Looking within: The brain as art

A retrospective exhibit explores the evolving visualization of the brain.

By Stephanie Stapleton, amednews staff. May 7, 2001.

In 1991, the Institute of Medicine report, "Mapping the Brain and Its Functions: Integrating Enabling Technologies into Neuroscience Research," declared that "neuroscience is an inherently visual science."

This theme is demonstrated by a current National Academy of Sciences' exhibit tracking 500 years of work illustrating the evolution of knowledge about the brain's form and function. With more than 60 images, The Art of Neuroscience: Image and Understanding 1518-2000, explores how this discipline is marked by an intersection of advances in artistic technique and scientific technology -- from 16th century woodcuts to advanced PET scans.

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"The idea of the exhibition is that the visual form is at least as powerful a way to communicate scientific knowledge as are words," said Janis Tomlinson, PhD, curator and director of the Arts in the Academy program at the NAS.

"But going back in [time], each attempt to illustrate anatomy, the brain, creates a footprint forward," said Dr. Tomlinson. "When you try to record something in an image, it forces you to look harder to define what isn't that definite. The act of imaging forces you to see more."

The juxtapositions are striking.

One illustration, a 1627 woodcut from the anatomical text, On the Structure of the Human Body, is hung near a 1994 Annie Leibowitz photograph, "Portrait of Laurie Anderson, MRI."

Medical knowledge has been both advanced and hamstrung by limits in technology.

Together, these examples are interesting for a couple of reasons, according to Dr. Tomlinson. The early images are depersonalized. In contrast, Leibowitz' 20th-century photo shows a series of MRI images of one person, so specialized that it creates an unusual portrait, "a unique identifier of an individual," Dr. Tomlinson said.

Tracing neuroscience's images over time is a fascinating path that conveys how medical knowledge was both advanced and hamstrung by limits in technology.

"A woodcut -- even in the hands of the famous anatomist Vesalius -- could not show the detail that would be revealed subsequently in engravings and until the 18th century, illustrations were printed only in black and white," notes the exhibit's catalog.

Consider, for instance, Charles Estienne's De Dissectione Partium Corporis Humani from 1545. In a woodcut from this work, a muscular figure presents a dissected head for examination. However, the image, in terms of technical detail, is not very useful as a medical illustration, according to exhibit papers.

Meanwhile, Bartolomeo Eustachio's work, circa 1552, involved the use of copper engraving, thereby involving more precise linear shading of the vertebrae. The illustration from Tabulae Anatomicae was used until 1817 when it was published in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Dr. Tomlinson pointed out another copper engraving from Anatomia Humani Corporis, a 1685 work by Govard Bidloo.

It is interesting because it reveals the perspective of both the anatomist and the artist. There is incredible attention paid not only to the brain or spinal cord, but also to the dissection -- "the details of the human intervention," she said.

Meanwhile, other intriguing images reveal varying and emerging schools of thought about how the brain functions.

A 1518 woodcut by Jacobi Berengario da Carpi was part of a treatise on cranial injuries. It reflects the medieval concept of the localization of mental processes in three ventricles of the brain -- sensory perception resided in the first; reason and imagination in the second; memory in the third.

Later, in De homine, published first in 1662, Rene Descartes is credited with a major breakthrough regarding how the brain controls the body's movements. Illustrations reflect his view that a pineal gland located at the center of brain between the anterior ventricles produced "animal spirits" that were released into the motor nerves to produce motion. According to Descartes, the "rational soul," located in the pineal gland, triggered the release.

Much later, the engravings of Franz Joseph Gall, 1819, advanced the concept that certain parts of the brain cortex related directly to certain human and animal talents and behaviors. Drawings convey an image of the brain that is made up of many different organs. The skull's bumps and indentations reflect the size and function of these organs, which, in turn, were responsible for instincts such as reproduction, self-defense, murder, cunning, tendency to steal, vanity and memory. His work became the basis for the studies of cranioscopy and phrenology.

Olivia Parker's 1996 photo, "The Murderer's Brain," turns the camera to evidence that was once examined in this manner. The brain belonging to John Wilson, executed for murder in 1887, was examined by noted neurologist Dr. Francis X. Dercum. He concluded that its anatomical aberrations indicated inferiority and criminal tendencies. The actual specimen is housed at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia.

The Art of Neuroscience: Image and Understanding, 1518-2000, will be on view through May 25 at the NAS in Washington, D.C. It will begin a three-year travelling tour later this year.