Simons Center Art + Science Program Guest Speaker
Carl Schoonover
Axel Laboratory, Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University
How to look inside the brain
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
6:00 pm, Della Pietra Family Auditorium, SCGP 103
Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, Stony Brook University
ABSTRACT
Our understanding of the brain depends in large part on the tools we have invented to look at it. This talk will present a whirlwind survey ranging from the earliest attempts to interact with this extraordinarily complex organ, to the seminal technical innovations in the late 19th Century that launched the modern field, and the plethora of technologies that power research today.
The spectacular data that are the fruit of these methods range from medieval sketches and intricate drawings by groundbreaking scientists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Santiago Ramón y Cajal, to the architectures revealed through the use of cutting edge biotechnology and imaging. These exquisite images, which emerge from microscopes, electrophysiological instruments, and MRI machines, are the fuel of daily neuroscience research.
BIO
Carl Schoonover is a postdoctoral fellow in the Axel Laboratory at Columbia University where he studies the neural circuitry of odor-driven behaviors. His doctoral work in the Bruno Laboratory at Columbia University focused on microanatomy and electrophysiology of rodent somatosensory cortex. He is the author of Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century, and has written for The New York Times, Le Figaro, and Scientific American. Schoonover co-founded NeuWrite, a collaborative working group for scientists, writers, and those in between. His radio program on WKCR 89.9FM, focuses on opera, postwar classical music, and occasionally their relationship to the brain.
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This talk is part of THE ELEGANT BRAIN exhibition at the Simons Center Gallery.
THE ELEGANT BRAIN
Featuring artwork by neuroscientists from the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Stony Brook University and The Friedman Brain Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai, NY.
Simons Center Gallery, Stony Brook, NY
Tuesday, May 23 – Friday, August 25, 2017
Curated by Lorraine Walsh
Opening Reception: Tuesday, May 23, 2017
Reception: 5:30 – 6:00 pm, Simons Center Gallery and Lobby
Guest Speaker: 6:00 pm, Carl Schoonover, How to look inside the brain
Della Pietra Family Auditorium, SCGP 103