Cartoonist Lynda Barry Teaches You How to Draw

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Creativity, Neuroscience | June 25th, 2019

Friend, are you par­a­lyzed by your iron­clad con­vic­tion that you can’t draw?

Pro­fes­sor Chew­bac­ca aka Pro­fes­sor Old Skull aka car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry has had quite enough of that non­sense!

So stop dis­sem­bling, grab a pen and a hand-sized piece of paper, and fol­low her instruc­tions to Anne Strain­champs, host of NPR’s To The Best Of Our Knowl­edge, below.

It’s bet­ter to throw your­self into it with­out know­ing pre­cise­ly what the ten minute exer­cise holds (oth­er than draw­ing, of course).

We know, we know, you can’t, except that you can. Like Strain­champs, you’re prob­a­bly just rusty.

Don’t judge your­self too harsh­ly if things look “ter­ri­ble.”

In Barry’s view, that’s rel­a­tive, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you were draw­ing with your eyes closed.

A neu­rol­o­gy nerd, Bar­ry cites Gir­i­ja Kaimal, Kendra Ray, and Juan Muniz’ study Reduc­tion of Cor­ti­sol Lev­els and Par­tic­i­pants’ Respons­es Fol­low­ing Art Mak­ing. It’s the action, not the sub­jec­tive artis­tic mer­it of what winds up on the page that counts in this regard.

For more of Barry’s exer­cis­es and delight­ful­ly droll pres­ence, check out this playlist on Dr. Michael Green’s Graph­ic Med­i­cine Chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

Fol­low Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Barry’s 2017 “Mak­ing Comics” Class Online, Pre­sent­ed at UW-Wis­con­sin

Lyn­da Barry’s Illus­trat­ed Syl­labus & Home­work Assign­ments from Her New UW-Madi­son Course, “Mak­ing Comics”

Join Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry for a Uni­ver­si­ty-Lev­el Course on Doo­dling and Neu­ro­science

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine… Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Oliver Sacks Promotes the Healing Power of Gardens: They’re “More Powerful Than Any Medication”

in Creativity, Health, Nature, Neuroscience | June 11th, 2019

Ear­ly Euro­pean explor­ers left the con­ti­nent with visions of gar­dens in their heads: The Gar­den of Eden, the Gar­den of the Hes­perides, and oth­er myth­ic realms of abun­dance, ease, and end­less repose. Those same explor­ers left sick­ness, war, and death only to find sick­ness, war, and death—much of it export­ed by them­selves. The gar­den became de-mythol­o­gized. Nat­ur­al phi­los­o­phy and mod­ern meth­ods of agri­cul­ture brought gar­dens fur­ther down to earth in the cul­tur­al imag­i­na­tion.

Yet the gar­den remained a spe­cial fig­ure in phi­los­o­phy, art, and lit­er­a­ture, a potent sym­bol of an ordered life and ordered mind. Voltaire’s Can­dide, the riotous satire filled with gar­dens both fan­tas­ti­cal and prac­ti­cal, famous­ly ends with the dic­tate, “we must cul­ti­vate our gar­den.” The ten­den­cy to read this line as strict­ly metaphor­i­cal does a dis­ser­vice to the intel­lec­tu­al cul­ture cre­at­ed by Voltaire and oth­er writ­ers of the peri­od—Alexan­der Pope most promi­nent among them—for whom gar­den­ing was a the­o­ry born of prac­tice.

Exiled from France in 1765, Voltaire retreat­ed to a vil­la in Gene­va called Les Délices, “The Delights.” There, writes Adam Gop­nik at The New York­er, he “quick­ly turned his exile into a desir­able con­di­tion…. When he wrote that it was our duty to cul­ti­vate our gar­den, he real­ly knew what it meant to cul­ti­vate a gar­den.” Enlight­en­ment poets and philoso­phers did not dwell on the sci­en­tif­ic rea­sons why gar­dens might have such salu­tary effects on the psy­che. And nei­ther does neu­rol­o­gist Oliv­er Sacks, who also wrote of gar­dens as health-bestow­ing havens from the chaos and noise of the world, and more specif­i­cal­ly, from the city and bru­tal com­mer­cial demands it rep­re­sents.

For Sacks that city was not Paris or Lon­don but, prin­ci­pal­ly, New York, where he lived, prac­ticed, and wrote for fifty years. Nonethe­less, in his essay “The Heal­ing Pow­er of Gar­dens,” he invokes the Euro­pean his­to­ry of gar­dens, from the medieval hor­tus to grand Enlight­en­ment botan­i­cal gar­dens like Kew, filled with exot­ic plants from “the Amer­i­c­as and the Ori­ent.” Sacks writes of his stu­dent days, where he “dis­cov­ered with delight a very dif­fer­ent garden—the Oxford Botan­ic Gar­den, one of the first walled gar­dens estab­lished in Europe,” found­ed in 1621.

