Mind/Brain/Behavior Junior Symposium:
The Creative Mind
September 16, 2007
Fong Auditorium, Boylston Hall
8:30 am to 4:00 pm
The MBB junior symposium is an all-day meeting that features talks by and discussions with a variety of scholars on an interdisciplinary theme in mind/brain/behavior. The symposium is open to MBB juniors and those MBB seniors who did not attend last year’s symposium. It is required of students pursuing the Certificate in MBB (students in honors MBB tracks) and is also open to students pursuing or considering a secondary field in MBB.
This event is NOT open to the public - eligible students, please register at the bottom of the page.
Art appears in every human community, including those of early humans. We seem to have a need for the arts. What gives rise to this need? What is the social role of art? These questions have been pursued across the disciplines. This year's junior symposium approaches these topics from the point of cognitive science. What happens in the brain when one experiences art, and when one produces it? Are the processes underlying the production and appreciation of the arts primarily those of sensory, cognitive, limbic systems - or some combination? Do artists perceive the world differently? Is artistic ability an optional extra, e.g. matter of having additional cognitive abilities beyond a normal baseline, or is it more a matter of freeing primitive abilities that everyone starts out with? Do the answers to these questions differ depending on specific mode of art (e.g., music, painting, sculpture, poetry, etc)? Some kinds of brain damage appear to bring with it a gain in the ability to paint. What can we learn from these cases of brain damage about the neural and cognitive bases of artistic production and appreciation? Join us for a day of lectures and discussion with neurologists and artists. The symposium will include special appearances by singer David Kravitz and poet Charles Coe, who have graciously agreed to perform for us during the symposium, so that we may try to directly connect our theoretical discussions with our shared experience of their performances.
(Click on links below for additional information on symposium participants)
ORGANIZERS:- Albert Galaburda
Emily Fisher Landau Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School - Edward Kravitz
George Packer Berry Professor of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School - Susanna Siegel
Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University
| 8:30 am | Registration |
| 8:45 | Welcome and Introduction by Susanna Siegel |
| 9:00 | Margaret Livingstone Professor of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School What Art Can Tell Us About The Brain News article 1, News article 2 |
| 10:00 | Alice Flaherty Assistant Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School Frontotemporal and Limbic Control of Idea Generation: Writing as Disease News article 1, Optional reading |
| 11:00 | Bruce Miller Professor of Neurology, University of California at San Francisco Art and Dementia Art Gallery |
| 12:00 pm | Lunch in Ticknor Lounge, Boylston Hall |
| 1:00 | Performances
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| 2:00 | Discussion Groups: and Suzanne Hanser (Professor of Music Therapy, Berklee College of Music) |
| 3:00 | Panel Discussion |