Science Friday: Etched From The Mind

Original article link: https://www.sciencefriday.com/videos/etched-from-the-mind/ by Luke Groskin, Johanna Mayer, on April 15, 2019 For Greg Dunn, an artist and neuroscientist, “the brain is a sacred object and I think deserves to be treated as so. It’s responsible for our entire existence.” Often with his colleague Brian Edwards, Dunn makes “microetchings” which depict the brain and its neural processes. He begins by making a traditional ink drawing, which he then scans into…

Oh Chouette: Ces images cérébrales montrent la beauté et la complexité de la conscience humaine Publié

Link to Original article: https://ohchouette.com/ces-images-montrent-la-beaute-et-la-complexite-de-la-conscience-humaine/ Publié par Julie Ramdani, le mardi 17 juillet 2018 à 8:01. L’Univers a toujours été synonyme de beauté et de complexité. Que l’on se dirige vers l’infiniment grand, ou que l’on plonge au cœur de l’infiniment petit, le degré d’émerveillement reste le même. Le plus fascinant dans tout cela, c’est de voir la similarité qui existe entre la structure de l’Univers et celle du cerveau humain……

Scientific American: Watch the Human Brain Come to Life in This Stunning Piece of Art

Originally published on Scientific American By Leslie Nemo on June 21, 2017 Original link: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/watch-the-human-brain-come-to-life-in-this-stunning-piece-of-art/ Drawn and etched with algorithms, Greg Dunn’s masterpiece is unique in more ways than one. Sometimes neuroscientist Greg Dunn finds his field tedious. Working at a lab bench can make you forget how beautifully ornate the human brain is, he says. To reinspire himself, his colleagues and the public, Dunn makes art. Most recently he made an eight-…

Sciences et Avenir: DIAPORAMA. Toute la magie et la complexité des neurones révélées dans une microgravure

Link to Original Article: https://www.sciencesetavenir.fr/sante/cerveau-et-psy/diaporama-toute-la-magie-et-la-complexite-des-neurones-revelees-dans-une-microgravure_113817 Par Marine Van Der Kluft le 14.06.2017 à 18h16 Pour représenter la complexité du système neuronal, Greg Dunn, docteur en neurosciences, a créé une technique de microgravure. 500 000 neurones prennent vie dans de très belles images. Les différentes régions du cerveau Les différentes régions de notre encéphales sont représentées dans cette carte.  GREG DUNN / BRIAN EDWARDS / WILL DRINKER Le cerveau est un chef d’oeuvre de…

Metro UK: Glowing golden-leaf brains show the absolutely awesome nature of our minds

Originally published on Metro UK: https://metro.co.uk/2017/05/27/glowing-golden-leaf-brains-show-the-absolutely-awesome-nature-of-our-minds-6662490/ By Alex Hickson Saturday 27 May 2017 This totally unique mash-up between neuroscience and art shows the stunningly complex beauty of the human brain. Your brain is terrifyingly complicated and is made up of approximately 86 billion neurons which work together as a biological machine to create who you are. But it takes some real cranium contortion to get your head around what those…

Colossal: An Intricate Cross-Section of the Brain Depicted With Thousands of Layers of Gold Leaf

Originally published on by This is Collossal APRIL 17, 2017 Original link: https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/04/brain-depicted-with-gold-leaf/ by KATE SIERZPUTOWSKI Self Reflected, 22K gilded microetching, 96″ X 130″, 2014-2016, Greg Dunn and Brian Edwards. The entire Self Reflected microetching under violet and white light. (photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker) Taking nearly two years to complete, artist and neuroscientist Dr. Greg Dunn, along with his collaborator Dr. Brian Edwards, have mapped the neurons in…

Cosmos Magazine: A striking new vision of the human brain

Originally published at Cosmos Magazine, April 3, 2017Link: https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/a-striking-new-vision-of-the-human-brain This artwork used neuroscience data, hand drawings, algorithmic manipulation, optical engineering, photolithography and gilding to etch half a million neurons into large sheets of gold. ‘Self Reflected under white, red, and violet light’ is billed as ‘the world’s most elaborate artistic depiction of the human brain.’ The artists drew on techniques from art and science to create the piece: neuroscience data, hand…

