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These stackable coasters create a 3-D brain on your coffee table
04.22.2015
01:39 pm
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I’m digging the hell out of this ten-piece set of glass brain coasters that create a 3D brain if stacked in the proper order. Apparently the Brain Specimen Coasters are easy to stack in order as each coaster is labeled. The price for these ain’t too shabby either, the entire set is a mere $19.99 plus shipping. I think that’s very reasonable for a 3D glass brain! 

The coasters have rubber feet as not to scratch any surfaces and they’re hand wash only (not safe for dishwashers).


 
via Bored Panda

Posted by Tara McGinley
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04.22.2015
01:39 pm
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The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art
03.18.2015
04:16 pm
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Marjorie Taylor, “Mark’s Brain,” 2002
 
When you first hear about the Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art, one immediately wonders whether its purpose is in any way therapeutic or perhaps that actually plays some kind of odd and unexpected research role. But no, the point appears to be far more mundane: some embroidery enthusiasts just find brain scans and fMRI images visually appealing and enjoy reproducing the vibrant and oftentimes striated outputs of the complex medical devices in the form of embroidered quilts.

“I couldn’t help but look at them with the eye of a quilter,” says Taylor, a psychologist at the University of Oregon and a key contributor to the museum’s holdings. “I thought the folds of the cerebral cortex would be great in velvet.” Taylor’s first piece was a quilt with a cerebral cortex in blue velvet on a silver background; it took her several years to complete four brain-scan quilts. “Not very many,” she admits. “They take a long time to do.”

Curator Bill Harbaugh, whose day job is economics professor at the University of Oregon, welcomes visitors to the site with the following message:
 

This is the world’s largest collection of anatomically correct fabric brain art. Inspired by research from neuroscience, dissection and neuroeconomics, our current exhibition features a rug based on fMRI imaging, a knitted brain from dissection, and three quilts with functional images from PET. The artists are Marjorie Taylor and Karen Norberg. Techniques used include traditional Nova Scotian rug hooking, quilting, applique, embroidery, beadwork, knitting, and crocheting. Materials include fabric, yarn, metallic threads, electronic components such as magnetic core memory, and wire, zippers, and beads.

While our artists make every effort to insure accuracy, we cannot accept responsibility for the consequences of using fabric brain art as a guide for functional magnetic resonance imaging, trans-cranial magnetic stimulation, neurosurgery, or single-neuron recording.

 

Marjorie Taylor, “Warm Glow, or fabricMRI: Bill’s Brain,” 2009
 

Karen Norberg, “The Knitted Brain”
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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03.18.2015
04:16 pm
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The forgotten brains of the Texas state mental hospital
12.03.2014
07:32 pm
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Anatomical art generally generally depicts recognizable, perfectly formed parts or figures, flayed open to display all the beauty and genius of our design. It’s medical, certainly, but it’s usually a testament to the beauty of the human body. Photographer Adam Voorhes goes in an entirely different direction in the book Malformed: Forgotten Brains of the Texas State Mental Hospital. How he came across his evocative subjects is a surreal story. From the book’s description:

Hidden away out of sight in a forgotten storage closet deep within the bowels of the University of Texas State Mental Hospital languished a forgotten, but unique and exceptional, collection of hundreds of extremely rare, malformed, or damaged human brains preserved in jars of formaldehyde.

Decades later, in 2013, photographer Adam Voorhes discovered the brains and became obsessed with documenting them in close-up, high-resolution, large format photographs, revealing their oddities, textures, and otherworldly essence. Voorhes donned a respirator and chemical gloves, and began the painstaking process of photographing the collection.

Not only had decades worth of rare brains just been tossed aside, Voorhes learned that their abandonment followed a “Battle for the Brains,” where even Harvard attempted to get ahold of the collection. By the time Voorhes began photographing them, half were missing, and many of the remaining specimens suffered from neglect. Working with a journalist, he set out to find the rest of the brains, even renewing interest in the collection—The University of Texas is doing MRI scans on them now.

Sadly, many of the brains were likely disposed of after a lack of resources and care left them to fallow (and bureaucracy failed to record it). It was reported just yesterday that 100 of the brains were thrown out in 2002, as they had deteriorated beyond medical usage—one was rumored to be the brain of Charles Whitman, the ex-Marine who went on a shooting spree from the University of Texas at Austin clock tower that killed 16 people in 1966. Many brains remain missing, and people are still trying to track them down.
 

 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Amber Frost
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12.03.2014
07:32 pm
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