Imagine the power with just a thought to close or open doors, turn lights on and off, manipulate a thermostat or move a cursor across a computer screen. Or imagine the ability to delve willfully into your own subconscious and surface those hidden secrets. Science fiction, right. Right? Wrong.

Dr. Sanjay Singh last night presented six illustrations of huge advances in neuroscience discovery at a UNMC Science Café event hosted at Slowdown. In this Part I today, I will provide a brief snapshot of three of the wonders that he had to reveal. I will post the other three in Part II on Friday.

1 – What is art? Why are we attracted to some things and not others and why is art so subjective? Can science define it? Can it be defined through neuroscience? It is early days to answer this question, but Dr. Singh suggested an ancient Sanskrit text may hold one part of the answer, because it provided a definition of art that scientists could test against. The definition was that art is the defining characteristic of an object exaggerated.

Scientists have tested this using seagulls and rats. The rat experiment gave the rats the choice of a rectangle or a square. If they went to the rectangle, they got cheese. If they went to the square, they got nothing. (more…)