Neuroanatomy Lino Prints

 It's been a fair while since I posted anything, mainly because I've been pretty heavy into the research aspects of my main project. For a bit of relief I've started a side project on neuroanatomy, relating it to mental health in particular. 

 The mind is often seen as an ephemeral thing, unrelated to our physicality when in fact our thoughts and emotions are products of physical structures. I feel this separation of our psyche from our physical self adds to the stigma surrounding conditions such as depression, dysmorphia and other 'mental' health issues by enlarging their division from 'physical' health. 

 It doesn't help that we know relatively little about the brains processes, with the underlying issues causing mental health issues unknown to the border populace. One of the problems, I feel, is that with many physical health conditions there is a gross (as in macroscopic not disgusting) change to the body. With a broken bone we can see the cause and effect, we can see how to treat it and relate to it in a visual way. 

 My question then is this; by making art that relates mental health issues to their physical and neuro-chemical processes, by creating a visual stimulus that shows these conditions are based or related to physiological processes can we reduce the stigma? Can we show people it may 'just be all in your head' but that our heads are physical things and that mental health care is just as important as any other condition?

 I started by working on some of the more simple prints, neuroanatomy wise, looking at the basic topography of the brain and nervous system. I've tried a few colour variations on these, I may experiment a bit more but I'm quite happy with how they turned out. The bright colours remind me of the maps I used to look at as a child, with each country coloured as vibrantly as possible. 

 Depression is a condition that's quite close to home for me, but my experience with it lead me to want to tackle it first. I think coming at it from that point of understanding was necessary for my first foray into art and mental health. The image above shows the general area of influence of serotonin, a neurotransmitter (chemical that relays signals through the brain). Many researchers believe one of the causes of depression is a decreased amount of serotonin, or a lack of receptors for the chemical. It's also been linked to obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety, panic and anger. With this image I hoped to show how big of an area of the brain this chemical influenced, relating depression to a chemical and a chemical to a physical form.