My Wee Brain Sampler

While doing research for my illustrated book on navigating the medical system, I came across an intriguing article about a phenomenon referred to as "expert blindness." This essentially mean that a strong, narrow focus can cause an expert to miss information that is might be highly visible and pertinent because it is outside of the search field. This problem was demonstrated in an experiment with radiologists who were given an x-ray to review. The x-ray included a small but clearly visible gorilla. A stunning 80% of them missed the gorilla! The reason given for this is that the specialists were instructed to look for a specific finding and tried so hard that they did not see something obvious.

I thought that this would make for a great illustration to add to my book. The illustration is a pencil drawing derived from an MRI of a human brain. The entire picture is redesigned to look like an early American embroidery sampler. Hence the title: My Wee Brain Sampler. The interior of the brain houses butterflies and the exterior features decorative designs that include two seahorses. The seahorses refer to an anatomical part of the brain called the hippocampus, so named for the Greek word for seahorses.

The elaborate composition would not be complete without my signature border design. In this case I used back to back images of dendrites arranged in a decorative pattern.