Waves of Mu

So before I begin, I just want to tell you that this is totally off topic. The only way this directly relates to my consumption of food & drinks is that they had free supplies of both of those there. Which is partly the reason I walked in, but not the reason I stayed for 2 hours. I have never seen such an interesting combination of modern neuroscience and art before, and learned more about the brain that I will actually remember than I ever did in college biology. And all I was walking down that particular street at that time was to get a haircut from my neighborhood barber (they ended up being closed for Yom Kippur).

The actual exhibition is split up into two parts: the installation and the show. When you walk in, you first go through the installation where they make you take off your shoes to protect the installation which is all around you. The floors are bright red velvety stuffed pieces of fabric. The walls are covered in pictures of the brain. There are wires everywhere. There are things to touch, smell, listen, see, and talk to so it is a fully interactive exhibit. The exhibit is an entire room built up as model of the human brain. Some elements are metaphorical and some are more straightforward. Some actually go into the history of nueroscience and the development of the idea of mirror neurons. I went there on the opening night this past thursday and got to speak to Maggie, who is very involved in the exhibit and was able to explain the symbolism behind the entire installation.

More details on that and photos after the jump…

So unfortunately, I am still having slight technical difficulties posting photo’s in the blog entries but in the meantime I set up a separate photo gallery that you can take a look at here. I would recommend glancing through the photo’s first so the commentary below has some relevance. There are also some brief notes on the photo’s themselves so you know what you are looking at.

The entire room is covered in wiring, photos, references to neuroscience history, and actual parts of the brain everywhere. Right in the center of the room is the thalamus which is represented by a actor who sits at a desk and regulates everybody going in and out of the room. She was also comically fielding phone calls from callers (not sure if they were fake or real) and directing them to either long or short term [memory] storage. I learned this was because the thalamus acts as the regulator of the brain and every sense (except the sense of smell) goes through the thalamus first.

In front of the thalamus’s desk there was the hypothalamus, hippocampus, and the amigdila. The hypothalamus, which is responsible for a variety of things including, but not limited to, the endocrine system and emotional responses (such as anger and sex) and hunger regulation. To represent this they have a small table with photos inside of the various topic the hypothalamus regulates. The amigdila, which is where the response to whether to “fight or flight” is controlled, is represented by two animals (cats?) that are about to either attack or run away. The hippocampus, which aids in short term memory and spatial navigation, is represented by two clay-like figures holding up a variety of photos from the past.

Behind the thalamus was an archaic machine that represented the medulla oblongata, which is one of the oldest and most primitive parts of the brain that is responsible for basic regulation of things like your heart and lungs. The machines were respectfully churning, pumping, etc. away until you pushed one of the three buttons and messed with the system. I interpreted this as when we push our own body’s buttons with drugs, alcohol, or anything else that upsets our natural rhythm.

In the front of the room were two eyes with lights shining on them and a pair of scented candles in the middle representing your vision and olfactory systems. On the sides were two conch shells with sound coming out of them representing the auditory systems.

The sense of feeling was represented by the two pairs of black arches that loomed over the thalamus. The body parts painted onto the black arches corresponded to the part of the body that the neurons ended at. If the body part was painted larger it meant we have more neurons in our brain dedicated to that part of the body. For example, we have more neurons for our hands and face than we do our elbow’s so consequently the hand and face were drawn much larger than the elbow. An interesting bit of trivia i learned is that the neurons for our sex organs are on the same path as the neurons for our feet, which is supposed to explain why people play footsie.

Hanging in front of the thalamus are two chandeliers which I think are supposed to represent the frontal lobes of the brain. This is where the cava I had started to make things a bit fuzzy, but I think they were there to represent our personality and individuality. The artist wanted to emphasize this as the most important part of our brain so she used a very expensive set of chandeliers to do so.

On the walls they have hung three white gowns which represent the three different layers protecting the brain. In the corners of the room are gift boxes that are wrapped in the same paper as the walls. They seem to fall into the background with all the other things to look at in the exhibit. These represent the hidden parts of the brain that we haven’t come to fully understand yet. They are gifts that are hidden now, but will be opened later on.

Finally, and definitely not least, all throughout the installation they have small, reflective Christmas ornaments which represent the mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are a recent development in the past decade or so in neuroscience. They were discovered when a macaque monkey was observed having certains neurons firing whether or not the monkey was actually doing the action or observing the action. The action in this case was reaching for a peanut. To represent this part of neuroscience development, there are little models of macaque monkeys and a 2 peanuts in the gallery.

Useful links:
http://www.wavesofmu.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron