The winner for the Wellcome Image Image Awards 2012, is a picture of a real nude living brain. It is beautiful and grotesque and makes me wonder/understand the fascination we have with gore in media. This image is different then gore for me because it is separate from violence, while most “inside of you” media is about violence. What’s the word for gore without violence? Anyway, beautiful. And I would suggest reading the “Why”… well here it is quoted from the Wellcome Image site…
Alice Roberts (anatomist, author and TV presenter) explains: “This is a stunning image. Taken during an operation, which allows surgeons access to inside the skull, for recording electrical impulses, we are looking at the surface of a living brain. It’s just extraordinary: the ‘grey’ matter (which is grey in death) is blushing pink. Small arteries are glowing with the scarlet blood pulsing through them, while purple veins lie thickly in the sulci, the crevices of the brain. And underneath that is somebody’s mind. For me, the context, the composition and the clarity of this image made it a winner.”
A lot of those words are supposed to be gross, right? I just really like this exultation of the beauty of life as opposed to images of … I don’t know, Dexter is the first thing that comes to mind. The most I see of brains on TV or popular media is when they are being blown against a wall. So, thanks Wellcome Images for saluting innard beauty!
ok i’ve been focusing on some comedy and puppetry shows right now, but this came across my googles … AN LKS ASSOCIATION! i plan on researching harder and i believe they are in Spain, but i am totally fine collaborating with Spain. check out their site www.landaukleffner.org
I wanted to follow up the roach leg post with a little bit of home recordings. Well, hospital recordings if you will. A couple of months ago, my boyfriend went in to have some nerve conduction tests done (hockey is a tough sport y’all). I got to tag along and snag some audio! He is so good to me!!! One day this clip will be a fabulous experimental song with lots of looping mutated musical saw but for now here it is RAW… my boyfriend’s nerves, conducting.
When he is resting it sounds like constant blips and when the beat goes faster they are giving him small electric shocks. Pretty cool. Oh and Happy Birthday Baz!
But Hildegard had a completely different idea than our mechanical model of the body. The idea was that the body is like a plant and that the doctor is a gardener of the plant — this, as opposed to the idea of the body as a machine and the doctor as a mechanic. The fundamental difference is that someone has to fix the broken machine, but a plant can heal itself. And that healing power of the plant is what Hildegard called it its ‘greening power.’ She thought that human beings had the same kind of innate healing power and that, therefore, the doctor was more of a gardener whose purpose is to cultivate that healing power — to nurture it, remove obstructions to it and fortify it.
I was brought back to the story from The Brain That Changes Itself and how Paul Bach-y-Rita stayed with his father after his father’s stroke. He helped him to rehabilitate and learn well, basically everything again. How to walk from crawling. Have you ever met a doctor who seemed like they had that time? Let alone to follow up on that weird thing on your back? I believe that they exist and this interview (and sounds like, book!) supports that theory.
Anyway, that paragraph echoed the beauty I felt when I first read about Neuroplasticity. Bodies knowing how to heal themselves, but needing time, space, and help to do it. We are awesome! Brains are awesome!!! Onward!
I worked at the Pike Place Market in Seattle for 2 yrs. I worked at All Things Lavender across from the At Random – Shirts for Perverts shirt shop. I joked with the owner about a design that my boyfriend and I had talked about. Lo and behold as a going away present, I received this dirty nerdy joke shirt! I loved working at the market!!!
I applied for an artsy thing today because I need a space, some money, and a kick in the butt to do a new brain show. I had to send in a work sample for the application so I took some bits from my show “murder, hope”. That’s the first show I did that was about about brain disorders, neuroplasticity, Batman, and murder ballads. This is the show that I toured on the Canadian Fringe circuit but this clip is from my run at the great, Annex Theatre in Seattle. I thought I’d post it here as well since, y’know I mention it from time to time. These are just a few selections from the show, and its mostly movement stuff (none of the murder ballads, sorry) please to enjoy!
Written and performed by Becky Poole and directed by Carrie Morris, “murder, hope” is the story of one family’s experience with the unimaginably rare and heartbreaking brain disorder, Landau-Kleffner Syndrome. It is a disorienting journey fueled by the creator’s obsessions with superhero archetypes, the burgeoning frontier of Neuroplasticity research, and soul-chilling Appalachian murder ballads. It is a charged and curious show that seeks to make sense of the senseless.
In 2006 Becky Poole’s nephew, Devin, was diagnosed with Landau Kleffner Syndrome, a highly rare childhood neurological disorder characterized by an unusual combination of epilepsy and aphasia. This condition, which robs children of their ability to use and understand language, has been diagnosed in fewer than 10 individuals per year since it was first discovered in 1957. Becky’s urge to make sense of this fascinating and mysterious turn of fate led her to seek comfort and explanation from many sources, and she defended herself against this tragedy by embracing and dissecting Batman mythology, studying contemporary and groundbreaking research in new fields of neurology, and writing eerie and vengeful folk songs to isolate and neutralize her pain. The products of these fascinations have been synthesized in ‘murder, hope’, a one-woman multi-genre performance piece in which the perplexing challenges of balance and communication are made real for audience and performer alike.
Woah! Bugs n’ Brains! Here is a great TedEd talk. As much as ripping a bug’s leg off is not pleasant. This is super cool. Besides, it’ll grow back! This guy make a cockroach leg move by using a beatboxer. This is how dancing feels right? I mean, not like ripping off your leg but like, you just gotta do it! Science makes you groove.
Just thinking today about Neuroplasticity and a bad taste I keep getting, a nagging sense that Neuroplasticity (my tiny knowledge of it) gets co-opted by new-ageness and brain game stores as a quick fix. And that cheapens it! Even if there is a place for it in those realms, which I’m sure there is.
In the interview he says something about Neuroplasticity and using what you have, that I really want to keep with me. Neuroplasticity is not just about neurogenesis, right? It is also working with what you’ve already got to create new paths. I think that is part of the beauty of Neuroplasticity. To change yourself and your internal connections because you have to to survive. Not just that new happens but what you do with it. How you incorporate new with the rest of the old you. ITS A BIG DEAL!!! You can SEE through your TONGUE. You can READ with your TONGUE
Just doing crossword puzzles is not a cure for Alzheimer’s! Maybe no one is saying that, and I’m really just mad about what a crappy job I had at Marbles! Anyway, just wanted to get that out. Feel free to comment please! Just don’t be a jerk. I’ve already said I don’t know what I’m talking about.
