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Retraining Your Brain: The Articulate Hand

Friday, June 3, 2011
8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Through both art and science, explore the remarkable connection between mind, brain, and body. Based on his collaboration with neurophysiologist Jonathan Cole, performance artist Andrew Dawson presents The Articulate Hand, a media-rich, on-stage portrayal of patients whose peculiar impairments—physiological and neurological—provide stunning insights into just how we humans are wired, and how adaptable that wiring may be. Dawson and Cole will be joined in a post-performance conversation by plastic surgeon Kodi Azari, whose groundbreaking work with hand transplant patients offers complementary insights into how the brain copes with dramatic and traumatic bodily changes.

Moderator

Stuart FiresteinNeuroscientist

Stuart Firestein is the chair of Columbia University’s department of biological sciences where, along with his colleagues, he studies the vertebrate olfactory system, possibly the best chemical detector on the face of the planet.

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Participants

Kodi AzariSurgeon

Kodi Azari, MD, FACS is an internationally known plastic surgeon and hand surgeon. His clinical areas of interest include hand, microvascular, peripheral nerve surgery, and hand transplantation.

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Jonathan ColeNeurophysiologist

A neurologist, scientist, and author in the UK, Jonathan Cole’s writing explores the experience of impairment of the body from the first person perspective. Pride and a Daily Marathon detailed living without movement sense or touch. It became a BBC TV documentary and was one vignette in Peter Brook’s play, The Man Who.

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Andrew DawsonPerformance Artist

Andrew Dawson is a theatre director, performer, Feldenkrais practitioner, and hand model. He studied dance with Merce Cunningham in New York and theatre in Paris with Phillipe Gaulier, Monika Pagneux, and Jacques Lecoq.

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