September 2, 2010
A Tasty Brain
Carefully carving through the surface of the shiny, quivering pink cortex with his scalpel, neuroscientist Guy Billings traced out a small area of the marvellous human cerebrum. “This,” he said, “is Broca’s area – crucial for the ability to produce language. People who have suffered damage to this region have lost the ability to speak.” The crowd peered in for a closer look.
“Let’s just cut that out then,” said Guy, and plopping the pink shiny piece onto a plate, he handed it out with a shiny pink spoon. It was instantly devoured (and declared delicious).
August 25, 2010
Green Man: Jelly Brains
In a lovely pop up presentation with a quivering jelly brain (plus a dozen miniature pannacotta brains), neuroscientist Guy Billings took us through the anatomy of our marvelous cerebrums.
It truly is an amazing construction – and we certainly do not use “10 per cent” of it, as popular myths would have us believe.
Rather, we use the entire thing – as a number of unfortunate individuals have discovered. At the mercy of curious mid 20th-century neuroscientists, famous individuals such as HM had small chunks of their cortex removed in misguided attempts to cure severe depression, epilepsy and other crippling conditions.
As we discovered, those little bits were quite necessary. HM was left with no short term memory – as Guy put it, “a human goldfish”, unable to remember anything for longer than a few seconds.
Thankfully the rest of us in the garden in Wales had ours intact, and could enjoy carving up a pannacotta model in lieu of the real thing to learn about the structure of the most complex object in the known universe. Safer, and tastier, than the real thing.
August 18, 2010
Wellcome Trust Blog
Summertime means music festival season for many, but revellers at some of this year’s events may encounter science alongside the singing. Zoe Cormier, ‘guerilla scientist’, tells us more.
Agency of adventure and play Coney with our synaesthetic brain.
Anyone who passed by the Guerilla Science tent at the Secret Garden Party in July would have had reason to look twice: costumed revellers standing in front of a giant eye to make an enormous brain sing a cascade of strange noises.
The giant, pink, flowery brain is not just any giant brain. It has synaesthesia, a condition that up to one in 23 people may possess where two senses become entwined: words can have tastes, or numbers may have smells. Agency of adventure and play Coney, paired with neuroscientist Thomas Wright, devised an interactive performance to give those with a more typical sensory framework a better appreciation of what synaesthesia feels like. Contestants were asked, as Coney put it, “to see what the brain thinks you sound like to look at” and the result was a sonic and visual feast.
By blending the latest from biomedical research and neuroscience with art, music and play to create a noisy and colourful interactive experience, the Synaesthesia Game is a unique and (we hope) effective way to introduce people to a scientific concept in ways the written word or a lecture cannot.
Guerilla Science specialises in scientific events like this. Since we began staging events at music festivals in 2007 we have moved beyond simply speaking to our audiences. We try to engage people with the latest in research by blending science with art, music and play to create interactive and memorable events in unusual and generally arts-focused settings. Our handle, ’guerilla’, stems from how we pop up in places where science and scientists are not normally found: nightclubs, food markets, cinemas and (most importantly for us) music festivals.
By nestling ourselves among cabaret dancers, fire sculptures and mud wrestling pits, we aim to challenge widespread assumptions about what science is and how it works. By surprising people with a new finding (some people in vegetative states are actually conscious) or a challenging question (is gender actually an illusion?) we hope to inspire more people to think in new ways about their own lives. And through this, we hope more people understand how ‘science’ provides a window into the complexities of the human condition.
This year’s programme was larger and more experimental than ever, in great part thanks to our funding from the Wellcome Trust. After a string of smaller events in London (including a sensory feast in Borough Market and an immersive installation on perception with Secret Cinema) we are in the middle of our biggest summer festival season to date.
July took us to the Lovebox festival in London and four days at the Secret Garden Party. Now we are gearing up for the Green Man festival this coming weekend (20-22 August). The Synaesthesia Game will be with us. Transporting a giant brain from a warehouse in East London to a yurt in the middle of a field in Wales is certainly not easy, but it is most definitely worth it.
By Zoe Cormier for the Wellcome Trust
July 29, 2010
SGP: Waking The Dead
Dr Adrian Owen of the University of Cambridge.
Neuroscientist Adrian Owen held our audience captive for a staggering hour and a half with the story of how he learned to speak to people in vegetative states using brain scans, state of the art technology, and patience.
It appears that about 17 per cent of people in comas are actually conscious, and some of these do eventually wake up and find new lives. Incredible. Terrifying and moving.
Most of the time people find me in the science tent, I’m smiling my head off – the job is such a joy. But during Adrian’s talk I spent most of the time blubbering in a corner.
Can you imagine what it must have been like to lie in the dark, unable to move or speak, ignored by everyone around you until one scientific team took the time and the energy to see that you really were in there?
By Zoe
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