This week we went to the Museé du Fumer (smoking museum) to learn about the history of smoking in France and around the world. To the outside observer, the museum looked like an average smoke shop (it was), but hidden in the back were collections of antique pipes, oils, pictures and advertisements that told a unique story about smoking‘s cultural role through history. Smoking has been a social ritual since the very first civilizations; a “cultural icon” according to one poster in the museum. With a wall entirely dedicated to “smoking and the female image”, it’s hard to deny the impact cigarette smoking has had on our cultural perceptions. Indeed, smoking has been romanticized by many of our greatest cultural heroes (see picture below of celebrity-smoking-pictures-covered bathroom walls). One reason people think that the French continue to have a laisse-faire attitude toward smoking, despite the known health effects, is that they associate it with a sort of broken-artist image (Reed, 2016). France’s biggest heroes-Serge Gainsbourg, Brigitte Bardit, Django Reinhardt, Albert Camus-are all rather sullen, or broken in some artistic way, and all of them heavily smoke (Reed, 2016). Another theory behind the French’s attitude toward smoking is their rejection of broader society’s promotion of self-betterment (Reed, 2016). The French don’t like to be told what to do and besides, such an attitude is not conducive to art (Reed, 2016). Continue reading “Puff Puff Paris”

A couple of weeks ago, Emily, Gabi and I went to a temporary exhibit at the Grand Palais called Artists and Robots. The first room of the exhibit showed a number of line-heavy art pieces, one of which was still being done by three small robots. Each robot had different movement patterns: one that spun repetitively in a small circle, one that raced straight across the paper and one that moved in random jagged movements. While these pieces were more mechanic, there were other robots drawing softer, realistic pieces of animals and people. There was even realist painting of a waterfall scene (see below). Not only were the robots able to mimic human-like artistic style, but they were also able to create pieces unique to their abilities. After the first room, displays went beyond basic robots. Computer-generated “movies” of moving numbers, code and words produced scenes of beautiful movement, giving me the same sense of reflectiveness that I would have looking at a human-made art piece.

Continue reading “Blog 4: Can Robots be Creative?”

On Monday, the NBB Paris crew took a trip to the Musée du Chocolat. After an hour of mastering the history of cocoa bean trade and origins of chocolate production, we had the opportunity to learn the chocolatiering craft. We were brought to the kitchen of Monsieur Chocolatier (name unknown), where he taught us how to make chocolate molds, fill them, and seal them. He said that we were less skilled and louder than the groups of children he taught (perhaps with the exception of Ashley and I, who will be releasing our new chocolate line shortly). He also said that he liked that we were loud because it meant we were happy. Apparently, his French visitors are very serious about their chocolate education and rarely smile in his class. From the pictures taken during our lesson and at the museum, Monsieur Chocolatier seems to have spoken the truth. Even beyond the chocolate museum, the NBB group seems to be radiating positive emotions in response to French novelties (and French food). The following is a sneak peak of my photo collection “PA Paris” and a neuroscience review of positive emotion experience. For reference, PA stands for Positive Affect state, a state in which humans report to feel fundamentally happy. The most effective method to measure this state is debated among neuroscientists, but self-report ratings and observation of unconditioned behavior such as Duchenne smiling are frequently used (Burgdof and Panksepp, 2006).

Continue reading “Positive Affect in Paris”

Reminiscent of middle school dances, Emily and I were pumped to see MIKA in concert. When he started singing Grace Kelly, it was hard not to be emotional, especially when Dr. Rommelfanger started dancing with us. We all have experienced music-provoked emotion, but why is that? Why do we feel instantly rewarded when a song we like comes on? Why did Emily start smiling and dancing when MIKA played Emeli Danse? Per usual, neuroscientists have the answer.

In 2005, two researchers investigated the reward components of music listening. They used fMRI to track the brain activity of people listening to 23 seconds of music or 23 seconds of scrambled music clips (Menon and Levitin, 2005). They found that during the music clips, participants’ brains were highly active in areas involved in reward processing, notably the nucleus accumbens (NAc), the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and the hypothalamus (Menon and Levitin, 2005). Specifically, they found that interactions between the NAc and the hypothalamus were VTA-mediated, suggesting a strong connectivity between these areas while participants listened to music. No such connectivity was found when participants listened to the scrambled music clips…bad news for bad singers. Something else I found interesting was that they found affective connectivity between the NAc and the OFC and IFC, pathways involved in autonomic, somatic and emotional functions (Craig, 2002). Perhaps this explains why we just can’t resist dancing (or crying) when certain songs come on. Continue reading “Reward of MIKA <3”

In Greek mythology, cyclopes existed as cave-dwelling, one-eyed giants. The myth of the cyclops had its origins in the Greek’s discovery of giant skulls with single holes in the center, presumed to be single eye-sockets. Today, scientists speculate that those skulls belonged to elephants, sadly negating the giant cyclopes myth (History, 2015). Thankfully, a visit with my NBB class in Paris returned my hope. This week at the Musée Fragonard of the École nationale vétérinaire d’Alfort, I learned that cyclopes did exist, although perhaps in not such an exciting mythical form. The museum, which is dedicated to preserving art pieces and specimens of “monster” animals and animal body parts, had a cyclops skull, as well as models of cyclopes farm animals that once existed in Europe. According to our veterinary student tour guide, there was a time in Europe when a plant mutation cause cyclopia to be prevalent in farm animals. Hello one-eyed chicken! Today, about 1 in 100,000 human babies are identified as having cyclopia, none of whom are able to survive with the mutation (Salama et. al., 2015). I decided to look into the neuro-origins of cyclopia, to see how this mythical phenotype develops in the early nervous system.

Continue reading “Cyclops in Paris”