Cederic Pimentel, MD Profile picture
Oct 11, 2021 22 tweets 10 min read Read on X
🧵
1/ Salvador Dalí's delirium as science
1904-1989 | Spanish surrealist | Explorer of the (erotic) subconscious through his "paranoiac-critical" method
🦋🦋🦋 Neurology is everywhere
2/"Critical paranoia."
🤓Another way to perceive reality. Revealing the "irrational knowledge."
🤓"My whole ambition in the pictorial domain is to materialize the images of my concrete irrationality with the most imperialist fury of precision" Dalí
3/
🤔"..it makes the world of delirium pass onto the plane of reality." Dalí Swans Reflecting Elephants -1937
4/
🤔Is delirium an expression of a different reality? (involuntary)
🧐Dalí consciously extracts elements that make up the inner world (of the paranoiac)
🤔And I wonder if his artistic ecstasy is a convulsion, a seizure. I wish we could have had cEEG during Dalí's trances.😍
5/
"The only difference between a madman and me is that I'm not mad." Dalí😆
🤓He was just delirious! (A fluctuating confusion or a different perception of what's real?)
6/
🤔Was Dalí tapping into Default Mode Network (DMN)
🦋Medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus, and angular gyrus -> strong low-frequency oscillations activated when individuals are focused on their internal mental state processes (Limbic network?) The temptation of St. Anthony (1946) https://www.sciencedire
7/
"I use hypnagogic images, vivid lilliputian images." Dalí
🧐Hypnagogia is associated with stage 1 NREM sleep and pre-sleep alpha waves
🧐Lilliputian hallucinations described in seizures, brain tumors, AIDS-dementia complex, delirium, Lewy Body dementia, schizophrenia.
8/
"Sleep is a heavy monster held up by the crutches of reality." Dalí Sleep 1937
9/
Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937)
🤓Nemesis punished Narcissus. He fell in love with his reflection. He melted away from the fire of passion burning inside of him, eventually turning into a flower (Narcissus flower) -> Narcissism is born.😅 Narcissus is contemplating his beauty. A narcissus flower fr
10/
🤓Dali's fascination with Freud manifested in his art ("On Narcissism: An introduction" Sigmund Freud 1914)
🦋He was a diligent reader of Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams." (1899) Portrait of My Dead Brother. 1963 “The Vulture, according
11/
🤓Stereopsis (Binocular depth perception)
🧐Dalí created art using our optic nerve-chiasm-lateral geniculate nucleus-primary visual cortex (Near Far discrimination)
🧐He experimented with 3D images, Frenzel goggles (disables visual fixation)
12/
😍Nuclear Mysticism
😍Homage to Crick and Watson's DNA double helix
"On Jacob's ladder, each step is a DNA landing, and the angels going up and down are the RNA" Dalí. Galacidalacidesoxiribunucleicacid (Homage to Crick and Watso
13/
🤓Nuclear/Atomic period
🧐"Dalí was fascinated by the theory of relativity because it offered the idea that reality could not be reduced to a single flow" Gavin Parkinson.
🤓"Determinism doesn't exist.. the identity of objects is created by observation!" Dalí Galatea of Spheres.1952 He described the atom as "his f
14/
🥸1938 Dalí meets Freud
😆During the meeting, Dalí sketched.
"I uttered a loud cry. I had just that instant discovered the morphological secret of Freud! Freud's cranium is a snail! His brain is in the form of a spiral – to be extracted with a needle!" Dalí Dalí's sketch of Freud during the meeting.  https://www.fre
15/
🥸Freud, in a letter to Stefan Zweig (Austrian Novelist)
"I was inclined to look upon the surrealists as absolute, cranks. That young Spaniard, however, with his candid and fanatical eyes, and his undeniable technical mastery, has made me reconsider my opinion". 1938. Morphologie du crane de Sigmund Freud
16/
😍Dalí's brain->snails
🦋Hard outside (cranium), soft inside (Brain)
✅Insects bite -> reveal a watermelon. (insects for Dalí, were symbols of fear-> neurophobia?)
✅To the left, there is a skull, but the skull is a larva -> symbol of evolution—neuroscience evolution? Metamorphose.1946
17/
😍Dalí's melting clocks
🧐A reminder of our ephemeral nature or our mental decay = dementia! The persistence of Memory. 1931
18/
🥸Reinterpretation of Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp
🦋Inkblots, notice figures of Diego Velazquez, Dalí, and Christ.
🧐Velazquez (Spanish painter) has a saw opening the skull. Christ closed his eyes.😅😅 La Lecon d'Anatomie.1965
19/
🥴Dali's Parkinson's disease (76 y/o, 1980)
😍He depicts his malady beautifully.
✅Tremor, rigidity, postural instability (crutches, repeated in different paintings)
✅Dementia (melting clocks?) Saint Sebastian.1982
20/
😳My surreal ramblings
😳Giraffes on fire, I see hippocampi in status or inflamed from autoimmunity
😳Long elephant legs, I see neurons and long axons
🦋Butterflies, I see neurons (#cajalbutterflies)
😅Critical paranoia, I see multimodal monitoring and deep electrodes
21/
🤓Dalí is a challenge to our scientific perceptions and bias.
"Our reality is a habit of the mind" Salvador The Great Masturbator. 1929
22/
"I don't do drugs, I am drugs" Salvador Dalí
🦋🦋🦋Neurology is everywhere!
@EmoryNeuroCrit @caseyalbin @bensalem_owen @gabifpucci @JimmySuhMD @sigman_md @Capt_Ammonia @EricLawson90 @VizcarraJA

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Cederic Pimentel, MD

Cederic Pimentel, MD Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @CajalButterfly

Jan 22, 2022
1/🧵
"A novelist conversation with the abyss"
Charles Ferdinand Ramuz🥸
French-speaking Swiss (Laussane) writer 1878-1947 | Most prominent Swiss novelist
😞R MCA stroke @ age 65
🥸He called it "The adventure."
🧐Risks: smoker
2/
😍Igor Stravinsky (one of the most influential composers of the 20th century) + Ramuz -> created the famous musical play L' Historie du Soldat (1918):
"You have no right to share what you are and what you were."⤵️

E-N-J-O-Y
3/
🥸R handed. Developed L-sided weakness and crossed Aphasia!

"Crossed aphasia is a phenomenon in which an individual sustains a lesion in the right hemisphere (typically non-language dominant), but who exhibits an aphasic syndrome."
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28114692/
Read 18 tweets
Sep 10, 2021
1/
🤔I kept thinking about Klüver-Busy after @RyanBPetersonMD fantastic case (Post-herpes encephalitis NMDA, check it out!)
🧐How in the world did they get to describe this syndrome!? Well, it's fascinating.
2/
🤓A Cactus (mescaline), a monkey named "Aurora", Heinrich Klüver and a neurosurgeon (Bucy)
✅Klüver: experimental psychologist, helped shape the field (neuroscience). He had an interest in Peyote and mescaline induced hallucinations (eidetic visual phenomena)
3/
🌵Mescaline (Trimethoxyphenethylamine)
✅Occurs naturally in two cacti: San Pedro and Peyote
🌵Alkaloid, hallucinogen, chemically related to amphetamine
🌵Stimulates serotonin and dopamine receptors (locus coeruleus and prefrontal cortex
Peyote is a cute cactus.😍😍
Read 9 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(