Jayne Jubb

As someone who likes to combine things – I have a fondness for working on reports and articles in cafes wherever I happen to be in the world – I can appreciate this study. Two neuroscientists have ‘discovered’ that Michelangelo was conveying secret messages about neuroanatomy in his artwork on the Sixtine Chapel ceiling. Was Michelangelo really a secret neuro geek?

I’ll leave it up to you to decide if these neuroscientists were on holiday or if they need to go on one!

Known by his first name the world over, Michelangelo was an artistic genius, sculptor and architect— and it turns out that he was also an anatomist, a secret he concealed by destroying almost all of his anatomical sketches and notes. Now, 500 years after he drew them, his hidden anatomical illustrations have been found—painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, cleverly concealed from the eyes of Pope Julius II and countless religious worshipers, historians, and art lovers for centuries—inside the body of God.

This is the conclusion of Ian Suk and Rafael Tamargo, in their paper in the scientific journal Neurosurgery (you can download the original scientific article at http://journals.lww.com/neurosurgery/toc/2010/05000). Suk and Tamargo are experts in neuroanatomy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1990, physician Frank Meshberger published a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association deciphering Michelangelo’s imagery with the stunning recognition that the depiction in God Creating Adam in the central panel on the ceiling was a perfect anatomical illustration of the human brain in cross section. Meshberger speculates that Michelangelo surrounded God with a shroud representing the human brain to suggest that God was endowing Adam not only with life, but also with supreme human intelligence.

Now in another panel The Separation of Light from Darkness, Suk and Tamargo have found more. Leading up the center of God’s chest and forming his throat, the researchers have found a precise depiction of the human spinal cord and brain stem.

Is the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel a 500 year-old puzzle that is only now beginning to be solved? What was Michelangelo saying by construction the voice box of God out of the brain stem of man? Is it a sacrilege or homage?

It took Michelangelo four years to complete the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He proceeded from east to west, starting from the entrance of the Chapel to finish above the altar. The last panel he painted depicts God separating light from darkness. This is where the researchers report that Michelangelo hid the human brain stem, eyes and optic nerve of man inside the figure of God directly above the altar.

Art critics and historians have long puzzled over the odd anatomical irregularities in Michelangelo’s depiction of God’s neck in this panel, and by the discordant lighting in the region. The figures in the fresco are illuminated diagonally from the lower left, but God’s neck, highlighted as if in a spotlight, is illuminated straight-on and slightly from the right.

How does one reconcile such clumsiness by the world’s master of human anatomy and skilled portrayer of light with bungling the image of God above the altar? Suk and Tamargo propose that the hideous goiter-disfigured neck of God is not a mistake, but rather a hidden message. They argue that nowhere else in any of the other figures did Michelangelo foul up his anatomically correct rendering of the human neck.

They show that if one superimposes a detail of God’s odd lumpy neck in the Separation of Light and Darkness on a photograph of the human brain as seen from below, the lines of God’s neck trace precisely the features of the human brain.

There is something else odd about this picture. A role of fabric extends up the center of God’s robe in a peculiar manner. The clothing is bunched up here as is seen nowhere else, and the fold clashes with what would be the natural drape of fabric over God’s torso. In fact, they observe, it is the human spinal cord, ascending to the brain stem in God’s neck. At God’s waist, the robe twists again in a peculiar crumpled manner, revealing the optic nerves from two eyes, precisely as Leonardo Da Vinci had shown them in his illustration of 1487. Da Vinci and Michelangelo were contemporaries and acquainted with each other’s work.

The mystery is whether these neuroanatomical features are hidden messages or whether the Sistine Chapel present a sort of ‘Rorshach’ (psychological ink blots on paper) tests upon which anyone can extract an image that is meaningful to themselves. The authors of the paper are, after all, neuroanatomists….

If the hidden figures are intentional, what do they mean? The authors resist speculation, but a great artist does not merely reproduce an object in a work of art, he or she evokes meaning through symbolism. Is Separation of Light from Darkness an artistic comment on the enduring clash between science and religion? Recall that this was the age when the monk Copernicus was denounced by the Church for theorizing that the Earth revolved around the sun. It was a period of struggle between scientific observation and the authority of the Church, and a time of intense conflict between Protestants and Catholics. It is no secret that Michelangelo’s relationship with the Catholic Church became strained. The artist was a simple man, but he grew to detest the opulence and corruption of the Church.

Michelangelo was a devout person, but later in life he developed a belief in Spiritualism, for which he was condemned by Pope Paul IV. The fundamental tenet of Spiritualism is that the path to God can be found not exclusively through the Church, but through direct communication with God. Pope Paul IV interpreted Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, painted on the wall of the Sistine Chapel 20 years after completing the ceiling, as defaming the church by suggesting that Jesus and those around him communicated with God directly without need of Church. He suspended Michelangelo’s pension and had fig leaves painted over the nudes in the fresco. According to the artist’s wishes, Michelangelo’s body is not buried on the grounds of the Vatican, but is instead interred in a tomb in Florence.

