Museums are becoming valuable vehicles for engaging the public with groundbreaking scientific research into the workings of the human brain.
Several recent exhibitions have introduced audiences to new neurological discoveries and complex ideas about the development of the body’s most mysterious organ. This exciting work often requires close collaboration between museums, artists, hospitals and neuroscientists.
The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge showed how fruitful such partnerships can be with a display of etchings made with real brain slices in its recent exhibition Realisation. Artist Susan Aldworth worked with three human brain samples under the supervision of the Parkinson’s UK Brain Bank at Hammersmith Hospital.
David Dexter, the professor of neuropharmacology at Imperial College London and the scientific director of the brain bank, supervised Aldworth as she created zinc etching plates, which were then used to make 22 prints for the exhibition.
Aldworth instigated the project after being invited by the hospital to witness a brain dissection.
“They lay all the bits of brain out very formally on a stainless steel tray,” she says. “I said to professor Dexter: ‘They look like an etching plate. Can I get permission to print from them?’ I thought that printing from the human brain would make the ultimate self-portrait.”
The ethereal, brightly coloured prints and etching plates were displayed alongside Jane Dixon’s drawings of organic forms, which looked realistic but were in fact created from the artist’s imagination.
A key aim of Realisation was to highlight the need for brain donation and research into conditions such as Parkinson’s disease – a neurodegenerative movement disorder experienced by one in 1,000 of the general population, increasing to one in 100 in those aged over 60.
Brain Diaries, at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, which runs until 1 January 2018, focuses on how the human brain develops from birth to old age, rather than on specific disorders.
The exhibition involves contributions from around 50 scientists. Most of them were studying brain diseases, but still believed that looking at normal brain development was the best way to put their work in context, says Janet Stott, the deputy director and head of public engagement at the Museum of Natural History in Oxford. The show looks at, for
example, neural pruning during adolescence.
This is when active connections are strengthened or lost in the area of the brain responsible for planning and decision making. The limbic system – which controls our emotions – becomes overactive, resulting in the mood-swings we see in teenagers.
The exhibition uses animations and videos to illustrate complex concepts. It also has a tactile exhibit featuring 3D-printed models of the human brain, made from scans of the brains of a neuroscientist and her family.
Visitors can enter a competition to investigate a brain on a chosen subject using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.
The Oxford University Museum of Natural History and Birmingham’s Thinktank are among a number of museums that ran activities and talks from neuroscientists during Brain Awareness Week (13-19 March).
Meanwhile, displays on mental health keep drawing visitors. Last year the Wellcome Collection in London opened two major shows on the theme – States of Mind, about the conscious experience, and Bedlam, which explored how the asylum (now Bethlem Royal Hospital) evolved and influenced the landscape of mental health now. Bethlem Museum of the Mind is organising an exhibition (likely to open in November) on the treatment of trauma associated with war and conflict.
Museums have been playing an important role in ensuring that research on the human brain helps audiences to make sense of their own lives, and does not simply sit within the pages of academic papers.
Not so cerebral
“You don’t go about demystifying the brain by locking it away in a laboratory. You have to address the subject appropriately in widely accessible media, like art, which has a significant role to play in communicating science to the public. Art can be used as a tool to translate what a scientist sees into a form that can be understood by everyone.”
David Dexter is the professor of neuropharmacology at Imperial College London and the scientific director of the Parkinson’s UK Brain Bank
Several recent exhibitions have introduced audiences to new neurological discoveries and complex ideas about the development of the body’s most mysterious organ. This exciting work often requires close collaboration between museums, artists, hospitals and neuroscientists.
The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge showed how fruitful such partnerships can be with a display of etchings made with real brain slices in its recent exhibition Realisation. Artist Susan Aldworth worked with three human brain samples under the supervision of the Parkinson’s UK Brain Bank at Hammersmith Hospital.
David Dexter, the professor of neuropharmacology at Imperial College London and the scientific director of the brain bank, supervised Aldworth as she created zinc etching plates, which were then used to make 22 prints for the exhibition.
Aldworth instigated the project after being invited by the hospital to witness a brain dissection.
“They lay all the bits of brain out very formally on a stainless steel tray,” she says. “I said to professor Dexter: ‘They look like an etching plate. Can I get permission to print from them?’ I thought that printing from the human brain would make the ultimate self-portrait.”
The ethereal, brightly coloured prints and etching plates were displayed alongside Jane Dixon’s drawings of organic forms, which looked realistic but were in fact created from the artist’s imagination.
A key aim of Realisation was to highlight the need for brain donation and research into conditions such as Parkinson’s disease – a neurodegenerative movement disorder experienced by one in 1,000 of the general population, increasing to one in 100 in those aged over 60.
Brain Diaries, at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, which runs until 1 January 2018, focuses on how the human brain develops from birth to old age, rather than on specific disorders.
The exhibition involves contributions from around 50 scientists. Most of them were studying brain diseases, but still believed that looking at normal brain development was the best way to put their work in context, says Janet Stott, the deputy director and head of public engagement at the Museum of Natural History in Oxford. The show looks at, for
example, neural pruning during adolescence.
This is when active connections are strengthened or lost in the area of the brain responsible for planning and decision making. The limbic system – which controls our emotions – becomes overactive, resulting in the mood-swings we see in teenagers.
The exhibition uses animations and videos to illustrate complex concepts. It also has a tactile exhibit featuring 3D-printed models of the human brain, made from scans of the brains of a neuroscientist and her family.
Visitors can enter a competition to investigate a brain on a chosen subject using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.
The Oxford University Museum of Natural History and Birmingham’s Thinktank are among a number of museums that ran activities and talks from neuroscientists during Brain Awareness Week (13-19 March).
Meanwhile, displays on mental health keep drawing visitors. Last year the Wellcome Collection in London opened two major shows on the theme – States of Mind, about the conscious experience, and Bedlam, which explored how the asylum (now Bethlem Royal Hospital) evolved and influenced the landscape of mental health now. Bethlem Museum of the Mind is organising an exhibition (likely to open in November) on the treatment of trauma associated with war and conflict.
Museums have been playing an important role in ensuring that research on the human brain helps audiences to make sense of their own lives, and does not simply sit within the pages of academic papers.
Not so cerebral
“You don’t go about demystifying the brain by locking it away in a laboratory. You have to address the subject appropriately in widely accessible media, like art, which has a significant role to play in communicating science to the public. Art can be used as a tool to translate what a scientist sees into a form that can be understood by everyone.”
David Dexter is the professor of neuropharmacology at Imperial College London and the scientific director of the Parkinson’s UK Brain Bank