“It pleased me to think,” he recalls, refer­ring to key Enlight­en­ment sci­en­tists, “that Boyle, Hooke, Willis and oth­er Oxford fig­ures might have walked and med­i­tat­ed there in the 17th cen­tu­ry.” In that time, cul­ti­vat­ed gar­dens were often the pri­vate pre­serves of land­ed gen­try. Now, places like the New York Botan­i­cal Gar­den, whose virtues Sacks extolls in the video above, are open to every­one. And it is a good thing, too. Because gar­dens can serve an essen­tial pub­lic health func­tion, whether we’re stressed and gen­er­al­ly fatigued or suf­fer­ing from a men­tal dis­or­der or neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tion:

I can­not say exact­ly how nature exerts its calm­ing and orga­niz­ing effects on our brains, but I have seen in my patients the restora­tive and heal­ing pow­ers of nature and gar­dens, even for those who are deeply dis­abled neu­ro­log­i­cal­ly. In many cas­es, gar­dens and nature are more pow­er­ful than any med­ica­tion.

“In forty years of med­ical prac­tice,” the physi­cian writes, “I have found only two types of non-phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ‘ther­a­py’ to be vital­ly impor­tant for patients with chron­ic neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­eases: music and gar­dens.” A gar­den also represents—for Sacks and for artists like Vir­ginia Woolf—“a tri­umph of resis­tance against the mer­ci­less race of mod­ern life,” as Maria Popo­va writes at Brain Pick­ings, a pace “so com­pul­sive­ly focused on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty at the cost of cre­ativ­i­ty, of lucid­i­ty, of san­i­ty.”

Voltaire’s pre­scrip­tion to tend our gar­dens has made Can­dide into a watch­word for car­ing for and appre­ci­at­ing our sur­round­ings. (It’s also now the name of a gar­den­ing app). Sacks’ rec­om­men­da­tions should inspire us equal­ly, whether we’re in search of cre­ative inspi­ra­tion or men­tal respite. “As a writer,” he says, “I find gar­dens essen­tial to the cre­ative process; as a physi­cian, I take my patients to gar­dens when­ev­er pos­si­ble. The effect, he writes, is to be “refreshed in body and spir­it,” absorbed in the “deep time” of nature, as he writes else­where, and find­ing in it “a pro­found sense of being at home, a sort of com­pan­ion­ship with the earth,” and a rem­e­dy for the alien­ation of both men­tal ill­ness and the grind­ing pace of our usu­al form of life.

via New York Times/Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Oliv­er Sacks’ Rec­om­mend­ed Read­ing List of 46 Books: From Plants and Neu­ro­science, to Poet­ry and the Prose of Nabokov

A First Look at The Ani­mat­ed Mind of Oliv­er Sacks, a Fea­ture-Length Jour­ney Into the Mind of the Famed Neu­rol­o­gist

How the Japan­ese Prac­tice of “For­est Bathing”—Or Just Hang­ing Out in the Woods—Can Low­er Stress Lev­els and Fight Dis­ease

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Oliver Sacks’ Recommended Reading List of 46 Books: From Plants and Neuroscience, to Poetry and the Prose of Nabokov

in Books, Neuroscience | May 13th, 2019

Image by Lui­gi Novi. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We remem­ber Oliv­er Sacks as a neu­rol­o­gist, but we remem­ber him not least because he wrote quite a few books as well. If you read those books, you’ll get a sense of Sacks’ wide range of inter­ests — inven­tion, per­cep­tion and mis­per­cep­tion, hal­lu­ci­na­tion, and more — few of which lack a con­nec­tion to the human mind. His pas­sion for ferns, the core sub­ject of a trav­el­ogue he wrote in Oax­a­ca as well as an unex­pect­ed­ly fre­quent object of ref­er­ence in his oth­er writ­ings and talks, may seem an out­lier. But for Sacks, ferns offered one more win­dow into the king­dom of nature that pro­duced human­i­ty, and which through­out his life he tried to under­stand by observ­ing from as many dif­fer­ent angles as pos­si­ble.

No small amount of evi­dence of that pur­suit appears in Sacks’ list of 46 book rec­om­men­da­tions com­mis­sioned for The Strand’s “Author’s Book­shelf” series. (See the full list below.) A fair few of its selec­tions, includ­ing William James’ The Prin­ci­ples of Psy­chol­o­gy, A.R. Luri­a’s The Mind of a Mnemonist, and Anto­nio Dama­sio’s The Feel­ing of What Hap­pens, seem like nat­ur­al favorites for a writer so end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by human cog­ni­tion and con­scious­ness.

Trac­ing the devel­op­ment of the human brain and mind would, of course, lead to an inter­est in biol­o­gy and evo­lu­tion, here result­ing in such picks as Edward O. Wilson’s Nat­u­ral­ist, Carl Zim­mer’s Evo­lu­tion: The Tri­umph of an Idea, and the jour­nals Charles Dar­win kept aboard the Bea­gle.

