The axon is one of the most crucial elements of a nerve cell. As human beings, we rely on the axon to make sense of the world around us—to feel and make connections between our external and internal environments—and to allow our body to communicate with itself. Through an amazingly well-coordinated regulation of sodium and…
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Hypnosis… not just a party trick
After hearing about Emily’s presentation about dreams and other forms of reality I was reminded of the time I was placed under hypnosis. The night after graduation my school hosted a party at our local recreation center. There were games, indoor rock climbing, and even a hypnotist. I’ll admit I’ve always been a skeptic when…
Neurocinematics: Your Brain on Movies
Lately I’ve been watching a lot of movies and TV shows, either by myself, with my family or with my friends (through Facetime or Netflix Party). This made me wonder how movies affect our brains. I would consider cinema the most advanced art form: it is visual as well as auditory, it takes years and…
Art Therapy, Traumatic Brain Injuries & Depression
One day during my junior year of high school, on our walk down to the soccer field, my best friend told me that a fellow teammate had just been diagnosed with a concussion. What was originally supposed to be a mild head injury, eventually turned into over nine months of recovery and the loss of…
How Art Therapy is Helping Cancer Patients
When I was three years old, my little sister, who was 11 months old, was diagnosed with a Stage III Wilms’ Tumor. Wilms’ Tumors are kidney cancer and, luckily, have a high remission rate when caught early enough. My sister, Grace, was in treatment for just over a year. She turned one and two in…
Vision in Mantis Shrimp
Color vision is a complex and interesting subject to learn more about because of how significant it is in our understanding and perception of the world and how diverse color vision is in our world. I find it fascinating to think about the varieties of colors we see and how they make up our…
An Artistic Outlet for Alzheimer’s
Having a relative who had Alzheimer’s, I have always been intrigued by how our brains can affect how well we perform daily activities and go about our daily lives. Upon learning about van Gogh’s struggles with his health and observing the deterioration in van Gogh’s speech through the letters between him and his brother Theo,…
Explaining the Senses: a Nearly Impossible Task
As an avid thinker and enjoyer of the arts, I often find myself questioning what the definition of art is. This definition is extremely hard to obtain, mostly because all people perceive art differently. Art, as an experience, is incredibly different for every person who observes it. In my “Arts on the Brain” class, the…
The Endless Colors of the Sky By Jai Arora
Ever since I was a little kid, I have always been fascinated with the beauty of the sky. I would be the peculiar kid that would wake up early on weekend mornings just to watch the sunrise and also the kid that would stop everything he was doing to watch the sunset in the evening….
Exploring the Tortured Artist
The tortured artist, an artist that struggles (either within himself or against the world) and gains artistic talent from it, is an archetype that the western world has been familiar with for hundreds of years. Most often this encompasses mental illnesses that the artist suffers from, however it is important to question if the uphill…