Perhaps the meaning in the Sistine Chapel is about not needing the Church to access God. The material is rich for speculation and the new findings will doubtlessly spark endless interpretation. We may never know the truth, but in Separation of Light from Darkness, Michelangelo’s masterpiece combines the worlds of art, religion, science, and faith in a provocative and awe inspiring work of art.

 

References:

You can download the original full scientific article for yourself at:

http://journals.lww.com/neurosurgery/toc/2010/05000

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=michelangelos-secret-message-in-the-2010-05-26

Meshberger FL. An interpretation of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam based on neuroanatomy. Journal of the American Medical Association. 1990, volume 264, number 14, pages 1837-1841.

In a recent study, neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, report that hormone fluctuations during a woman’s menstrual cycle may affect the brain as much as do substances such as caffeine, methamphetamines or the popular attention drug Ritalin.

Scientists have known for decades that working memory (short-term information processing) is dependent on the chemical dopamine. In fact, drugs like Ritalin mimic dopamine to help people concentrate. Researchers have also had evidence that in rats, estrogen seems to trigger a release of dopamine. The new study from Berkeley, however, is the first to show that cognition is tied to estrogen levels in people—explaining why some women have better or worse cognitive abilities at varying points in their menstrual cycles.

The Berkeley team examined 24 healthy women, some of whom had naturally high levels of dopamine and some of whom had low levels, as indicated by genetic testing. As expected, those with the lower levels struggled with complicated working memory tasks, such as repeating a series of five numbers in reverse order. When the test was repeated during ovulation, however, when estrogen levels are highest (usually 10 to 12 days after menstruation), these women fared markedly better, improving their performance by about 10%. Surprisingly, those with naturally high dopamine levels took a nosedive in their ability to do complicated mental tasks at that point in their cycle.

For women with the lowest levels—about 25 percent of the general population—increased dopamine during ovulation will sharpen cognitive functions, whereas for the 25 percent of women with the highest levels, ovulation seems to take them beyond a threshold and to impair thinking. The remaining half of women fall somewhere in between and were not a part of the study.

The work has broad implications: it may mean that caffeine, which triggers a dopamine release, and Ritalin-like drugs are less effective—or even detrimental—at certain times of the month for some women, when estrogen is spiking.

But the estrogen-dopamine link is showing that this may make women more vulnerable to addictions. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter involved in the perception of rewards such as food, sex and drugs. There is a growing literature on female addiction shows that they are not much like their male counterparts. The studies point to new drug treatments for addiction as well as practical tips for women who want to quit using.

 

The Weaker Sex?


Although scientists have been studying drug use in women on a small scale since the 1970s, progress was relatively meager before 1994, when the National Institutes of Health mandated that most clinical research include women and minorities. As research on gender differences greatly accelerated, investigators uncovered hints that girls and women may be more vulnerable to addiction and substance abuse than men are. Scientists noticed that women more quickly escalate to heavy drug use and more readily succumb to the accompanying social and physical damage. Even female rats obsessively self-administer addictive drugs more readily than male rodents do.

Reproductive hormones may underlie this susceptibility. Removing the ovaries of female rats so that the animals no longer produce estrogen can diminish their tendency to seek out stimulants such as cocaine and amphetamine. In addition, giving estrogen to female rats whose ovaries have been removed can shorten the path to addiction. In 2004 neuroscientist Jill Becker of the University of Michigan and her colleagues reported that it took six days for ovary-free rats to start repeatedly helping themselves to infusions of cocaine—in this setup, by poking their noses into a hole. In contrast, rats receiving supplemental estrogen succumbed to the same compulsion after just four days.

Researchers believe that estrogen spurs addiction by stimulating the brain’s reward pathways, enhancing the “high” from drugs. Administering estrogen to rats that have had their ovaries removed boosts levels of dopamine.

 

Hormone High


In female mammals, estrogen does not act alone, however. Its hormonal partner, progesterone, appears to oppose estrogen’s ability to promote addictive tendencies. In 2006 Becker’s team reported that giving both estrogen and progesterone to female rats lacking ovaries does not accelerate obsessive cocaine use in the rodents, suggesting that progesterone may be an antidote to estrogen’s pleasure-seeking influence.

And more recent work confirms that women’s response to drugs varies across the menstrual cycle, as the relative levels of estrogen and progesterone naturally wax and wane. In a 2007 study clinical neurobiologist Suzette Evans and her colleagues found that stimulants are far more pleasurable to women during the estrogen-dominated ‘follicular phase’ (which occupies the approximately two weeks from the onset of a woman’s period until she ovulates) than during the ‘luteal phase’ after ovulation, when both estrogen and progesterone are high.

A woman’s perception of other kinds of rewards—such as money, food and sex—may also vary during her menstrual cycle. In a 2007 study researchers at the NIH scanned women’s brains using functional MRI as the women played slot-machine games. They found that women’s reward circuitry was more active when they won jackpots during the estrogen-governed phase of their cycles than during the progesterone-infused phase that follows. The ebb and flow of female hormones could thus have broad effects on the perception of pleasures and incentives, influencing women’s motivation to engage in a wide variety of behaviors.