But Sacks was­n’t just an observ­er of the brain: some of his most inter­est­ing writ­ings come out of the times he used him­self as a kind of research sub­ject — as when he found out what he could learn on amphet­a­mines and LSD. A sim­i­lar line of inquiry no doubt showed him the val­ue of Aldous Hux­ley’s The Doors of Per­cep­tion and Heav­en and Hell, and in less altered states the likes of Sig­mund Freud’s The Inter­pre­ta­tion of Dreams. But whichev­er paths took Sacks toward his knowl­edge, he ulti­mate­ly had to get that knowl­edge down on paper him­self, and the prose of Vladimir Nabokov, the poet­ry of W.H. Auden and the phi­los­o­phy of David Hume sure­ly did their part to inspire his inci­sive and evoca­tive style. We would all, what­ev­er our inter­ests, like to write like Oliv­er Sacks: if these books shaped him as a writer and thinker, who are we to demur from, say, A Nat­ur­al His­to­ry of Ferns?

  • A Nat­ur­al His­to­ry of Ferns by Rob­bin C. Moran
  • A Rum Affair: A True Sto­ry of Botan­i­cal Fraud by Karl Sab­bagh
  • A Trea­tise of Human Nature by David Hume
  • A Vision­ary Mad­ness: The Case of James Tilly Matthews and the Influ­enc­ing Machine by Mike Jay
  • Actu­al Minds, Pos­si­ble Worlds by Jerome Bruner
  • Being Mor­tal: Med­i­cine and What Mat­ters in the End by Atul Gawande
  • Can­nery Row (Stein­beck Cen­ten­ni­al Edi­tion (1902–2002)) by John Stein­beck
  • Chal­lenger & Com­pa­ny: the Com­plete Adven­tures of Pro­fes­sor Chal­lenger and His Intre­pid Team-The Lost World, The Poi­son Belt, The Land of Mists, The Dis­in­te­gra­tion Machine and When the World Screamed by Arthur Conan Doyle
  • Col­lect­ed Poems by W.H. Auden
  • Curi­ous Behav­ior: Yawn­ing, Laugh­ing, Hic­cup­ping, and Beyond by Robert R. Provine
  • Dar­win and the Bar­na­cle: The Sto­ry of One Tiny Crea­ture and His­to­ry’s Most Spec­tac­u­lar Sci­en­tif­ic Break­through by Rebec­ca Stott
  • Dis­turb­ing the Uni­verse by Free­man Dyson
  • Earth Abides by George R. Stew­art
  • Evo­lu­tion: The Tri­umph of an Idea by Carl Zim­mer
  • Eye of the Behold­er: Johannes Ver­meer, Antoni van Leeuwen­hoek, and the Rein­ven­tion of See­ing by Lau­ra J. Sny­der
  • God’s Hotel: A Doc­tor, a Hos­pi­tal, and a Pil­grim­age to the Heart of Med­i­cine by Vic­to­ria Sweet
  • Igno­rance: How It Dri­ves Sci­ence by Stu­art Firestein
  • Imag­in­ing Robert: My Broth­er, Mad­ness, and Sur­vival by Jay Neuge­boren
  • In Search of Mem­o­ry: The Emer­gence of a New Sci­ence of Mind by Eric R. Kan­del
  • Inward Bound: Of Mat­ter and Forces in the Phys­i­cal World by Abra­ham Pais
  • Lise Meit­ner: A Life in Physics by Ruth Lewin Sime
  • Lost in Amer­i­ca: A Jour­ney with My Father by Sher­win B. Nuland
  • Music, Lan­guage, and the Brain by Anirud­dh D. Patel
  • Nat­u­ral­ist by Edward O. Wil­son
  • Phan­toms in the Brain: Prob­ing the Mys­ter­ies of the Human Mind by V.S. Ramachan­dran
  • Plu­to­ni­um: A His­to­ry of the World’s Most Dan­ger­ous Ele­ment by Jere­my Bern­stein
  • Same and Not the Same by Roald Hoff­mann
  • Select­ed Poems by Thom Gunn
  • Silent Thun­der: In the Pres­ence of Ele­phants by Katy Payne
  • Speak, Mem­o­ry: An Auto­bi­og­ra­phy Revis­it­ed by Vladimir Nabokov
  • Swim­ming to Antarc­ti­ca: Tales of a Long-Dis­tance Swim­mer by Lynne Cox
  • The Age of Won­der: How the Roman­tic Gen­er­a­tion Dis­cov­ered the Beau­ty and Ter­ror of Sci­ence by Richard Holmes
  • The Anatomist: A True Sto­ry of Gray’s Anato­my by Bill Hayes
  • The Doors of Per­cep­tion and Heav­en and Hell by Aldous Hux­ley
  • The Ele­phan­ta Suite by Paul Ther­oux
  • The Feel­ing of What Hap­pens: Body and Emo­tion in the Mak­ing of Con­scious­ness by Anto­nio Dama­sio
  • The Inter­pre­ta­tion of Dreams by Sig­mund Freud
  • The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curios­i­ty Changed the World by Jen­ny Uglow
  • The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Lit­tle Book about a Vast Mem­o­ry by A. R. Luria
  • The Prin­ci­ples of Psy­chol­o­gy (Vol­ume Two) by William James
  • The World With­out Us by Alan Weis­man
  • Think­ing in Pic­tures: And Oth­er Reports from My Life with Autism by Tem­ple Grandin
  • Time, Love, Mem­o­ry: A Great Biol­o­gist and His Quest for the Ori­gins of Behavior by Jonathan Wein­er
  • Voy­age of the Bea­gle: Charles Dar­win’s Jour­nals of Research­es by Charles Dar­win
  • What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Sens­es by Daniel Chamovitz
  • What Mad Pur­suit: A Per­son­al View of Sci­en­tif­ic Dis­cov­ery by Fran­cis Crick
  • Won­der­ful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of His­to­ry by Stephen Jay Gould

