imag(in)ing

It's a precious thing my brain.
It's easy to get all paradoxy looking at it wondering what folds are responsible for thinking this thought... this one right now. Is it a really honest self portrait or merely providing a gossamer-light smokescreen?
After all, with the birth of new imaging technologies like MRI in the 70s and 80s an image of the brain has become iconic like images did of the earth from space in 1969 'cept I wonder if we get more of a warm fuzzy glow from the earth imaged?
There isn't the same emotional resonance seeing, literally, what makes us tick. You could say an image of us collectively in our living environment (the little blue marble) is greater than a single aspect of one individual.
Ultimately what do you get from an image showing what's making us tick?
With the flick book i wanted to try and bring some 19th century 'end of the pier' technology to a late 20th century technology (that uses magnets! an almost elemental/timeless technology).

Do you get more from an orchestrated grimace/cheesy grin?
A portrait subject chooses to present a front to the viewer. 'This is who I am' not just when the camera clicks but for all time. the subject is SO not about artifice!

So many other smart things seem to be going on in the human body that our brains almost pale into insignificance.

An e-coli infection that keeps coming back as persistent UTIs apparently hides under a biofilm a creation of its own making of dead and used cells (letting it hide like a limpet stuck to the side of the bladder wall). I believe this is the same thing that Lyme type infections http://www.lymeinfo.net/multiplesclerosis.html do in the vascular system that some folk believe a long term antibiotic approach is useful for tackling. Chlamydiae Pneumoniae is apparently an alternative foreign body lurking under its own invisibility cloak explored further here http://www.davidwheldon.co.uk/ms-treatment.html The counter argument to the Lyme theory is http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/ms-and-lyme-disease/ I think it's worth keeping in mind other's ways of thinking. Conspiracy and counter conspiracy abound when there are so many people tired of playing their roles in medical Cleudo at the same time as there being so many unknowns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluedo

all this talk of alien invaders settling down into our bodies pretty comfortably and efficiently (which both harm and help us) can cause us to question who 'we' are. http://www.ted.com/talks/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate.html

Another desperate grasping at straw: I'm looking into getting my fatty acid profile tested. Our brains are 60% fat after all. Patricia M Kane phd has done lots of research on the role a faulty lipid metabolism plays in neurodegenerative disease amongst a host of other disorders. http://www.healthy.co.nz/news/550-discover-the-benefits-of-essential-fatty-acids.html it's a long almost inscrutably technical assessment of her work but the final four paragraphs make for heartening reading. I'll be posting the progress of the exercise