THEThe face in the mirror, a dialogue between medicine, neuroscience and art is the conference dedicated today bySan Raffaele University of Milan at the meeting between doctors, philosophers, art scholars and neuroscientists. Because if nothing expresses everyone’s individuality more than the face, finding the similarities with others in oneself is the first way to relate. This is why facial scrutiny has always been interested philosophers artists and doctors. To read some the singularity of the subject, others the common traits of a pathology. To them are added today the neuroscientists who study how does the facial recognition ability exerted by our brain work.
The face in the mirror: a theme for doctors and philosophers
The conference was organized by Professor Massimo Filippi, director of the Neurology Unit, of the Neurophysiology service and the Neuro Rehabilitation Unit of the IRCCS San Raffaele Hospital in Milan. With him Dr. Maira Gironi, neurologist multiple sclerosis specialist in the dedicated center of the hospital. Professor Francesco Valagussa full professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University and Antonio Cattaneo research fellow in History of Philosophy at the Federico II University of Naples complete the organizers’ parterre.
The face is the art and the idea of beauty
The experience of beauty is it something that rests on common biological foundations, goes beyond differences of gender, culture, education? Or is our approach profoundly determined by our experience, by the emotions that accompany us in the analysis of a work? Cinzia Di Dio, associate professor of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, was called to answer in the opening speech of the day. During the meeting, works of art were also analyzed such as those by Francis Bacon in whose decomposed, disfigured, stylized faces, crisis, fragmentariness, restlessness, of contemporaneity.
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Narcissi and ephebes: the mirror of the contemporary
The contemplation of the face in the mirroris a key issue in the image society. It is analyzed starting from the attitude to always be connected, to show oneself continuously, which can lead to becoming a victim of narcissism. This was outlined by Antonio Nizzoli, professor of media communication at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University.
The “betrayal” of the mirror that refers a self-image alien to reality, fatter, thinner, uglier, is the basis of eating disorders of many teenagers. This is the topic focused on by the clinical psychologist at San Raffaele Anna Ogliari. Finally full of questions mirroring oneself in a face with ever more elusive and ambiguous characters for sexual characterization investigated by Raffaella Colomboprofessor of philosophers at the State University of Milan.
The migraine is seen in the face
Facial change in pathology has been investigated in cluster headache and other forms of migraine. So Claudio Mencacci, Co-President of the Italian Society of Neuropsychopharmacology (SINPF) focuses on how depression prevents you from reading the codes of the other’s emotions on the face in a kind of emotional agnosia. The impossibility of recognizing oneself in the face in the mirror for the patient suffering from dementia is argued by the report by Federica Agosta, of the Neuroimaging unit of the Institute of Experimental Neurology of the San Raffaele Hospital – Irccs. The final session deals with therapies for these and other ailments, with a speech among others by Pietro Avanzini researcher of the Cnrneuro scientist of the Institute of Neuro Sciences of Parma, who talks about mirror neurons.
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