To pur­chase books on this list, vis­it The Strand’s web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

This is What Oliv­er Sacks Learned on LSD and Amphet­a­mines

Oliv­er Sacks Con­tem­plates Mor­tal­i­ty (and His Ter­mi­nal Can­cer Diag­no­sis) in a Thought­ful, Poignant Let­ter

A First Look at The Ani­mat­ed Mind of Oliv­er Sacks, a Fea­ture-Length Jour­ney Into the Mind of the Famed Neu­rol­o­gist

Oliv­er Sacks Explains the Biol­o­gy of Hal­lu­ci­na­tions: “We See with the Eyes, But with the Brain as Well”

Oliv­er Sacks’ Final Inter­view: A First Look

29 Lists of Rec­om­mend­ed Books Cre­at­ed by Well-Known Authors, Artists & Thinkers: Jorge Luis Borges, Pat­ti Smith, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, David Bowie & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Mapping Emotions in the Body: A Finnish Neuroscience Study Reveals Where We Feel Emotions in Our Bodies

in Biology, Neuroscience, Psychology | May 8th, 2019

“East­ern med­i­cine” and “West­ern medicine”—the dis­tinc­tion is a crude one, often used to mis­in­form, mis­lead, or grind cul­tur­al axes rather than make sub­stan­tive claims about dif­fer­ent the­o­ries of the human organ­ism. Thank­ful­ly, the med­ical estab­lish­ment has large­ly giv­en up demo­niz­ing or ignor­ing yog­ic and med­i­ta­tive mind-body prac­tices, incor­po­rat­ing many of them into con­tem­po­rary pain relief, men­tal health care, and pre­ven­ta­tive and reha­bil­i­ta­tive treat­ments.

Hin­du and Bud­dhist crit­ics may find much not to like in the sec­u­lar appro­pri­a­tion of prac­tices like mind­ful­ness and yoga, and they may find it odd that such a fun­da­men­tal insight as the rela­tion­ship between mind and body should ever have been in doubt. But we know from even a slight famil­iar­i­ty with Euro­pean phi­los­o­phy (“I think, there­fore I am”) that it was from the Enlight­en­ment into the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Now, says Riit­ta Hari, co-author of a 2014 Fin­ish study on the bod­i­ly loca­tions of emo­tion, “We have obtained sol­id evi­dence that shows the body is involved in all types of cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al func­tions. In oth­er words, the human mind is strong­ly embod­ied.” We are not brains in vats. All those col­or­ful old expressions—“cold feet,” “but­ter­flies in the stom­ach,” “chill up my spine”—named qual­i­ta­tive data, just a hand­ful of the embod­ied emo­tions mapped by neu­ro­sci­en­tist Lau­ri Num­men­maa and co-authors Riit­ta Hari, Enri­co Glere­an, and Jari K. Hieta­nen.

In their study, the researchers “recruit­ed more than 1,000 par­tic­i­pants” for three exper­i­ments, reports Ash­ley Hamer at Curios­i­ty. These includ­ed hav­ing peo­ple “rate how much they expe­ri­ence each feel­ing in their body vs. in their mind, how good each one feels, and how much they can con­trol it.” Par­tic­i­pants were also asked to sort their feel­ings, pro­duc­ing “five clus­ters: pos­i­tive feel­ings, neg­a­tive feel­ings, cog­ni­tive process­es, somat­ic (or bod­i­ly) states and ill­ness­es, and home­o­sta­t­ic states (bod­i­ly func­tions).”

After mak­ing care­ful dis­tinc­tions between not only emo­tion­al states, but also between think­ing and sen­sa­tion, the study par­tic­i­pants col­ored blank out­lines of the human body on a com­put­er when asked where they felt spe­cif­ic feel­ings. As the video above from the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry explains, the researchers “used sto­ries, video, and pic­tures to pro­voke emo­tion­al respons­es,” which reg­is­tered onscreen as warmer or cool­er col­ors.

