Julia Levy, Contributing Photographer

A new exhibition, “Mind/Matter: The Neuroscience of Perception, Attention, and Memory,” marks the first temporary exhibition at the newly reopened Yale Peabody Museum. The museum closely partnered with the Yale Wu Tsai Institute, an interdisciplinary research endeavor that connects neuroscience and data science to accelerate breakthroughs in understanding cognition.

“At the Peabody Museum, we know a lot about dinosaurs. We don’t know much about neuroscience,” David Skelly, director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History, told the News. “We are bringing scientists into this realm for the public to see. We are representing the world of neuroscience with this exhibition.” 

This exhibit is the first curation by Yale neuroscience and cell biology professor Daniel Colón-Ramos.

The exhibition hosts several interactive features from rotating photos, to transcribing scientific images, to writing down one’s first memory of life on a board to share. As Colón-Ramos described, these optical illusions may be commonly placed in a children’s museum but this exhibit explains the neuroscience behind these visuals.

“We want to have something for everyone who visits, from little kids to adults. We do that with an experience of visuals,” Colón-Ramos said.

Entering the exhibit, visitors are greeted with the inaugural showings of the drawings of the founding fathers of neuroscience, Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal, through an international collaboration from museums in Italy and Spain. This beginning section of the exhibition is titled “Catching the Butterflies of the Soul,” referencing Cajal in his quest to study the human cerebral cortex.

Proceeding into the main wing of the exhibit, visitors are followed by the gaze of a mask of Albert Einstein when entering the “Perception” section. Visitors then have the chance to glean at optical illusions and decipher their interpretations of the world. 

“Really what your brain is doing is making its best guess on what reality is, with the information it has,” reflected Colón-Ramos reflecting on the illusions. 

Proceeding deeper, deceptions await in the “Attention” section with short featurettes starring the magician Mark Mitton and the Invisible Gorilla. Then, the “Memory” section allows visitors to reflect on their first memories and understand how they form new ones. There are also several explorations on neurological disorders such as dementia explored in the artistry of William Utermohlen. 

Finally, the exhibit concludes with the Artificial Intelligence Section, showcasing its inspiration from the human brain and its uncanny resemblance. Due to the recent advancements of artificial intelligence in the last six months, Colón-Ramos indicated the interactive components of this section are currently in the process of being changed to meet present day advancements. 

Visitors will be surprised to see Handsome Dan II, Yale’s mascot from 1933 to 1937, sharing a glass case with a shark and a snake. 

Mariana Di Giacomo, the museum’s natural history conservator, described the recent acquisition of the famous mascot. The handler of the current Handsome Dan XIX called the Peabody museum after a social media reveal of the Peabody Museum’s acquisition of Handsome Dan I, and Handsome Dan II was in a Yale visitor center. The handler asked if the museum wanted him. 

They accepted.  

“He had a whole patch on his face that was missing. It’s funny he is displayed in a neuroscience exhibit because the part I patched is not hair. It’s actually paint. But you can’t tell. Taxidermy is all about making things out of other things to trick your eye,” said Di Giacomo.

The exhibition opens to the public on Dec. 7, 2024.