Wired Magazine: A Gold-Leaf Brain Lights Up With the Awesome Complexity of Neurons

Originally published by Wired Magazine: BRENDAN COLE 06.24.16 READY TO GET really really meta? A new installation at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, open June 25, displays what happens in your brain—while you’re looking at it. The project comes from Greg Dunn and Brian Edwards, a neuroscientist and a physicist by training. Dunn is no stranger to cerebral art; a few years ago, he shared a project of single-neuron prints with us. But the team’s new…

PhillyVoice: Here’s the most complex, detailed depiction of the brain in the world

Originally published at PhillyVoice on JUNE 14, 2016 BY MEERI KIM “Self Reflected” will be a new addition to the Franklin Institute’s “Your Brain” exhibit.original link: https://www.phillyvoice.com/heres-most-complex-detailed-depiction-brain-world/  SCIENCEArtCREDIT/WILL DRINKER “Self Reflected,” by local artist Greg Dunn in collaboration with University of Pennsylvania physicist Brian Edwards, is likely the most complex and detailed artistic depiction of the brain in the world. It stands 8 feet tall and 12 feet wide. This scene…

Article in PhillyVoice “Mutter Museum features artist’s ‘mind-blowing’ images of the brain”

BY MEERI KIM, PhillyVoice Contributor | Published JULY 07, 2015 The artwork of Greg Dunn starts off simple, typically with circular blobs of liquid black ink on a piece of paper. With a few strong puffs of air, the blobs grow finger-like tendrils that stretch outward — and in turn, those tendrils split off into even smaller branches. Eventually, the paper is covered with what looks like a leafless, black forest. This…

Dazzling Images of the Brain Created by Neuroscientist-Artist

by Tanya Lewis, for http://www.livescience.com | December 10, 2014 …..”The microscopic world belongs in the world of Asian art,” Dunn said. “There’s no distinction between painting a landscape of a forest and a landscape of the brain.” …. Read Full Article Here.

Society for Neuroscience 2014 exhibition

I will be exhibiting reflective microetchings, prints, scrolls, and gold leaf paintings at the Society for Neuroscience meeting at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC November 15th-19th from 10am-4pm each day. The address for the convention center is 801 Mt Vernon Pl NW, Washington, DC 20001. The general public should be able to walk into the convention center to see the booth, and you should not have to be registered…

NSF grant

My collaborator Dr. Brian Edwards and I have received a grant from the National Science Foundation to create an enormous microetching of the human brain at as close to full complexity as possible! The full work will be completed and installed at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in 2016. We are very excited about this project, and you can find out more about it here.

Science Inspires Art: The Brain. – article in the New York Times

New York Hall of Science, Queens. Opens Oct. 11. Adults $11, children and seniors $8. By JASCHA HOFFMANSEPT. 29, 2014 This art exhibition offers some new ways of looking at that three-pound hunk of jelly in your skull. Some do it with humor: a mock-infographic that shows a brain hinged open to reveal dozens of tiny people scurrying about, and an elegantly staged photograph of a small brain on a…

Art and science make beautiful collaboration

Neurons and Other Memories exhibit in Miller Gallery evoke connected world by Rachel Cohen Oct 12, 2014 “The aesthetic highlight of the exhibit is Greg Dunn’s series of four beautiful, shimmering works: “Purkinje Neurons,” “Synaptogenesis,” “Glomerulus,” and “Retina I” are enamel depictions of neural connections on leaves of gold, copper, and aluminum.” read full article here.