Sim­i­lar kinds of emo­tions clus­tered in sim­i­lar places, with anger, fear, and dis­gust con­cen­trat­ing in the upper body, around the organs and mus­cles that most react to such feel­ings. But “oth­ers were far more sur­pris­ing, even if they made sense intu­itive­ly,” writes Hamer “The pos­i­tive emo­tions of grate­ful­ness and togeth­er­ness and the neg­a­tive emo­tions of guilt and despair all looked remark­ably sim­i­lar, with feel­ings mapped pri­mar­i­ly in the heart, fol­lowed by the head and stom­ach. Mania and exhaus­tion, anoth­er two oppos­ing emo­tions, were both felt all over the body.”

The researchers con­trolled for dif­fer­ences in fig­u­ra­tive expres­sions (i.e. “heartache”) across two lan­guages, Swedish and Finnish. They also make ref­er­ence to oth­er mind-body the­o­ries, such as using “somatosen­so­ry feed­back… to trig­ger con­scious emo­tion­al expe­ri­ences” and the idea that “we under­stand oth­ers’ emo­tions by sim­u­lat­ing them in our own bod­ies.” Read the full, and ful­ly illus­trat­ed, study results in “Bod­i­ly Maps of Emo­tions,” pub­lished by the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Inter­ac­tive Map of the 2,000+ Sounds Humans Use to Com­mu­ni­cate With­out Words: Grunts, Sobs, Sighs, Laughs & More

How Med­i­ta­tion Can Change Your Brain: The Neu­ro­science of Bud­dhist Prac­tice

A Dic­tio­nary of Words Invent­ed to Name Emo­tions We All Feel, But Don’t Yet Have a Name For: Vemö­dalen, Son­der, Chrysal­ism & Much More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How to Memorize an Entire Chapter from “Moby Dick”: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

in Books, Education, Neuroscience, Science | May 3rd, 2019

Some­times, when I can’t sleep, I men­tal­ly revis­it the var­i­ous homes of my child­hood, wan­der­ing from room to room, turn­ing on lights and peer­ing in clos­ets until I conk out.

Turns out these imag­i­nary tours are also handy mnemon­ic tools, as Vox’s Dean Peter­son explains above.

Hey, that’s good news… isn’t the sub­con­scious rumored to do some heavy lift­ing in terms of pro­cess­ing infor­ma­tion?

Peter­son con­quered a self-described bad mem­o­ry, at least tem­porar­i­ly, by traips­ing around his apart­ment, deposit­ing vivid sen­tence-by-sen­tence clues that would even­tu­al­ly help him recite by heart one of his favorite chap­ters in Moby Dick.

In truth, he was plant­i­ng these clues in his hip­pocam­pus, the rel­a­tive­ly small struc­ture in the brain that’s a crit­i­cal play­er when it comes to mem­o­ry, includ­ing the spa­tial mem­o­ries that allow us to nav­i­gate famil­iar loca­tions with­out seem­ing to give the mat­ter any thought.

What made it stick was pair­ing his every­day coor­di­nates to extra­or­di­nary visu­als.

Chap­ter 37, for those keep­ing track at home, is a mono­logue for Cap­tain Ahab in which he describes him­self as not just mad but “mad­ness mad­dened.” Here’s the first sen­tence:

I leave a white and tur­bid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where’er I sail.

Not the eas­i­est text for 21st-cen­tu­ry heads to wrap around, though with a lit­tle effort, most of us get the gist.

Let’s not get hung up on lit­er­ary inter­pre­ta­tion here, though, folks. Hav­ing set­tled on his front stoop as the first stop of his mem­o­ry palace Peter­son refrained from pic­tur­ing frothy spume lap­ping at the low­er­most step. Instead he plunked down a funer­al wreath and direc­tor John Waters, pale of suit and cheek, weep­ing. Get it? White? Wake? Pale cheeks?

After which Peter­son moved on to the next sen­tence.

There are 38 in all, and after sev­er­al days of prac­tice in which he men­tal­ly walked the image-strewn course of his apart­ment-cum-Mem­o­ry Palace, Peter­son was able to regale his cowork­ers with an off-book recita­tion.

The time fac­tor will def­i­nite­ly be a let down for those hop­ing for a low com­mit­ment par­ty trick.

Peter­son spent three-to-four hours a day pac­ing his spa­tial mem­o­ry, admir­ing the odd­i­ties he him­self had placed there.

The incred­u­lous com­ments from those ques­tion­ing the effi­cien­cy of giv­ing up half a day to mem­o­rize a page and a half are bal­anced by tes­ti­mo­ni­als from those who’ve met with suc­cess, using the Mem­o­ry Palace method to retain vast amounts of data pri­or to an exam.

That may, ulti­mate­ly, be a bet­ter use of the Mem­o­ry Palace. Peter­son gets an A for spit­ting out the lines as writ­ten, but his expres­sion is that of an actor audi­tion­ing with mate­r­i­al he has not yet mas­tered. (No shade on Peterson’s act­ing tal­ent or lack thereof—even great actors get this face when their lines are shaky. One friend doesn’t con­sid­er her­self off book until she can get all the way through her mono­logue whilst hop­ping on one foot.)

