Brain power

Science and art of the brain

Dr Ken Arnold, the Wellcome Trust’s Exhibitions Manager, announces the opening of a new exhibition at the Science Museum that provides a challenging view of what’s inside of our heads.

It weighs 1.5 kg and contains 28 billion cells, with a mind-boggling 10 000 billion connections between them. We each have one, and yet they are all different. While we are alive, they are constantly switched ‘on’; turning them ‘off’ kills us. And from this extraordinary physical object comes the totality of our experiences, feelings, ideas and understandings. Even our comprehension of what any of this might mean resides there.

Little wonder then that the human brain has proved an irresistible magnet for curiosity and wonder, for investigation and speculation - particularly by scientists and artists. Drawing on a long historical tradition of brain research, recent times have seen startling progress in areas such as neural networks and computer modelling, diseases affecting the brain such as stroke, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, and on profound issues such as the role of language in thought, cognition and behaviour.

Conversely, in art, the brain and mind have also been subject to inspired scrutiny and exploration. Professor Semir Zeki, himself a leading neuroscientist, has gone so far as to propose that some artists might be thought of as neurologists, "studying the brain with techniques that are unique to them and reaching interesting but unspecified conclusions about the organisation of the brain".

This growing focus on the brain as the seat of understanding in the last few centuries has led to its becoming as much an icon as an object of study. The brains of the famous, and especially of the famously brainy, have been subjected to particularly close scrutiny. Albert Einstein’s has been endlessly studied, and that of the mathematical genius and inventor of the computer Charles Babbage was studied and kept (in two halves) by the Royal College of Surgeons. One half is currently on show at the entrance of a new exhibition at the Science Museum – ‘Head On: Art with the brain in mind’.

Medical science is sustained by curiosity and wonder; but it also affects much else in our everyday lives. As part of the Wellcome Trust’s desire to engage the public, ‘Head On’ is the first in a series of exhibitions presented in a new 330 square metre gallery at the Science Museum examining the relationship between medical science, and its social and cultural contexts. At the heart of this country’s premier science museum, where visitors have got used to didactic and interactive exhibitions, this space will be more like an art gallery - but one with an attitude, not just a display of art.

The variety of works on show in ‘Head On’ reflects the diversity and creative potential of the brain itself. Exhibits are drawn from science, art, history and anthropology, with many coming from the Wellcome Collections, originally gathered by Sir Henry Wellcome and now largely kept in the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine and the Science Museum.

At the heart of the exhibition are eight collaborations led by contemporary artists involving ideas from the world of biomedicine. Gerhard Lang, for example, has sought to present a mind (his own perhaps) in the form of a modern ‘cabinet of curiosities’; while Andrew Carnie, inspired by the work of early neurologists, has produced a light-work based on images of neurons; Katharine Dowson on the other hand presents a series of works exploring her own experiences as a dyslexic; and Osi Audu shows work related to his interest in ideas about the ‘outer and inner head’ and the ‘seeing mind’ from Yoruba and other African cultures. Surrounding this ‘grey matter’ are historical and scientific objects as well as works by some well-known artists, including David Hockney and Elizabeth Frink.

Led by contemporary art works then, ‘Head On’ draws on both artistic and scientific traditions, and especially on those moments when one has seemed relevant and significant for the other. The exhibition is organised around three broad themes that attempt to tease out some of the intriguing aspects of the human mind and the centuries-old quest to understand it: the anatomy of the brain, the relationship between the head’s innards and outer surface, and models and metaphors for the mind.

Anatomy of the brain

What is inside our brains? The development of the Renaissance idea of studying things by pulling them apart led researchers to put the brain under the anatomist's knife. Many scientists also wondered about the relationship between the physical brain and the mind. For the 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes and his followers, the answer lay in mechanical theories.

In the mid-19th century, methods of study were developed for observing people with brain injuries and illnesses. This led Paul Broca and others to speculate that localised brain regions were responsible for specific mental functions, such as language. More recently, powerful imaging techniques have given scientists windows onto functioning brains, without damaging them. Electroencepholography (EEG), discovered in 1875, allowed detection of the brain’s electrical signals in action. A century later, computerised axial tomography (CAT) provided images of brain structure. Today, positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allow blood flow in the brain to be viewed while subjects perform specific tasks. Like elements in a cubist painting, each method adds to the overall picture of the workings of the mind.

Face, form and character

What links the insides and outsides of our heads: our minds and characters to our faces and skulls? For centuries, this question has intrigued both artists and scientists.

The portrait is one of the most enduring forms of art and the study of the face (physiognomy) has ancient roots. In the 18th century, physiognomy became part of a new ‘science of man’. Differences between animals and between types of people were related to a technical analysis of heads and faces. Links between the physical and the moral were made explicit: people’s characters, it was felt, could be detected in their faces. In the 19th century, these ideas were widely adopted by sociologists, criminologists and anthropologists.

Joseph Gall’s theory of heads (phrenology) related brain regions to specific moral attributes - generosity, hope, and criminality, for example. Bumps on people’s heads, reflecting the brain within, indicated character and intelligence. These ideas were popular, though not scientifically supported, well into the 20th century. Ironically, though, many mental attributes are now thought to be associated with particular parts of the brain. Several emotions, for example, are strongly tied to the amygdala, while brain scans regularly identify regions that ‘light up’ when subjects are engaged in some kind of mental activity, such as controlling the movement of a finger or becoming sexually aroused.

Models of the mind

What do our minds resemble? The use of models and metaphors are crucial to both the art and the science of understanding the brain.

Western models of the mind have often focused on memory, using analogies of pictures and words - the mind as a canvas, museum, alphabet or encyclopaedia. Renaissance anatomical research, and the idea of linking physical structure with function, led to the influential idea of the mind as a ‘thinking machine’. In art, seeing the mind as a seat of the senses has proved extremely suggestive, while some argue that every artwork can be thought of as a model of the mind. Mind metaphors have sometimes come from nature and religion (a tree or a spirit), but more frequently they relate to cutting-edge technology. Early ideas of the brain as a book or blank slate gave way to the 19th-century steam engine, then to the telephone exchange. Most recently the brain has been likened to a computer or the World Wide Web.

Little, it would seem, can be understood of the mind outside of metaphors. But since these metaphors all come from the brain in the first place, the mind is clearly at least as intriguing as all of them together. With each new metaphor, we see more to wonder at.

And this is part of the point of the exhibition. For rather than providing answers to any of the questions it raises, ‘Head On’ suggests instead that we probably understand more about our minds and brains by using art and science to probe and explore. You can see for yourself by visiting the exhibition at the Science Museum, London, until 28 July.

‘Head On’ was co-curated by Ken Arnold, Caterina Albano and Marina Wallace (who also co-curated ‘Spectacular Bodies’ at the Hayward Gallery in October 2000).

External links