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SfN Showing of My Love Affair with the Brain: The Life and Science of Dr. Marian Diamond

By September 28, 2017No Comments

My Love Affair with the Brain

A Film Documentary of the Life and Science of Dr. Marian Diamond
SfN Showing Monday, November 13th, 6:30-8 pm
Marriott Marquis Washington, DC: Salon 5

 

How can you not fall in love with a woman who carries around a human brain inside a floral-decorated hatbox? Meet Dr. Marian Diamond … and prepare to be smitten. Follow the career of this remarkable woman and get introduced to her many scientific accomplishments as well as the warm, funny, and thoroughly charming woman herself. Experience for yourself why she describes her 60-year career at UC Berkeley researching the human brain as “pure joy”.

It is no exaggeration to say that Dr. Diamond changed science and society in dramatic ways over the course of her career. Her groundbreaking work is all the more remarkable as it began when so few women entered science at all. Shouted at from the back of the conference hall by noteworthy male academics as she presented her research, and disparaged in the scientific journals of a more conservative era, Dr. Diamond simply did the work and followed where her curiosity led her, bringing about a paradigm shift (or two) in the process. As she points out, in order to get to the answers that matter, you have to start by asking the right questions.

SCIENTIFIC HIGHLIGHTS of MARIAN DIAMOND’s CAREER

  • One of the founders of modern neuroscience.  Her pioneering research preceded the very term “neuroscience.”
  • Enrichment and brain plasticity (how the brain changes due to experience and environment) are concepts we now take for granted, but they were a scientific battleground where Dr. Diamond decisively challenged the old view of the brain as fixed and unchangeable.  She was the first to find actual evidence of plasticity in a brain, forever changing our understanding of the brain and ourselves.
  • First to publish a study of Albert Einstein’s brain – fueling yet another paradigm change, a renewed appreciation of glial cells, the 80% of the brain that, previously, was said ‘to do nothing.’
  • 4.6 million views of her YouTube Anatomy lectures, making it the 2nd most popular college course in the world, and inspiring the NY Times to call her “one of the tweedy celebrities of cyberspace.”

Part biography, part scientific adventure story, part inspirational tale; this is a story of a worthy role model – a woman who has joyously lived at the forefront of scientific exploration and education, finding and sharing fact-based good news about the brain.

FILM FESTIVAL AWARDS

  • Best in Festival, Audience Award, RiverRun International Film Festival
  • Best Film, American Psychological Association Film Festival
  • Best Documentary, Audience Award, Durango Film Festival
  • Best Documentary, Indigo Moon Film Festival
  • Audience Favorite Award, Mill Valley Film Festival
  • Best Documentary, Audience Choice, High Falls Film Fest, NY
  • World Premiere, AAAS Annual Meeting, Closing Night Prestige Event

 

NARRATED BY TV-star Dr. MAYIM BIALIK

Amy on Big Bang Theory, Blossom on Blossom
An actress who not only plays a neuroscientist on TV, but is one in real life, with a PhD in Neuroscience from UCLA.

LUNA PRODUCTIONS and the FILM MAKERS

Directors Catherine Ryan and Gary Weimberg are five-time Emmy Award nominees, 2-time Emmy Award winners, and were short-listed for an Academy Award nomination. As independent documentary producers at Luna Productions, they have had 8 primetime documentaries broadcast on PBS, ABC, WB, Fox, and others worldwide. Luna Productions, info@lunaproductions.com

Short trailer & info: http://lunaproductions.com/brain/