Howdy! Great to see you again, and today I am going to share with you none other than Amboise in the beautiful Loire Valley. We went on a class trip here last Friday, June 15th. The small town of Amboise may not have been at its most beautiful, as it was drizzling lightly with dark skies, but not much could compare with the amazing chateau that past kings have tried to get their hands on for years. We received a tour of the remains of the chateau, which is only a fraction of its size back in the day. I had wondered why the tour guide pretty much gave us an entire history of the chateau (nothing wrong with it, I was just wondering why), and it was because the chateau was literally so small had she only given us the backstory to every room we would have been done in less than 15 minutes. A very interesting fact about Amboise is that Leonardo da Vinci lived here in the latter stages of his life. King Francis I and da Vinci were great friends and Francis offered the Clos Lucé manor to da Vinci, who accepted and lived his last three years here. The manor was in close proximity to the Chateau Amboise, and Leonardo da Vinci continued with his work until he died of a stroke in 1519. The painting below depicts Leonardo being held by Francis I, but there is speculation that this was false and ordered by Francis I to be painted as propaganda to increase his popularity. He is currently buried in Amboise. Continue reading “Ambois(e)ing Experience”
Height as a Predictor of Cognitive Performance?
On Wednesday, June 13th, we visited the Musée de L’homme Exposition Néandertal. At the museum, I stumbled upon an art display of people that varied greatly by height and took a photo with them. Additionally, my roommates and I took a photo right outside the museum which had a wonderful view of the Eiffel Tower. From this photo, you can see that we are all different heights.
Continue reading “Height as a Predictor of Cognitive Performance?”
Blog 4- Trip to Musée de l’Orangerie and Finding Gems from Monet
Last weekend I took a stroll towards the Tuileries and since I had already been to the Louvre (though there is still a lot I have yet to see in there since it is so large), I decided to go into the Orangerie museum. It is a building that was originally a sort of green house for the orange trees of the Louvre palace, so it is a much better lit museum than most of the previous ones I have been in.
This lighting is also very important for the Nymphéas room on the top floor of this museum. This room was originally designed to house the final grand art works of Claude Monet, the Nymphéas, or in English: Water lilies. It is an oval shaped room with one grand tableau on each side, to make a total of 4 works, depicting water lilies as the name suggests. However, the roundedness of the room, the special lighting, and the harmony of the art works have with one another allows you to feel like all four pieces are rather one complete piece, 360 degrees. Continue reading “Blog 4- Trip to Musée de l’Orangerie and Finding Gems from Monet”
I fell for Eiffel
During my fleeting time here in Paris, I have made it my personal mission to visit the Eiffel Tower as many times as possible (Fig. 1). It began one of the first days I was here when I decided to go for a morning run. Not having any particular place to go, I decided to run to the Eiffel Tower and back, which came to about 3 miles exactly with a short selfie break in the middle. The next day, I didn’t want to use up any data mapping my way around the area, so I ran the same path again, and took another selfie. The same thing happened the day after that. It has actually become a small comfort for me, and I am now known as the tall, sweaty girl in the coffee shop at the end of the street that always comes in early in the morning, out of breath, and never having perfect change. Continue reading “I fell for Eiffel”
Research is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get
Last week, we visited the Musée du Chocolat (Fig. 1). Probably one of the hidden gems in Paris, the museum features an exhibit on the origins of cocoa with free chocolate samples, a live chocolate making demonstration with free chocolate samples, and a chocolate molding class with lots of free chocolate samples. Chocolate may seem like a simple dessert featured in your average Twix bar, but cocoa has been used for over 4,000 years in different cultures and products. Many people in the chocolate world regard chocolate making and molding as an art form. From personal experience, the process is much more difficult than it may seem. Our class chocolates were still delicious, but were described as “child-like” by a passing-by chocolatier (Fig. 2).