For more infor­ma­tion on build­ing a Mem­o­ry Palace, refer, as Peter­son did, to author Joshua Foer’s Moon­walk­ing With Ein­stein: The Art and Sci­ence of Remem­ber­ing Every­thing, or to his appear­ance on Adam Grant’s TED Work/Life pod­cast. Stream it here:

If you would like to go whale to whale with Peter­son, below is the text that he installed in his Mem­o­ry Palace, com­pli­ments of Her­man Melville:

I leave a white and tur­bid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where’er I sail. The envi­ous bil­lows side­long swell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass.

Yon­der, by ever-brim­ming goblet’s rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The gold brow plumbs the blue. The div­er sun- slow dived from noon- goes down; my soul mounts up! she wea­ries with her end­less hill. Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of Lom­bardy. Yet is it bright with many a gem; I the wear­er, see not its far flash­ings; but dark­ly feel that I wear that, that daz­zling­ly con­founds. ‘Tis iron- that I know- not gold. ‘Tis split, too- that I feel; the jagged edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against the sol­id met­al; aye, steel skull, mine; the sort that needs no hel­met in the most brain-bat­ter­ing fight!

Dry heat upon my brow? Oh! time was, when as the sun­rise nobly spurred me, so the sun­set soothed. No more. This love­ly light, it lights not me; all love­li­ness is anguish to me, since I can ne’er enjoy. Gift­ed with the high per­cep­tion, I lack the low, enjoy­ing pow­er; damned, most sub­tly and most malig­nant­ly! damned in the midst of Par­adise! Good night-good night! (wav­ing his hand, he moves from the win­dow.)

‘Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stub­born, at the least; but my one cogged cir­cle fits into all their var­i­ous wheels, and they revolve. Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of pow­der, they all stand before me; and I their match. Oh, hard! that to fire oth­ers, the match itself must needs be wast­ing! What I’ve dared, I’ve willed; and what I’ve willed, I’ll do! They think me mad- Star­buck does; but I’m demo­ni­ac, I am mad­ness mad­dened! That wild mad­ness that’s only calm to com­pre­hend itself! The prophe­cy was that I should be dis­mem­bered; and- Aye! I lost this leg. I now proph­esy that I will dis­mem­ber my dis­mem­ber­er. Now, then, be the prophet and the ful­filler one. That’s more than ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye, ye crick­et-play­ers, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blind­ed Bendi­goes! I will not say as school­boys do to bul­lies- Take some one of your own size; don’t pom­mel me! No, ye’ve knocked me down, and I am up again; but ye have run and hid­den. Come forth from behind your cot­ton bags! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab’s com­pli­ments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye can­not swerve me, else ye swerve your­selves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed pur­pose is laid with iron rails, where­on my soul is grooved to run. Over unsound­ed gorges, through the rifled hearts of moun­tains, under tor­rents’ beds, unerr­ing­ly I rush! Naught’s an obsta­cle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Moby Dick Read in Its Entire­ty by Til­da Swin­ton, Stephen Fry, John Waters & Oth­ers

Play Mark Twain’s “Mem­o­ry-Builder,” His Game for Remem­ber­ing His­tor­i­cal Facts & Dates

How to Prac­tice Effec­tive­ly: Lessons from Neu­ro­science Can Help Us Mas­ter Skills in Music, Sports & Beyond

The Neu­ro­science & Psy­chol­o­gy of Pro­cras­ti­na­tion, and How to Over­come It

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City May 13 for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Neurons as Art: See Beautiful Anatomy Drawings by the Father of Neuroscience, Santiago Ramón y Cajal

in Art, Neuroscience, Science | April 8th, 2019

Art depends on pop­u­lar judg­ments about the uni­verse, and is nour­ished by the lim­it­ed expanse of sen­ti­ment. . . . In con­trast, sci­ence was bare­ly touched upon by the ancients, and is as free from the incon­sis­ten­cies of fash­ion as it is from the fick­le stan­dards of taste. . . . And let me stress that this con­quest of ideas is not sub­ject to fluc­tu­a­tions of opin­ion, to the silence of envy, or to the caprices of fash­ion that today repu­di­ate and detest what yes­ter­day was praised as sub­lime.

- San­ti­a­go Ramón y Cajal

The above draw­ing is the sort of sub­lime ren­der­ing that attracts throngs of vis­i­tors to the world’s great mod­ern art muse­ums, but that’s not the sort of renown the artist, Nobel Prize-win­ning father of mod­ern neu­ro­science San­ti­a­go Ramón y Cajal (1852 ‑1934), active­ly sought.

Or rather, he might have back before his father, a pro­fes­sor of anato­my, coerced his wild young son into trans­fer­ring from a provin­cial art acad­e­my to the med­ical school where he him­self was employed.

After a stint as an army med­ical offi­cer, the artist-turned-anatomist con­cen­trat­ed on inflam­ma­tion, cholera, and epithe­lial cells before zero­ing in on his true muse—the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem.

