Geetha

Last week Ben and I talked about the nature of cognitive processing in the rats and songbirds he studies. One of the many things he mentioned that I hadn’t previously known about was the importance of random processing and its effect on learning. Here’s a greatly paraphrased summary of his explanation: One part of the brain operates based on pre-learned or pre-programmed patterns, so that it knows how to effectively do a thing when presented with a problem. Another part of the brain fires at random, essentially jigging the animal off-course when doing something pre-patterned. At first, I thought this must be maladaptive, because surely it creates an error in something honed through evolution or learned from prior experience. But Ben went on to explain that random error introduction creates a new problem for the animal to solve—essentially, it’s a way for animal to learn new things, or behave more flexibly than before. 

We went on to talk about sleep and dream states in songbirds in rats (more on that later), but what I started to think about how to introduce randomness or unpredictability in writing. Examples include “choose your adventure”-style interactive storytelling, video-game based storytelling, hypertext narratives, mad-libs, found poems, and AI-generated poems and novels. And there’s the simple poem—fixed text on a page. The line-break, the point in a poem where you break a sentence and continue on the next line, is a visual destabilizer—it leaves you hanging until you scan to the next line, and have to recalibrate the meaning of what you previously read. In a nod to randomness, I’ll share an example that popped up by chance on my Twitter feed last week (read it, then read it again, slowly, each line independent of what comes before and after, then again as a whole). Now, if we call randomness “creativity,” it suggests something powerful about how unpredictable language can lead to unforeseen associations and insights.

Back to sleep and dreaming in animals. Ben was explaining how studies done on songbirds have shown how different parts of their brains associated with vocal production fire off during REM- or non-REM sleep (so, songbirds dream in electric tweets). He mentioned that the pattern of activity in their brains is similar to the speed at which they sing when they are awake. Rats exhibit another kind of dream state wherein the part of their brain that processes movement through space fires off—but at a greatly accelerated speed. Ben used the term “fictive navigation,” to describe this activity in rats, and here’s where randomness and my writing connect this week. I find that phrase incredibly evocative, and am now thinking about what it means to capture the mental state of a rodent imagining a world it runs through at many times the speed of life. Have you ever had those dreams where you’re effortlessly marathoning through the neighborhoods of your childhood and haven’t broken a sweat and are exhilarated to discover you’re across the ocean now? Where on earth does a rat go in such a dream state?—a writing prompt I have to figure out. 

Ben

Geetha and I have discussed approaches for this collaboration including creative direction, communication style and process. Along the lines of format, several possibilities were proposed. Mixed media was an interesting idea and Geetha shared an awesome video she had worked on, highlighting the work of Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute scientist Julia Schuckel on insect night vision. Another suggestion was writing poetry and I think writing fiction or non-fiction could be on the table as well. Intellectually there seems to be a large space of possible directions and we have discussed ways to narrow these down.   ​

Through our conversations I came to understand my approach to and expectations of collaboration a bit more. In my past experience as a researcher, all collaborations have fit a fairly similar pattern. I work closely with the other person, meeting regularly, often face-to-face daily. The goal is clear from the outset, yet there is an understanding that the goal may change as when in the course of research something more interesting is uncovered. We work together on all aspects of the project and when it comes time, the writing is done together, sometimes with several people. Come to think of it, all the paper I have written were the result of this process, this has never been a solo endeavor.

I can’t tell which part of this process is the most difficult to abandon, but having a clear goal might be it. Having a goal from the outset is comforting and clarifying. It provides a direction for the first few steps and the confidence to know that you aren’t about to wander off a creative cliff. It gives me the motivation to work, keeps the wheels from spinning and helps to prioritize and make time for the project. ​

Geetha

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about the words we use to describe how brains work. What is a “thought,” or a “dream,” in the mind of a human, and to what extent can those terms be applied to other animals. As a science writer, I’m cautious about attributing human-like characteristics to other animals. Humans generally have the capacity to verbalize or otherwise describe their motivations. Since we can’t communicate with other animals in the same way, we can’t really know how they think and feel the way we intuit what humans think or feel based on what they say or do. As a science writer, I worry about anthropomorphizing.
 
