Extra Credit - Art + The Brain with Dr. Cohen

 On Thursday I attended an Art + The Brain event in collaboration with Dr. Mark S. Cohen. This comes as extra credit for me, although I really would have attended regardless of the incentive. In my email correspondence with Dr. Cohen, I thanked him for his multidisciplinary model and continuous pursuit of exploring his passions through research as it inspires undergraduates like myself. Surely we do not frequently come across individuals of this sort who have had such profound standing in art (music), science (neurology), and technology (engineering).

From his title screen we can see that Dr. Cohen is a true interdisciplinary.

My email correspondence with Dr. Cohen actually precedes this event. A year or two ago, I introduced myself to him as a consumer of the work of he and his previous doctoral student, Sam Harris [1], who has frequented my blogs. Dr. Cohen and Dr. Harris share one of the most highly cited articles in all of science [1]. I responded on the same email thread as before, and we have now enjoyed communication over the past several days. He asked that I share with him some of academic submissions that relates to he or Dr. Harris's work, such as my paper in which I critiqued Dr. Harris's distaste towards religion [2]. In particular, he took an interest in my midterm project for this course [3]. Not only did this uncanally resemble a previous patent of his [4], but he shared with me a new project that he is working on called Audeze. 

[5] Audeze creates sensory monitoring devices such as his most recent noise-cancelling headphones which are intended for use in MRI machines.

 

Since then, I have connected a few of my neuroengineering friends with Dr. Cohen as he mentioned interest in gaining the help of an enthusiastic UCLA student. I have also proposed to tailor my final project and write up in a way that could benefit his work or validate his inspiration.

Regarding the actual event itself, I enjoyed hearing him talk about his variety of interests and was amazed at his long-lasting influence in neurotechnology. I also found the collaboration of he and Dr. Vesna in "Octopus Brainstorming" [6] to be a fascinating progression in human and interspecies communication. Of course, his answer to my proposal of the hard question of consciousness was no less inspiring when his "I don't really know" turned to a call to curiosity for myself and the other attendees.

[7] Octopus Brainstorming offers an alternative dialogue of technology and culture through in-time EEG scanning and participation.

[1] Harris, Sam. Sam Harris, https://samharris.org/about. 2022

[2] Harris, Sam et al. “The neural correlates of religious and nonreligious belief.” PloS one vol. 4,10 e0007272. 1 Oct. 2009, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0007272
[3] Sullivan, Jahred. "Psychiatry 175: Mindfulness Practice and Theory Final Paper." UCLA, Los Angeles, CA. July 7, 2021
[4] Sullivan, Jahred. "Wearable Awareness: Jewelry and Piercings that Grab Others'- And Your Own- Attention." UCLA, Los Angeles, CA. April 29, 2022.
[5] LENARTOWICZ, Agatha, and Mark COHEN. “Systems and Methods for Enhanced Wearable Attention Monitoring.” WIPO IP Portal, PatentScope, 28 Nov. 2019, https://patentscope2.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2019226947&_cid=JP1-KQPFGX-74125-1.
[6] Audeze LLC. “CRBN Electrostatic.” Audeze LLC, Audeze, 2022, https://www.audeze.com/products/crbn.
[7] Vesna, Victoria, and Mark Cohen. “Octopus Brainstorming.” Octopus Brainstorming, WordPress, 2022, http://octopusbrainstorming.com/.

[8] Sommer, Valerie. “'Octopus Brainstorming'.” UCLA Newsroom, UCLA, 14 Nov. 2017, https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/octopus-brainstorming.