Learning from a brain tumor: how a skilled artist’s experience of a brain tumor reveals hitherto unimagined brain function

On January 26, 2022, Peggy Mason and I held an invited guest lecture at the Swedish university “Konstfack”. The lecture was a part of their annual Research Week, and we joined in via zoom to meet a big group of students and faculty. The title of the lecture was “Learning from a brain tumor: how a skilled artist’s experience of a brain tumor reveals hitherto unimagined brain function“

Abstract:

How do we use our sense of space when imagining and making three-dimensional forms as artists? When a tumour disrupts the abilities of a skilled artist, novel insights become available that would be unknown in a person without specialized skills. Here we describe a unique case where a woodcarver (Gulliksen) lost and regained her sense of space and mental rotation abilities due to a brain tumour. We begin with presenting an autoethnographic narrative (Gulliksen, 2021) and discuss briefly core methodological considerations for how Gulliksen went about studying her own artistic process. Mason, a neurobiologist, then brings in her perspective to reflect upon how this case informs us on the mechanisms the brain uses to process spatial information, insights that would be otherwise inaccessible. We end with a discussion of how these insights could be relevant for your artistic practices.

The lecture is registered as a part of the “Making Matters?” project: https://app.cristin.no/results/show.jsf?id=1991603. Link to the project page: https://app.cristin.no/projects/show.jsf?id=430822

Parts of the empirical data behind this lecture is published in the article “There and back again: A carver’s tale of losing and regaining sense of space due to a brain tumour“. For fulltext open access click here: http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2756610 or here: https://doi.org/10.1386/crre_00043_1