social status. I think that a normal primate brain is able to represent the known faces as attractors of the neural network. Normally, the primate brains gather visual information through the eyes and the primary visual cortex and modify dynamically specific facial muscles to be interpreted properly by other primate brains through nonlinear feedback processes of iteration and mutual communication. Inability to stabilize such complex nonlinear feedback processes may suggest the emergence of chaotic attractors in the brain networks. This CEREBRART work illustrates these ideas artistically.
P.S. According to a recent comment I tried to generate a primary artistic design idea for an artefactual facial attractor to help people with Prosopagnosia ...

CEREBRART - Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex

Many studies have provided evidence that social conflicts can generate activation in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex. The Anterior Cingulate Cortex is the frontal part of the Cingulate Cortex, that resembles a collar around the brain corpus callosum.

This CEREBRART work  illustrates the Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex that is  involved in the distressing experience of social exclusion and might represent a circuit that underpins sadness.  So, this partially isolated brain illustrates not only an increased activity in the Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex but also as an abstract idea of the experience of distress following social rejection/isolation associated with greater activity in the Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex.

CEREBRART - Basket Cell

Despite more than 100 years of scientific research, the causes of schizophrenia are still unknown. Neural oscillations are a fundamental mechanism for enabling coordinated activity of brain cells.

Recent evidence from electrophysiological, physiological and anatomical studies suggests that abnormalities in the oscillatory activity of brain cells may have a central role in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. There is evidence towards cortical hyperexcitability in schizophrenics - “Glutamate Chaos” because of a lack of inhibition. 

Dysfunctional oscillations may arise owing to anomalies in the brain’s rhythm-generating networks of GABA-interneurons.

Of the GABA-interneurons types, the cortical Basket Cells are very characteristic in that their axons, when viewed under the microscope, terminate on somata and proximal dendrites of Pyramidal Cells. Therefore, Basket Cells, whose axon terminals surround principal cell somata and proximal dendrites, have a privileged and influential position for regulating the firing of Pyramidal Cells.

The strategic location of Basket Cells axons has long suggested that they subserve inhibitory
mechanisms on the somata of Pyramidal Cells possibly preventing and limiting chaotic processes - “Glutamate Chaos” - in the network of Pyramidal Cells. Thus, altered perisomatic inhibition of Pyramidal Cells by Basket Cells could provide a plausible mechanistic basis for the gamma-oscillation impairments and cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. In the future, this hypothesis may provide a powerful research tool to gain new insights on ways to limit chaotic processes and restore gamma oscillations in schizophrenia.

This CEREBRART work illustrates these ideas artistically.

CEREBRART - MONDRIAN AMACRINE

This CEREBRART work is a mondrianesque transformation of my original painting of the retina approximately symbolising  the cellular transformation that accompany the transmission
of light signals.  I have retained the basic organization of the original painting.

As you probably know, +Piet Mondrian was a sophisticated intellectual and Mondrian’s artistic genius focussed on his search for an underlying structure of nature lay in his unique arrangement of the pattern elements, one that causes a profound aesthetic order to emerge triumphantly from stark simplicity.

This CEREBRART work consists of just three basic colors (approximately symbolising three kinds of retina cone photoreceptors cells), a few black lines (as an artistic scaffold approximately symbolising the glial scaffold of retina) and an otherwise uneventful background of plain white (approximately symbolising the white light to be transformed by the retina). Only one amacrine cell is still left to be presented rather realistically. Amacrine cells provide a mechanism for lateral signal communication between retinal cells, including providing a feedback loop to bipolar cells. They are assumed to play an important role in object segregation including perception of +Mondrian’s paintings.

CEREBRART - REFLECTING THE ACTIONS

The real (non-chaotic) perception of time by the human brain is the consciousness of the succession of physical actions (oriented to success or oriented to reaching understanding) and cognitive reflections on a sequence of one’s actions that have already taken place, upon the consequences of those actions and feelings of pain or pleasure in response. Already in 1871 Darwin wrote in his “The descent of man” that moral beings must be capable of reflecting over and evaluating their actions. Ideally, all human actions should be evaluated by reflecting upon specific principles, using this reflective process to rationally deduce a specific judgment and to improve the person’s capacity for subsequent performances. But in reality the filters that our brain applies are rather chaotic and highly influenced by multiple external factors. Therefore, when our brain creates anything, it also creates chaotically other things which are not what we intended. Only time will tell if our reflections are valid or not as it will become clear what has and has not worked. There is, of course, no way of asking non-human beings to reflect of their actions, but humans can be asked. CORRECTION: It seems that corvids, carrion crows (Corvus corone corone) and ravens (Corvus corax) could reflect as well.Photo Joachim S. Müller's photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/joachim_s_mueller/ And now it is clear that the medial frontal cortex of the human brain is crucially involved in self-generated action and post-actional self-reflection but it remains to be shown why it is that self-reflection depends on mechanisms on the medial frontal surface and which other parts of the brain are involved in post-actional self-reflection. This CEREBRART work illustrates these ideas.

CEREBRART - INFORMATIONAL CHAOS

 

This CEREBRART work illustrates informational chaos in the brain. No motivation. No intention. No volition. No action. No reflection. No integration. Nothing else here, just pure information, chaotic, harsh and uncompromising.