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TBWA's brain booty and disruptive interestingness across creative culture and media arts.

Curated by Abbey Dethlefs.

Founded by Maria Popova, editor of Brain Pickings.

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With the holidays on the horizon, its gems like Where, the Why, and the How, a new hardcover, that are going to help check off that gift to-do list that much quicker. Whimsical, wonderful and quirky? Check!

Published by Chronicle Books, answers to some of science’s most fun questions—like “Why do we blush?” or “What existed before the Big Bang?” are unveiled in delightful illustrations. The best parts, however, may be the contributions from 75 artists—free-form illustrations that riff on the scientific essays with as much literality or imagination as the artist chose.

The result of this collaboration is like a science book published by The New Yorker. Images range from 1980s textbooks homages (coral!) to dinosaur watercolors to Escherian mind-benders to straight-up trippy, surrealist work that would be at home on an album cover.

Read the full article here at Fast Company Design or purchase the book here!

Posted on Monday, November 5th 2012

Tags Science Illustration Biology Anatomy Literature

Heart Drawn: Leonardo da Vinci’s Intricate Anatomy


From the collection Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist, Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, 4 May to 7 October 2012. It’s mind-boggling how ahead of his time he was.

Excerpt: 
AROUND 1513, Leonardo da Vinci made detailed drawings of the heart and wrote nearly 2000 words of notes on the organ in his characteristic mirror handwriting. Intrigued by the way the aortic valve opens and closes to ensure blood flows in only one direction, he set about constructing a model.

“First pour wax into the gate of an ox’s heart so that you may see the true shape of the gate,” he wrote. With hardened wax as a template, he recreated the structure in glass. By pumping a mixture of water and grass seed through the glass he was able to observe how the widening at the base of the aorta caused swirls of seeds. These eddies, he believed, helped to close “the little doors of the heart” - the three cusps of the valve.

These studies are among 87 original drawings on display in Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist, the largest ever exhibition of his anatomical works. According to curator Martin Clayton, it is time da Vinci was celebrated as a scientist. “Many of Leonardo’s drawings have been regarded as science in the service of art,” he says. “I want to make the point that this is proper science.”

(via)

Posted on Tuesday, May 8th 2012

Tags Science Anatomy Biology Leonardo DaVinci Medicine

The Brain on Love

A RELATIVELY new field, called interpersonal neurobiology, draws its vigor from one of the great discoveries of our era: that the brain is constantly rewiring itself based on daily life. In the end, what we pay the most attention to defines us. How you choose to spend the irreplaceable hours of your life literally transforms you.

All relationships change the brain — but most important are the intimate bonds that foster or fail us, altering the delicate circuits that shape memories, emotions and that ultimate souvenir, the self.

Every great love affair begins with a scream. At birth, the brain starts blazing new neural pathways based on its odyssey in an alien world. An infant is steeped in bright, buzzing, bristling sensations, raw emotions and the curious feelings they unleash, weird objects, a flux of faces, shadowy images and dreams — but most of all a powerfully magnetic primary caregiver whose wizardry astounds.

Read more. 

Posted on Monday, March 26th 2012

Tags Psychology Anatomy Love Science Emotions

10 Great Reads About the Senses

From hacking our senses and creating new ones to understanding how scent triggers primal urges, here’s an excellent selection of reads to keep you stimulated.

theatlantic:

tetw:

A Tetw reading list

The Blind Man Who Learned To See by Michael Finkel - A fascinating profile of a man who is helping other blind people to see using echolocation.

Mixed Feelings by Sunny Bains - How researchers can tap the plasticity of the brain to hack our 5 senses, and build new ones.

Sense and Sensitivity by Andrea Bartz - Is it possible that some people are wired to take in more sensory information than others, and that are our attitudes towards sensitivity are misguided?

Double Vision by Lawrence Weschler - A classic article about a pair of twins whose art unlocks the secrets of perception.

The Sniff of Legend by Karen Wright - “Human pheromones? Chemical sex attractants? And a sixth sense organ in the nose? What are we, animals?”

The Taste Makers by Raffi Khatchadourian - This trip to the heart of the flavour industry is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how modern food gets its taste.

You’ve Got Smell by Charles Platt - DigiScent is here. Will it take off, and if it does, will it be a fad or a technological revolution?

Seeing by Annie Dillard - An excellent essayist takes a personal, often abstract look inside the world of vision.

Master of Illusion by Ed Yong - How a neuroscientist from Stockholm can use mannequins, rubber arms and virtual reality to transport you outside your own body.

The Smelliest Block in New York by Molly Young - Deep in the Lower East Side, a terrible odor lurks. Where is it coming from?

Great selection.

Posted on Wednesday, March 21st 2012

Tags Reading Anatomy Psychology

Reblogged from The Atlantic

Source tetw