Once again this year, we will be celebrating Brain Awareness Week, the international event promoted every March by the Dana Foundation, based in New York, USA; the project aims to support brain science and disseminate brain research results to the wider public. From March 15 to 21, 2021, several research organisations worldwide will be hosting events to share the wonders of the brain, and the impact brain science has on our everyday lives.

This year Sapienza will contribute to Brain Awareness Week with "Il cervello degli artisti alla frontiera dell'esperienza umana" (Artists' brains at the frontier of human experience), a webinar organised by our neuroscientists on Wednesday, March 17, from 12 noon, focusing on the extraordinary nature of artists' brains.

The meeting will look at how artists can capture unique yet universal frames of life and emotions through different forms of visual and musical representation. It is often said that an artist's brain can see the world differently from other people; neuroscientists have discovered that this ability may depend on particular features in the structure and functional connections of the artists' brains. Through these features, artists' brains explore new dimensions of human experience, like pioneers discovering new lands and continents for all other people. The webinar will show the diversity of some artists' brains and the possible reflection of such diversity on their masterpieces; it has the potential to expand both the concept of normality in society and the boundaries of our inner world.

Claudio Babiloni, Professor of Physiology at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology "Vittorio Erspamer", will introduce the event. Professor Babiloni has been studying the brain rhythms underlying vigilance and consciousness for many years now, with applications to the understanding of diseases that deteriorate those brain functions, as in Alzheimer's disease. The speaker will be Laura Bonanni, Professor of Neurology at the University of Chieti-Pescara Gabriele d'Annunzio, an expert on genetic, anatomical, neurobiological, neurophysiological and clinical alterations in patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases with a particular interest in those caused by Lewy bodies.