Untitled (November 9, 2013 9:49AM) (detail), by Richard Misrach, 2013. Archival pigment print, 60 x 80 inches. © Richard Misrach, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles.

States of Mind

Volume XI, Number 1 | winter 2018

Miscellany

In 2016, after saxophonist Dan Fabbio was diagnosed with a brain tumor, neuroscientists in Rochester, New York, used functional MRI scans to create a brain map indicating areas crucial for music processing. Fabbio was awake during the surgery and, once the tumor was removed, played a Korean folk song to ensure his skill on saxophone remained; the song’s short notes allowed him to take shallow breaths so his brain would not protrude from his opened skull.

Brain, n. An apparatus with which we think that we think.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906