AMNH Presents BRAIN: THE INSIDE STORY, Opens 11/20

The American Museum of Natural History announces Brain: The Inside Story, an amazing and stimulating exhibition that will give visitors a new perspective and insight into their own brains using imaginative art, vivid brain scan imaging, and thrilling interactive exhibits that will engage the whole family. Brain features the latest cutting-edge research from the treating of diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's to the recent studies of more intangible aspects like the mapping of our emotional responses. Brain: The Inside Story will open November 20 and remain on view until August 14, 2011, after which it will begin an international tour.

Brain: The Inside Story offers an unprecedented journey through the essential bundle of neurons that is the human brain, the command center of every human being that enables each person to think, feel, and learn. The exhibition begins with an enthralling walk-through installation by contemporary Spanish artist Daniel Canogar, a canopy of moving lights representing billions of firing neurons inside the human brain. Passing through this dynamic interpretation, visitors will continue to explore their senses, emotions, thoughts, and memories through a series of videos and interactive installations that test visitors' responses. The presentation of the brain's adaptability and the surprising way it continually rewires itself throughout life-highlighted by the latest imaging technology-will engage visitors of all ages.

"Recent technological advances have allowed researchers to come ever closer to unraveling the complex mysteries of the human brain," said Museum President Ellen V. Futter. "Brain: The Inside Story brings this cutting-edge, interdisciplinary topic into sharp focus, providing the public a unique opportunity to make sense of its remarkable insights and implications. It is an exhibition with universal resonance that will leave visitors with a far deeper understanding to the intricacy of their own minds."

"This exhibition is a coming-out party for our 21st-century brains," says Rob DeSalle, curator of the exhibition and curator in the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics, American Museum of Natural History. "The last five years have accelerated our understanding of our brains because of advances in brain imaging, genomics of the nervous system, science of psychology, and integration of multiple disciplines."

Brain: The Inside Story is a sensory feast that will engage, enlighten, and entertain visitors with intriguing facts about our five senses, our emotional brain, our thinking brain, our changing brain, and our future brain. The action starts with a multimedia presentation that offers a captivating introduction to the brain. Images are projected on a scrim surrounding a clear, 5-foot-tall sculpted model of the brain. Various parts of the model light up as they are described in the narrative, helping visitors better visualize brain structure and function. In a section exemplifying how the brain changes with age, an interactive video lets visitors try pronouncing words from unfamiliar languages, a task that is more difficult for people whose brains weren't exposed to these sounds in early childhood. Relaxing in the "Brain Lounge," visitors will see how different parts of the brain are stimulated by various activities-like listening to music, sporting events, or foreign languages-by viewing colorful functional brain scans, or fMRIs, of people as varied as musicians, athletes, and U.N. translators.

Additional highlights in the exhibition include an installation by artist Devorah Sperber that brings hundreds of spools of thread into focus as an image of a world-renowned painting, a dramatic metaphor for how the brain organizes the visual world; an interactive map representing the streets of London that explores how the brain stores long-term memories; and a 6-foot-tall sensory homunculus, a figure sculpted with enormous hands and lips to demonstrate the proportional amount of the brain devoted to the sense of touch in different parts of the body.

In Brain: The Inside Story visitors will learn about the latest advances from neuroscience and medicine. Visitors will see a new technique for mapping the brain's pathways called diffusion spectrum MRI. A section on "Your 21st-Century Brain" presents exciting new advances in brain-computer interfaces, including actual deep-brain implants used to treat Parkinson's and depression, a medical device that can stimulate specific brain regions using magnetic fields, and a retinal implant or "bionic eye" that can help blind people see. Visitors will also learn how the brain's plasticity allows for changes at different stages of life, as they play computer games specifically designed to improve brain function.

Brain: The Inside Story is organized by the American Museum of Natural History, New York (www.amnh.org), in collaboration with the Guangdong Science Center, Guangzhou, China; and Parque de las Ciencias, Granada, Spain.

Generous support for Brain: The Inside Story has been provided by the Eileen P. Bernard Exhibition Fund, Virginia Hearst Randt and Dana Randt, and Mary and David Solomon.
The exhibition is curated by the American Museum of Natural History's Rob DeSalle with assistance from two consultants: Margaret Zellner, behavioral neuroscientist and psychoanalyst who is a postdoctoral fellow at The Rockefeller University, and Joy Hirsch, director of the Program for Imaging & Cognitive Sciences and professor at Columbia University.