At the time, retic­u­lar the­o­ry, which held that every­thing in the ner­vous sys­tem was part of a sin­gle con­tin­u­ous net­work, pre­vailed.

Ramón y Cajal was able to dis­prove this wide­ly held belief by using Gol­gi stains to sup­port the exis­tence of indi­vid­ual ner­vous cells—neurons—that, while not phys­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed, com­mu­ni­cat­ed with each oth­er through a sys­tem of axons, den­drites, and synaps­es.

He called upon both his artis­tic and med­ical train­ing in doc­u­ment­ing what he observed through his micro­scope. His metic­u­lous free­hand draw­ings are far more accu­rate than any­thing that could be pro­duced by the micro­scop­ic-image pho­to­graph­ic tools avail­able at the time.

His pre­ci­sion was such that his illus­tra­tions con­tin­ue to be pub­lished in med­ical text­books. Fur­ther research has con­firmed many of his sup­po­si­tions.

As art crit­ic Rober­ta Smith writes in The New York Times, the draw­ings are “fair­ly hard-nosed fact if you know your sci­ence”:

If you don’t, they are deep pools of sug­ges­tive motifs into which the imag­i­na­tion can dive. Their lines, forms and var­i­ous tex­tures of stip­pling, dash­es and faint pen­cil cir­cles would be the envy of any mod­ern artist. That they con­nect with Sur­re­al­ist draw­ing, bio­mor­phic abstrac­tion and exquis­ite doo­dling is only the half of it.

The draw­ings’ prag­mat­ic titles cer­tain­ly take on a poet­ic qual­i­ty when one con­sid­ers the con­text of their cre­ation:

Axon of Purk­in­je neu­rons in the cere­bel­lum of a drowned man

The hip­pocam­pus of a man three hours after death

Glial cells of the cere­bral cor­tex of a child

His spec­i­mens were not lim­it­ed to the human world:

Reti­na of lizard

The olfac­to­ry bulb of the dog

In his book Advice for a Young Inves­ti­gator, Ramón y Cajal took a holis­tic view of the rela­tion­ship between sci­ence and the arts:

The inves­ti­ga­tor ought to pos­sess an artis­tic tem­pera­ment that impels him to search for and admire the num­ber, beau­ty, and har­mo­ny of things; and—in the strug­gle for life that ideas cre­ate in our minds—a sound crit­i­cal judg­ment that is able to reject the rash impuls­es of day­dreams in favor of those thoughts most faith­ful­ly embrac­ing objec­tive real­i­ty.

Explore more of Ramón y Cajal’s cel­lu­lar draw­ings in Beau­ti­ful Brain: The Draw­ings of San­ti­a­go Ramón y Cajal, the com­pan­ion book to a recent trav­el­ing exhi­bi­tion of his work. Or immerse your­self at the neur­al lev­el by order­ing a repro­duc­tion on a beach tow­el, yoga mat, cell phone case, show­er cur­tain, or oth­er neces­si­ty on Sci­ence Source.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Vision­ary Note­books Now Online: Browse 570 Dig­i­tized Pages

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City April 15 for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Behold an Anatomically Correct Replica of the Human Brain, Knitted by a Psychiatrist

in Art, Creativity, Design, Neuroscience, Science | March 29th, 2019

Our brains dic­tate our every move.

They’re the ones who spur us to study hard, so we can make some­thing of our­selves, in order to bet­ter our com­mu­ni­ties.

They name our babies, choose our clothes, decide what we’re hun­gry for.

They make and break laws, orga­nize protests, frit­ter away hours on social media, and give us the green light to binge watch a bunch of dumb shows when we could be read­ing War and Peace.

They also plant the seeds for Fitz­car­ral­do-like cre­ative endeav­ors that take over our lives and gen­er­ate lit­tle to no income.

We may describe such endeav­ors as a labor of love, into which we’ve poured our entire heart and soul, but think for a sec­ond.

Who’s real­ly respon­si­ble here?

The heart, that mus­cu­lar fist-sized Valen­tine, con­tent to just pump-pump-pump its way through life, lub-dub, lub-dub, from cra­dle to grave?

Or the brain, a crafty Iago of an organ, pos­ses­sor of bil­lions of neu­rons, com­plex, con­tra­dic­to­ry, a mys­tery we’re far from unrav­el­ing?

Psy­chi­a­trist Dr. Karen Nor­berg’s brain has steered her to study such heavy duty sub­jects as the day­care effect, the rise in youth sui­cide, and the risk of pre­scrib­ing selec­tive sero­tonin reup­take inhibitors as a treat­ment for depres­sion.

On a lighter note, it also told her to devote nine months to knit­ting an anatom­i­cal­ly cor­rect repli­ca of the human brain.

(Twelve, if you count three months of research before cast­ing on.)

How did her brain con­vince her to embark on this mad­cap assign­ment?

Easy. It arranged for her to be in the mid­dle of a more pro­sa­ic knit­ting project, then goosed her into notic­ing how the ruf­fles of that project resem­bled the wrin­kles of the cere­bral cor­tex.