But when I write fiction and poetry, I anthropomorphize all the time, because this is a tool that can be used to inhabit other points of view. And this is not just about seeing the world from the eyes of a cat or a shrimp. If I say, “The wind plays piano upon the palm leaves,” I’m taking the liberty of anthropomorphizing wind so that a reader might understand the view out of my window—it’s not just leaf blades moving up and down in a breeze, there’s a light rhythm to it, an undulation that feels musical.
 
Something I’m hoping to get out of this collaborative experience is to see where my language needs to be more careful in describing how other animals’ brains process the world, and where I can take liberty with language to imagine something unknowable. Ben mentioned in his previous blog post that art might “provide an alternative means to investigate the unknown and overlooked […] to explore new territories which are currently inaccessible to existing scientific methods.” I find that exciting because it gives us a means to bridge* what is currently known about how animal brains operate with what we’d like to know as we continue to study them.
 
*Yep, I see what I did there.

Geetha

Hello, fellow sci-art enthusiasts! I’m Geetha. I once wanted to be a biologist but then meandered from genetics to ecology to environmental education to creative writing, which is why you find me here at The Bridge. I write fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, much of which incorporates scientific research in some capacity. Sometimes the research turns into speculative fiction - such as an NYTimes article about tardigrades living in Arctic moss balls that inspired a short fabulist story about preserving mementos of species on the brink of extinction. 

Other times, it can fuel poetry. For instance, a conversation with a Panamanian scientist at another sci-art residency I was part of became a poem that meditates on the economic versus inherent value of such things as golden frogs, the yellow silk of orb weaver spiders, the metal gold, and the brief yellow blooms of a tree species native to Panama. 

Nonfiction is perhaps the most obvious way to bridge science and writing. As is probably evident by now, I live in Panama, which means I take much of my day-to-day inspiration from this country’s incredible natural diversity. That resulted, for instance, in an essay on how caring for tadpoles of a poison frog native to this region turned into a research-based obsession with everything that poison frogs are and do. They produce skin toxins (ask me how and I’ll tell you a story). They go to great lengths to care for their young (I could talk about this for hours). They have brains capable of complex decision-making (I follow the scientists who study their brains the way other people follow rock stars or Instagram influencers).

Science is fun, and awe-inspiring, and changes what we know about the world we live in. It also, I hope, changes our sense of responsibility to the world. I write about ecosystems and conservation and animal behavior and plant beauty for a reason. We’re exploiting the natural world and will be poorer for it when we find we’ve driven most organisms to the brink of extinction and despoiled most of the terrain we share with them. Writing preserves a record. It celebrates. It eulogizes. It warns. It inspires. I would argue that science does all this as well. To me, it seems the most natural thing to be adjacent to science as a writer, which is why I’m so excited to be a part of The Bridge this year.

I’m also thrilled to work with Ben, who studies neurobiology and animal cognition. I won’t attempt to describe what he does without getting to know more firsthand, but animal cognition has been an ongoing obsession of mine. I’ve been thinking about how poison frogs think, of course, but also how cephalopods do so with a decentralized nervous system that runs through their limbs, and how social insects operate by aggregating the sensory knowledge of many tiny brains. This branch of science is such good fodder for poetry, for speculative fiction, for essays on what is alien versus familiar in non-human minds. Here’s to a productive collaboration! 

Ben

My collaborator Geetha asked what drew me to apply for this residency and what my connection (or desire for connection) to the arts might be. 
 
The first question is easier to address. Two of my favorite components of working in science are collaborating with people and explaining new research discoveries and concepts in a way that can be easily understood by a general audience. I hoped that this residency would offer an opportunity and a challenge in both domains.
 
My connection to the arts is more difficult to summarize. Like (most?) people I am a consumer of art. I was a projectionist (16mm and 35mm) at my college film group and a radio DJ in both college and graduate school. I try to find time to read fiction and feel lucky to live in a city with a number of excellent museums. I would also like to find new ways to interact with the art and the artistic process. In my field we explore new ideas through experimentation, data collection, and analysis. This process is immensely powerful and beautiful, but it proceeds much more slowly than the speed at which we think and communicate. What excites me about art is that it seems to provide an alternative means to investigate the unknown and overlooked. I would like to use art to explore new territories which are currently inaccessible to existing scientific methods. My hope is that Geetha and I may be able to do this together.   ​