Art and science of brain function focus of dialogue with Aschheim

Exhibition artist Deborah Aschheim, known for her focus on interactive multisensory responses to neuroscience, memory and cognition, joins WUSTL faculty from art, medicine, psychology and neuroscience for a free public panel discussion examining the relationship between Aschheim’s art and brain science at 6 p.m. March 20 in Room 110, January Hall.

The dialogue, held in conjunction with a St. Louis installation of Aschheim’s work, will be moderated by Jeff Zacks, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences and director of the University’s Dynamic Cognition Laboratory. Other university participants include Ken Botnick, professor of visual communications in the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts; Pascal Boyer, Ph.D., the Henry Luce Professor of Individual and Collective Memory in Arts & Sciences; and Marcus Raichle, M.D., professor of radiology, of neurology and of neurobiology in the School of Medicine, of psychology in Arts & Sciences and of biomedical engineering in the School of Engineering.

Aschheim’s art, inspired by family experience with Alzheimer’s disease, is on display in St. Louis through May 11 at the Laumeier Sculpture Park Museum Galleries in south St. Louis County. Titled “Deborah Aschheim: Reconsider,” the installation explores why we remember what we see and hear and why we forget, while offering a solution to curb the “forgetting curve.” Described as “an intensely immersive sensory experience,” Aschheim’s “Reconsider” exhibit will include a refined version of her six-part series of neural network installations.

The panel discussion is funded by Laumeier Sculpture Park, the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology (PNP) Program in Arts & Sciences and the McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience at Washington University.

For more information, contact PNP at 935-4297.