Drawing Connection
Artist Nene Humphrey collaborates with neuroscientists to imag(ine) the brain
I have been thinking a lot about what I call Lizardbrainlandia. It’s the space we occupy as humans when we are at our basest and governed by the amygdala aka the lizard brain and our emotions, especially fear, anxiety, and aggression. It’s not a space I relish, and my hope for myself and the species has been since some of my earliest memories to find daily evidence of the global populace doing its darnedest to realize the potential made possible by our prefrontal cortex, the region of the brain that conveys higher order cognitive functions like language, planning, and self-awareness and thereby distinguishes us from most other species.
I am an optimist and a believer in potential. I always have been.
Living in the United States, where the increasingly powerful cacophony of Lizardbrainlandia is all but impossible to escape, challenges me to stay the course these days. So, this week, and thanks to Nene Humphrey, we’re going to get up close and personal with the amygdala to refocus the lens.
Rather than consume and amplify the disquieting onslaught of insanity that Lizardbrainlandia is offering us practically every which way we turn, FED’s throwing down a delectable treat of amygdala transformed by art and science into connection, pure and simple.
This radical excision of Lizardbrainlandia’s current effect in favor of amygdala as object and non-judged process offers us the potential to experience an affect inflected by beauty. By transforming my mounting fear and anxiety into an aestheticized higher order cognitive experience, this dish offers an elevating antidote to the current assault of humans at their worst. Drawing connection instead of conclusion creates the possibility for imagining alternative emphases and experiences.
This transformation and the transformative power it evidences gives me hope in a dark and frightening time.
Art makes me an optimist over and over again. It saves me from despair and reminds me that potential is incontrovertible. No matter what, we humans have the power to imagine something new. May you, too, be comforted and nourished by beauty and connection.
Big love, Ashley
I've been the artist in residence at the LeDoux neuroscience lab at New York University for many years. Art and science were not always as separated as they are now. Lab head, Joseph LeDoux, is also a musician, and his invitation to join the lab reflected his belief that there are many parallels between the ways artists and scientists work.
The lab's research focuses on the amygdala, a part of the brain often referred to as the powerhouse of emotions, and LeDoux thought that it would be interesting to have an artist working alongside neuroscientists. This unconventional and very open-ended position at the lab has had an enormous impact on my work.
Lab scientists first introduced me to the work of neuroscientist/artist Ramòn y Cajal, who won the Nobel Prize in 1906. Cajal made beautiful, intricate drawings demonstrating his theory of synaptic connections in the brain. At the time, the microscope was not strong enough to demonstrate his theory; so, he drew what he imagined these connections would look like.
For as long as I can remember I’ve loved to draw and make things. As a kid, I drew portraits of all my friends and family. In college, this interest in the human form turned inward to organs—first the heart and then the spine before I arrived at the brain.
I became obsessed with the organ’s complex anatomy, functions, and beauty. Since then, I’ve made many photographs, sculptures, and videos with the brain as subject, but I always come back to my first love, drawing.
Some scientists still draw what they see through the microscope even though we now have many other high-tech ways to access the information. Like artists, these scientists feel that their eyes and hands provide valuable information that other formats do not.
One of the things I love to do at the lab is to draw sections of the amygdala through a high-powered microscope. I can spend a whole day drawing a tiny fraction of the amygdala’s neurons and their synaptic connections.
A camera lucida attached to the microscope allows me to orientate myself in the sea of thousands of neurons. It also lets me see my hand as I draw. I make these drawings on tracing paper for use back in the studio.
Lab drawings combine with historical anatomical brain images and other neurological data to form the basic ingredients I use for large collage works on paper. My own 'mapping' system using color and line ties it all together.
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