Potential clinical insights generated through the process of interdisciplinary science/art collaboration

The filmmaker’s trained intuition in ‘reading’ gesture on the one hand and the highly technical nature of the filmmaking process on the other allows for productive interdisciplinary science/art exchange in exploring neurological and psychopathological conditions. As an illustration, processes and observations of a cinema/neuroscience collaboration in the production of a short fiction film featuring a protagonist with visual agnosia will be presented. It will be suggested that challenges and conflicting approaches employed by the different disciplines in the interdisciplinary collaborative investigation are beneficial to both the neuroscience and the filmmaking process. Parallels will be drawn between the cinema/neuroscience collaboration on visual agnosia and the intentions of the current symposium’s interdisciplinary work. This will be discussed in relation to the depiction and interpretation of ‘the subjective’. A questioning of an individual’s subjective perception underpins both the experience of hallucinations and the neurological condition visual agnosia. The potential for clinical insights will be considered in the light of the particular nature of the medium of film and its preoccupation with the subjective experience in relation to aspects of psychosis.

This paper was presented to the 17th European Congress of Psychiatry, Lisbon 2009.

The 17th European Congress of Psychiatry was organised in Lisbon, Portugal, from 24 to 28 January 2009 under the presidency of Professor Hans-Jürgen Möller. This multidisciplinary congress focused on “New Diagnostic Approaches in Psychiatry: Relevance for Research and Practice in Europe”.

Science trained (chemistry, zoology) Sal Anderson worked as an arachnologist at the Natural History in Paris, in the Microbiology Department at Cape Town University and in scientific publishing before studying writing and directing at the UK's National Film and Television School. Sal has made award-winning short films in France and the UK. Recent projects include Wellcome Trust Arts Award film/neuroscience collaborations investigating the representation in film or neurological and psychiatric conditions.

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