Week 7 - Neuroscience and Art

 

This week Professor Vesna focused on the relationship between neuroscience and art. I have long been interested in the brain and the idea of consciousness. The ideas of Freud and Jung are some that I frequently think about because I like to be in control of my mind as much as possible. 


The ideas of Franz Joseph Gall, in that mental functions, are located in different areas of the brain are some of the pioneer ideas that have caused us to advance so much in our knowledge of our brains. You hear so often today about people being left-brained and right-brained and while there is much to debate on those topics as well, Gall’s ideas were the foundation to these as well. 



One of the things Professor Vesna mentions in the lecture is that 95% of dreams are forgotten. This is very interesting to hear because I have always forgotten the dreams that I have had my entire life and I am not the person that can wake up and write them down. I have researched how to be able to do things like lucid dreaming and how to remember dreams more effectively when I wake up, however, none of these have worked for me. 



Something I also have been getting more into in my personal time is controlling my dopamine levels. I thought of this after watching the lecture on LSD and cocaine. Today, it is very easy to get a quick hit of dopamine doing a remarkable amount of things. This includes drugs, but more commonly technology addiction has caused people to always seek out quick releases of dopamine from doing things like watching tik tok or other entertaining content as it is so readily available. I have sought to control myself more and balance out my dopamine levels so I have more willpower to do the things I need to. 


Works Cited:

Drug abuse, dopamine & the Brain's reward system. Drug Abuse, Dopamine & the Brain's Reward System | Hazelden Betty Ford. (n.d.). Retrieved May 14, 2022, from https://www.hazeldenbettyford.org/education/bcr/addiction-research/drug-abuse-brain-ru-915

Dopamine, smartphones & you: A battle for your time. Science in the News. (2021, February 4). Retrieved May 14, 2022, from https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/dopamine-smartphones-battle-time/

Zhao, H., Li, D., & Li, X. (2018). Relationship between dreaming and memory reconsolidation. Brain Science Advances, 4(2), 118–130. https://doi.org/10.26599/bsa.2018.9050005

FREUD, S. I. G. M. U. N. D. (2021). Interpretation of dreams. DIGIREADS COM.

The role of dopamine in motivation and learning. Neuroscience News. (2015, November 24). Retrieved May 14, 2022, from https://neurosciencenews.com/dopamine-learning-reward-3157/

Initiative, T. N. I. H. B. R. A. I. N. (2022, March 9). Researchers discover how the human brain separates, stores, and retrieves memories. SciTechDaily. Retrieved May 14, 2022, from https://scitechdaily.com/researchers-discover-how-the-human-brain-separates-stores-and-retrieves-memories/

Franz Josef Gall. (n.d.). Retrieved May 14, 2022, from https://grants.hhp.uh.edu/clayne/HistoryofMC/HistoryMC/Gall.htm

Vesna, V. (2022, May). Week 7 - Neuroscience + Art. Lecture.



Comments

  1. Akhil May 15, 2022 at 9:46 PM

    Hi Shyam, very interesting note about the several ways of inducing a dopamine release that have come about due to social media. I wonder what implications this has in terms of societal structure - there is the possibility we turn into a community like that in the Black Mirror episode "Nosedive" and only focus on our social image. Art in that world would also be less genuine as artists would only care about being liked and not questioned.

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