Continue reading “Research is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get”
Photo Post 4 – Musée Fragonard
During the first week, we visited the Musée Fragonard. This housed a series of preserved animal and human displays with a variety normal and abnormal morphology. Animal research has always been a key component of scientific exploration. There are many biological processes corresponding to human functioning and animal models allow an in depth look at these mechanisms and their dysfunction. For example, they had a lamprey on display, which is a common experimental model for central pattern generators in neuroscience research. However, the issue, especially relevant in the world of neuroscience, is that there are limits to comparing animal and human processes. Therefore, without human models we have a restricted understanding of risks and safety of certain treatments. However, as exemplified by the flayed human display (shown above) and the ‘Our Body’ exhibit, we have strict expectations regarding manipulation of human bodies, even after death.
Photo Post 3 – Artists and Robots
A couple weekends ago, I visited the Artists and Robots exhibit at the Grand Palais. The show included a series of robots that could “see” and “draw,” digital and sound engineering displays, as well as humanoid robot designs. There is a similar exhibit up in the High Museum of Art in Atlanta titled “Design in the Digital Age,” that showcases work by the Joris Laarman Lab in digital design and creation of works of art. The issue that both exhibits are trying to examine is what role does new technology have in our lives and in our modicums of human achievement such as art. As our understanding of the brain grows, we are getting closer to modelling human processing and creating potentially conscious robots that exceed our current limits of human ability. We need to think about what role and limits this neurotechnology should have.
Photo Post 2 – Musée d’Histoire de la Medicine
On June 4, our class travelled to the medical school to tour the Musée d’Histoire de la Medicine. They have on display a series of medical advancements and tools, ranging from the first prosthetics to horrifying instruments used to remove kidney stones, all the way to a small decorative coffee table made completely out of human parts. One of the larger spectacles was the electroshock therapy. In the 19thcentury, this machine, used to deliver a light shock to the patient, was thought to cure depression or insanity. While this contraption looks archaic, the use of electrical impulses to modulate brain activity remains prevalent today. Treatments range from deep brain stimulation for the treatment of Parkinson’s Disease to home transcranial direct current stimulation thought to improve a range of cognitive functions (Wexler & Hamilton, 2017). There is evidence of behavioral changes, although questions of the underlying biolgical mechanisms remain undetermined.
Works Cited:
Wexler, Anna & Hamilton, Roy H. (2017). Crowdsourced tDCS Research: Feasible or Fanciful?AJOB Neuroscience, 8(1), 50-53.
It’s Not What It Looks Like!
During our visit to Le Musée des Moulages at l’Hôpital Saint-Louis, we got to see casts of everything from syphilis to eczema, bone tumors to blood cancer. The accuracy of each condition was a little eerie, but it was also really cool to see the attention to detail. The casts were developed to teach dermatology students about the varying diseases that plagued the French people in the 19th century. Though that was neat to see, the categorization of some conditions would be considered incorrect by today’s standards. One ‘mistake’ that caught my eye was the ‘hermaphrodite’ cast. The figure 1 caption below describes what doctors in 1883 thought of the condition, but it strikes some discord with newer findings.
Photo Post 1 – Cheese Tasting
On May 30th, we travelled to a local fromagerie for a cheese tasting. We tried 6 different cheeses from different regions of France, including one from the northwest region of Normandy known as camembert. Camembert is a soft cheese that features a creamy center and fermented outer shell. Recent research has been investigating the possible neuroprotective aspects of cheese and dairy products, specifically cheeses that have been fermented with bacteria. Epidemiological studies have shown preliminary evidence that fermented dairy products may be associated with prevention of cognitive decline. A recent study specifically examined the anti-inflammatory effects of microglia, possibly implicated in cases of dementia, and potential components of the cheese surface that could promote this activity (Ano, Kutsukake, Hoshi, Yoshida, & Nakayama, 2015). While this data is not yet clinically applicable, this line of research into neuroprotective effects of simple dietary changes has a lot of potential.
Works Cited:
Ano, Y., Kutsukake, T., Hoshi, A., Yoshida, A., & Nakayama, H. (2015). Identification of a novel Dehydroergosterol enhancing microglial anti-inflammatory activity in a dairy product fermented with Penicillium candidum. PLoS One, 10(3). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0116598