 

A Smarter Way to Stop


Artificially boosting progesterone levels in women tempers the “high” they get from drugs. In a 2006 study Evans’s team gave 11 female cocaine users progesterone when their bodies’ natural levels of the hormone were low. The treated women reported feeling a reduced high as compared with the one they got at the same point in their cycles in the absence of additional progesterone. (In contrast, progesterone did not influence the subjective experience of cocaine smoking in the 10 male addicts they tested, although the researchers are not sure why.) If progesterone dampens the pleasure of drugs, it might help treat addiction in women—something Evans is currently testing in female cocaine addicts.

Short of a chemical fix, paying attention to the calendar could help women succeed at quitting smoking, drinking or using drugs. In a study published in 2008, Sharon Allen, a family medicine doctor at the University of Minnesota Medical School, and her colleagues asked half of 202 female smokers to try to quit during the second part of their cycles—when progesterone levels are high—and the others to make the attempt earlier in their cycles. The results were stunning: 34 percent of the women in the first group had not smoked 30 days later as compared with only 14 percent of those who tried to stop smoking when progesterone levels were low. When women smoke early in their cycle, they get more of a kick from their nicotine, so it might be harder to quit. In this mix of hormones, brain chemicals and desire—as in many other parts of life—timing may be everything.

 

References:

Allen SS, Bade T, Center B, et al. Menstrual phase effects on smoking relapse. Addiction (2008), volume 103, issue 5, pages 809-821.

Allen SS, Bade T, Hatsukami D, et al. Craving, withdrawal, and smoking urges on days immediately prior to smoking relapse. Nicotine and Tobacco Research (2008), volume 10, issue 1, pages 35-45.

Anthes E. She’s Hooked: Allure of Vices Tied to a Woman’s Monthly Cycle. Scientific American Mind (2010), volume 21, issue 2, pages 14-15.

Cools R, Sheridan M, Jacobs E, D’Esposito M. Impulsive personality predicts dopamine-dependent changes in frontostriatal activity during component processes of working memory. Journal of Neuroscience (2007), volume 27, issue 20, pages: 5506-5514.

Evans SM, Foltin RW. Exogenous progesterone attenuates the subjective effects of smoked cocaine in women, but not in men. Neuropsychopharmaclogy (2006), volume 31, issue 3, pages 659-674.

Evans SM. The role of estradiol and progesterone in modulating the subjective effects of stimulants in humans. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology (2007), volume 15, pages 418-426.

Hu M, Crombag HS, Robinson TE, Becker JB. Biological basis of sex differences in the propensity to self-administer cocaine. Neuropsycholpharmacology (2004), volume 29, issue 1, pages 81-85.

Jackson LR, Robinson TE, Becker JB. Sex differences and hormonal influences on acquisition of cocaine self-administration in rats. Neuropsychopharmaclogy (2006), volume 31, issue 1, pages 129-138.

Vance E. Is estrogen the new Ritalin? Scientific American Mind (2010), volume 21, issue 2, page 6.

You are probably no stranger to the fact that people who have come back from the verge of death have said that it was as if ‘their whole life flashed before their eyes.’

Very recently, unusual research into brain activity just before death offers clues about why such experiences occur.

An analysis of brain activity was carried out in seven sedated, critically ill patients as they were removed from life support. Using EEG recordings of neural electrical activity, a brief but significant spike was observed at or near the time of death—despite a preceding loss of blood pressure and associated drop in brain activity.

What is unusual with this is that it occurs at a very peculiar time point near death, when most people would think that the brain would physiologically die because of an absence of blood to the brain.

The jolts lasted 30 to 180 seconds and displayed properties that are normally associated with consciousness, such as extremely fast electrical oscillations known as gamma waves. Soon after the activity died down (pardon the pun), the patients were pronounced dead.

The researchers who carried out this study think that the predeath spikes are most likely brief, “last hurrah” seizures originating in brain areas that were irritable from oxygen starvation. Living nerve cells constantly maintain an electrical charge gradient, similar to the difference in charge on the poles of a battery. Keeping up this polarity takes energy—in this case, energy created from oxygen. As blood flow slows and oxygen runs out, the cells can no longer maintain polarity and they fire, causing a cascade of activity that ripples through the brain. If these seizures were to occur in memory regions, they could ex­plain the vivid recollections often reported by people who are brought back from near death.

It is difficult to draw further conclusions because in these patients only the forebrain was monitored. The end of a person’s is a poorly researched area – not surprisingly given the ethical red tape that you would have to go through to get permission to do these studies. However, the scientists are hoping to use more sophisticated brain imaging on a larger patient population to assess the entire brain in greater detail during near-death episodes.

 

References:

Lakhmir S. Chawla, Seth Akst, Christopher Junker, Barbara Jacobs, Michael G. Seneff. Surges of Electroencephalogram Activity at the Time of Death: A Case Series. Journal of Palliative Medicine. December 2009, 12(12): 1095-1100.

Peter Sergo. Going out with a Bang. Scientific American Mind. May/June 2010, volume 21(2), 10.