Etching the Neural Landscape

A neuroscientist-artist draws inspiration from the materials and techniques of Asian scroll painting to visualize the complex wiring of the brain. by Greg Dunn for American Scientist October 2014 Both art and science arise from our root desires to describe our experience of reality. From this starting point, the artistic and scientific paths diverge. Science describes external reality, about which we share a consensus. Art captures our internal, subjective realities. But…

Exhibit at the Garrison Institute

i am a visiting artist at the Mind and Life Meeting, June 15-21st, Garrison, NY. I was invited to exhibit artwork and give a talk at the Mind and Life Meeting at the Garrison Institute in NY in June this year.  This meeting features a discussion between neuroscientists, meditators, artists, and researchers in the contemplative disciplines.  I am honored to be a part of it. You can also see some…

“You wish your neurons were this pretty” in Wired Magazine

by Greg Miller When Greg Dunn finished his Ph.D. in neuroscience at Penn in 2011, he bought himself a sensory deprivation tank as a graduation present. The gift marked a major life transition, from the world of science to a life of meditation and art.   Now a full-time artist living in Philadelphia, Dunn says he was inspired in his grad-student days by the spare beauty of neurons treated with certain stains. The…

The Minimalist Brain – on Science Friday

BY ANNETTE HEIST Halfway through his PhD program in neuroscience at UPenn, Greg Dunn was inspired to try a new experiment: using the brain structures he was seeing in the lab as the subject matter for his minimalist Asian-inspired paintings. “In grad school, I would be looking at these images all day, and I was already on an Asian-art wavelength,” Dunn says. “One day I saw some images of Golgi-stained neurons, and I thought, ‘They’re…

A Fractal Solution to the Universe – an interview at Buddhist magazine Tricycle

An interview about the connections to my meditation practice and the specific techniques I use in painting. A Fractal Solution to the Universe An interview with “neuro-painter” Greg Dunn web exclusive If you’ve perused the current issue of Tricycle, you’ll have seen the beautiful and intricate artwork that illustrates our article about the convergence of Buddhism and neuroscience, “A Gray Matter,” by Columbia University professor of Japanese religion Bernard Faure. If these images…

Meet me at SfN in October

I will be exhibiting at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans starting October 11th in the lobby of the convention center! I will have gold leaf paintings, scrolls, prints, etc. available for viewing and purchase.  I will be in Lobby E on Saturday Oct. 13th, 1-5pm, and Sunday 14th – Tuesday 16th 10-4pm. Please stop by to say hello if you have a moment to spare.  

Article in the French blog – “The Brain From Top to Bottom”

You can google translate the whole article if you don’t read French. Its so poetically written. Mais il est une autre dimension de la nature, tout aussi spectaculaire que celles-là, et je dirais plus fondamentale encore puisque sans elle toute la diversité du comportement animal n’existerait pas. Je parle bien sûr de la complexité de nos cellules nerveuses, tant dans leur forme, qui n’est pas sans rappeler celle des arbres, que…

Art and its Connection to Science – theairspace.net interview

The Brain’s Artistry: A Conversation with Neuroscientist and Artist Greg Dunn BY MELISSA MCSWEENEY Though art and neuroscience may initially seem like severely different disciplines, artists and neuroscientists have more in common than one might think. For example, as Dunn himself proclaimed, “Part of being an artist or a scientist is living your life with the intent to solve a problem: wanting to know more about something that you’re interested in,…

Artwork featured in Discover Magazine

Ink Wants to Form Neurons, and an Artful Scientist Obliges Earlier this year I was interviewed by Discover Magazine. They created an amazing gallery and article about my work.  Thank you! Check it out here: http://discovermagazine.com/photos/03-ink-wants-to-form-neurons-and-an-artful-scientist-obliges

An Interview Published at The Huffington Post

Neuroscience Art: Greg Dunn’s Neurons Painted In Japanese Sumi-e Style – interview with Greg. Some of the works, like “Hippocampus II,” give those of us who do not spend a lot of time around a microscope a look at the complex architecture of our neurons. And then there are the occasional stumpers that are impossible to decipher as neuron or nature. “Two Pyramidals,” for example, look like upside down dandelions…

Exhibit at Howard Hughes medical institute

Fifteen works are currently on display at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Janelia Farm campus in Ashland, Virginia.  This exhibit will be taken down and reinstalled at the HHMI headquarters in Washington DC on May 1st, 2012, and will be exhibited until July 2012.