Art in Medical Contexts: How Creative Processes Can Raise Awarenes of Neurolgical Disorders

Seminar

How can artists and scientists communicate with each other? Do scientists need artists to raise awareness about neurological diseases? And can a scientific purpose be reached through creative tools?

Programme:
1 pm
Introduction by Prof. Henrik Zetterberg and Valentina Sansone

1.15 pm
Alzheimer Cafè by Valentina Vetturi. A research on how disease affects memory: visual and sound pieces, 30 mins
Valentina Vetturi¿s performances, sound- and text-based installations deal with memory. Since 2014, the Geneva-based, Italian visual artist has been working on a research that examines the relationship between memory and sound. For the workshop at the University of Gothenburg, Vetturi presents recent outcomes of her ¿Alzheimer Cafè¿ project: images, sound pieces and videos from the performance at MAXXI Museum in Rome, Italy, and from the sound-based installation developed as part of the public program of the Kunsthalle Goeppingen, Germany. Vetturi is the artist invited to the 2016 Residency Program for Visual Artists at the Italienska Kulturinstitutet in Stockholm (November - December 2016), curated by independent curator Valentina Sansone.
1:45 pm
The capability to paint in AD patients ¿ remaining artistic abilities in non-professional artists,
30 mins
Professor of Psychology and expert on capability, Professor Boo Johansson¿s lecture reflects upon the relationship between painting and Alzheimer's disease.
Since 2001, Johansson has been Professor of Psychology at the University of Gothenburg. His research has been focusing on the psychology of aging, and on cognitive and mental health during aging.
Johansson is a member of Nationalkommittéen of Psychology at the Royal Academy of Sciences and member of the Royal Society of Sciences and Letters in Gothenburg.

2:15 pm
Biomarkers: correlating brain pathology with clinical expression, 30 mins
Henrik Zetterberg is Professor of Neurochemistry at the University of Gothenburg and at University College London and the Head of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurochemistry at the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg. With a background in molecular biology and medicine, Dr. Zetterberg has spent the past 10 years focusing on the development of biomarkers for Alzheimer¿s disease and other brain disorders. His research involves evaluation of biomarkers in cell and animal models, as well as in longitudinal studies of patients and healthy individuals. He has received the Erik K. Fernström prize for young scientists and the Inga Sandeborg prize for research on Alzheimer¿s disease.

2:45 pm
Title TBA, 30 mins
Palle Dahlstedt (Associate professor, Information technology and music, University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology¿) is a composer and an improvizer. His research includes new technologies and concepts for musical improvisation and composition based on his own artistic practice and on algorithms from nature, complex systems and computer science. More recently, Dahlstedt has also been working on computational models of artistic creativity, with the dual objective of understanding the artistic mind and getting creative behavior from machines.

3:15 pm
AgeCap - a multidisciplinary research centre for capability in old age, 15 mins

Pia Gudmundsson is a researcher at the Department of Psychiatry and Neurochemistry at Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, University of Gothenburg. Gudmundsson obtained a Master of Education in Biology and Psychology. In 2012, she completed her thesis ¿Factors related to depression in women - over the life course¿, based on the Prospective Population study of Women in Gothenburg. Her research focuses on depression from a multidisciplinary perspective. Gudmundsson is scientific coordinator for the research group Neuropsychiatric Epidemiology - EPINEP, and for Centre for Ageing and Health - AgeCap.

3:45 pm
Q&A