Neanderthals did it? We have all done it  a lot as children but most of us stop doing it  during development into adulthood. What is it, why would we stop doing it and can it tell us anything about brain function and dysfunction? It is making visual art, such as drawing and painting. Most people stop producing visual art because areas of the brain which suppress the motivation for art production become more dominant. But what happens if these brain areas become damaged by disease or injury? In this talk I shall look at work by Van Gogh, de Kooning, Horn, Sarkin, McHugh, Dubuffet, Wolfi and Corbaz and discuss issues raised by tertiary syphilis, Alzheimer’s disease, mental health, disinhibition and the anterior region of the temporal lobe of the brain.
 

Roderick Scott is an artist printmaker during his leisure time, at work he is an electrophysiologist. He mainly works on the actions of naturally occurring compounds including cannabis-like chemicals and marine sponge toxins on the electrical excitability of cells. As an artist his work includes graphic witness type, black and white lino cut prints in which he tries to capture world events of our time, usually bad ones.