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Portraying Perception:
A note on how the brain integrates information
2019 USC: UNDER REVIEW FOR LITERARY PUBLICATION
I'm currently a senior at USC, and am studying neuroscience and business administration. Furthermore, I'm (obviously) interested in art, so I took a visualization & perception 101 course during the fall of 2019. Throughout the class, we were encouraged to develop projects that highlighted our backgrounds and identities. I used mixed-media and paper collage as an artistic medium to express human perception and how our brains function on a chemical and molecular level. The project you see here is my final portfolio for the class; it's a collection of pieces that reflect the functions of the mind... more specifically how the brain perceives and translates information/stimuli.
In my science classes, we learn that life is simply composed of cognition and perception. But art makes us think that life is far more grandiose. So when asked to make a collection of pieces that reflect my identity, I hit a block.
I came to the conclusion that my form of self-identity is really just the on and off firing of neurons. Life as we know it is rather binary... but this binary spark is what constitutes my conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions:
How do I perceive myself and my actions?
And how to observers comprehend that?
I am just neurons firing ON/OFF.
I am a concert of biological mechanisms perfected through evolution.
HOWEVER, my conscious experience is neither mechanistic nor binary.
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I exude the soft, elegant, and feminine essence of a vivid, dynamic, and balanced neural network. Neurons connect and work together in an integrated system like flowers on a vine or like gears of a machine. Sure, I am a system, but the intricate manner in which my neurons fire constitute the graceful, intelligent, and creative person I am today.
Optic Chiasm
Corpus Callosum
The corpus callosum stretches across the midline of the brain, connecting the left and right cerebral hemispheres. It plays an important role in relaying information between the right and left brain, keeping our conscious and unconscious functions balanced as information passes through. Many body functions cross at the midline... most notoriously, motor control on the left side of the body is controlled by the right brain, vice versa. Yet the ballerina is as balanced, graceful, and dynamic as ever. The corpus callosum beautifully and elegantly balances inverted information to create a seamless unified experience.
The optic chiasm connects our eyes to our brain, integrating visual information to be processed and carried to deeper brain centers. Many biologists believe the optic chiasm to be a turning point in evolution... its role is paramount in the lives of countless mammalian species. This piece reflects how the optic chiasm (the center focal point) efficiently integrates various forms and types of visual information from our environment into a fluid stream that expands out in the far reaches of the brain.
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