Coin­ci­dence?

Not like­ly. Espe­cial­ly when one of the cere­bral cor­tex’s most impor­tant duties is deci­sion mak­ing.

As she explained in an inter­view with The Tele­graph, brain devel­op­ment is not unlike the growth of a knit­ted piece:

You can see very nat­u­ral­ly how the ‘rip­pling’ effect of the cere­bral cor­tex emerges from prop­er­ties that prob­a­bly have to do with nerve cell growth. In the case of knit­ting, the effect is cre­at­ed by increas­ing the num­ber of stitch­es in each row.

Dr. Norberg—who, yes, has on occa­sion referred to her project as a labor of love—told Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can that such a mas­sive crafty under­tak­ing appealed to her sense of humor because “it seemed so ridicu­lous and would be an enor­mous­ly com­pli­cat­ed, absurd­ly ambi­tious thing to do.”

That’s the point at which many people’s brains would give them per­mis­sion to stop, but Dr. Nor­berg and her brain per­sist­ed, push­ing past the hypo­thet­i­cal, cre­at­ing col­or­ful indi­vid­ual struc­tures that were even­tu­al­ly sewn into two cud­dly hemi­spheres that can be joined with a zip­per.

(She also let slip that her brain—by which she means the knit­ted one, though the obser­va­tion cer­tain­ly holds true for the one in her head—is female, due to its robust cor­pus cal­lo­sum, the “tough body” whose mil­lions of fibers pro­mote com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­nec­tion.)

via The Tele­graph

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Mas­sive, Knit­ted Tapes­try of the Galaxy: Soft­ware Engi­neer Hacks a Knit­ting Machine & Cre­ates a Star Map Fea­tur­ing 88 Con­stel­la­tions

Jazz Musi­cian Plays Acoustic Gui­tar While Under­go­ing Brain Surgery, Help­ing Doc­tors Mon­i­tor Their Progress

How Med­i­ta­tion Can Change Your Brain: The Neu­ro­science of Bud­dhist Prac­tice

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, this April. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Why We Dance: An Animated Video Explains the Science Behind Why We Bust a Move

in Dance, Neuroscience | March 21st, 2019

Has any cul­ture, apart from that of the tiny Utah town in Foot­loose, done entire­ly with­out danc­ing? It would at first seem that any human need the rhyth­mic shak­ing of one’s limbs to orga­nized sound ful­fills must reside pret­ty low on the over­all pri­or­i­ty scale, but anthro­pol­o­gy tells us that var­i­ous human soci­eties start­ed danc­ing before they got into most every oth­er activ­i­ty that fills their time today. “Why is this osten­si­bly friv­o­lous act so fun­da­men­tal to being human?” asks the Aeon video above. “The answer, it seems, is in our need for social cohe­sion — that vital glue that keeps soci­eties from break­ing apart despite inter­per­son­al dif­fer­ences.”

Direct­ed and ani­mat­ed by Rosan­na Wan and Andrew Khos­ra­vani, the four-minute explain­er frames our deep, cul­ture-tran­scend­ing need to “bust a move” in terms of the work of both 19th- and ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry French soci­ol­o­gist Émile Durkheim and more recent research per­formed by Bron­wyn Tarr, an Oxford evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist who also hap­pens to be a dancer her­self.

Durkheim posit­ed the phe­nom­e­non of “col­lec­tive effer­ves­cence,” or “a sort of elec­tric­i­ty,” or “that exhil­a­ra­tion, almost eupho­ria, that over­takes groups of peo­ple unit­ed by a com­mon pur­pose, pur­su­ing an intense­ly involv­ing activ­i­ty togeth­er.” When you feel it, you feel “a flow, a sense that your self is meld­ing with the group as a whole.” And has any prac­tice gen­er­at­ed as much col­lec­tive effer­ves­cence through­out human his­to­ry as dance?

Mod­ern sci­ence has shed a bit of light on why: Tarr has found that “we humans have a nat­ur­al ten­den­cy to syn­chro­nize our move­ments with oth­er humans,” thanks to a region in the brain which helps us make the same move­ments we see oth­ers mak­ing. “When we mim­ic our part­ner’s move­ments, and they’re mim­ic­k­ing ours, sim­i­lar neur­al net­works in both net­works open up a rush of neu­ro­hor­mones, all of which make us feel good.” Lis­ten­ing to music “can cre­ate such a euphor­ic delight that it appears to acti­vate opi­oid recep­tors in the brain,” mak­ing it even hard­er to resist get­ting up and danc­ing. “They said he’d nev­er win,” Foot­loose’s tagline said of the movie’s big-city teen intent on get­ting the town danc­ing again, but “he knew he had to” — an assur­ance that turns out to have had a basis in neu­rol­o­gy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions to Three Soci­ol­o­gists: Durkheim, Weber & Adorno

The Strange Danc­ing Plague of 1518: When Hun­dreds of Peo­ple in France Could Not Stop Danc­ing for Months

The Addams Fam­i­ly Dance to The Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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