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Listen to (what’s likely) Frida Kahlo’s voice
The iconic 20th-century artist might not sound how you'd expect.
- Experts at the National Sound Library of Mexico may have discovered the first known voice recording of Frida Kahlo.
- The tape was found in the archives of a late radio personality.
- With her unforgettably surreal (and often painful) self-portraits, Kahlo challenged 20th-century notions of sexuality, class, and gender.
The National Sound Library of Mexico has discovered what could be the first known voice recording of the iconic artist Frida Kahlo.
"Frida's voice has always been a great enigma, a never-ending search," Pável Granados, director of the sound library, said at a press conference.
The recording was found in the archives of late radio personality Alvaro "The Bachelor" Galvez y Fuentes. On it, a female voice reads from Kahlo's essay "Portrait of Diego" for a radio program about Mexican artist Diego Rivera, Kahlo's husband.
"He is a gigantic, immense child, with a friendly face and a sad gaze," the voice says. "His high, dark, extremely intelligent and big eyes rarely hold still. They almost come out of their sockets because of their swollen and protuberant eyelids — like a toad's. They allow his gaze to take in a much wider visual field, as if they were built especially for a painter of large spaces and crowds."
The speaker is thought to be Kahlo because she's introduced as the female painter "who no longer exists." (Kahlo died in 1954 at age 47.) Researchers are analyzing the tape to confirm it's Kahlo, and they plan to search the archives in hopes of finding other potential recordings of the artist, whose voice was once described as "melodious and warm" by Gisèle Freund, a French photographer and friend of Kahlo.
"Melodious and warm" — or however you'd describe the voice in the recording — seems at odds with Kahlo's painting style, which is often described as brooding and painful.
#Entérate ¿Has imaginado cómo pudo haber sido la voz de #FridaKahlo? La @Fonoteca y @cultura_mx presentaron l… https://t.co/8ql3fxMWMt— Fonoteca Nacional (@Fonoteca Nacional)1560376551.0
"I was expecting something slow and pained, dark and moody," Waldemar Januszczak, a British art critic, told The New York Times. "Instead, she's as chirpy as a schoolgirl reading her mum a poem. . . Where did all the angst go? So much younger and happier than anyone would have thought."
"Girl with Death Mask" [Niña con máscara de calavera] by Frida Kahlo
Kahlo is still celebrated today because her work viscerally challenged 20th-century conventions of gender, class, and sexuality. As Mexico's Culture Minister Alejandra Frausto said, she remains "one of the most iconic cultural personalities there is."
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A recent study on monkeys found that stimulating a certain part of the forebrain wakes monkeys from anesthesia.
- Scientists electrically stimulated the brains of macaque monkeys in an effort to determine which areas are responsible for driving consciousness.
- The monkeys were anesthetized, and the goal was to see whether activating certain parts of the brain would wake up the animals.
- The forebrain's central lateral thalamus seems to be one of the "minimum mechanisms" necessary for consciousness.
Pixabay<p>When the team electrically stimulated a part of the brain called the central lateral thalamus, located in the forebrain, the monkeys woke up: they opened their eyes, blinked, reached out, made facial expressions and showed altered vital signs. </p><p>"We found that when we stimulated this tiny little brain area, we could wake the animals up and reinstate all the neural activity that you'd normally see in the cortex during wakefulness," Saalmann told Cell Press. "They acted just as they would if they were awake. When we switched off the stimulation, the animals went straight back to being unconscious."</p><p>This area of the brain may function as an "engine for consciousness," Redinbaugh told Inverse. Although past studies have shown that electrical stimulation can arouse the brains of humans and animals, the new findings are unique because they reveal which specific neural interactions appear to be minimally necessary for consciousness.</p><p>"Science doesn't often leave opportunity for exhilaration, but that's what that moment was like for those of us who were in the room," Redinbaugh told <a href="https://www.inverse.com/science/first-squid-mri-study-brain-complexity-similar-dogs" target="_blank"><em>Inverse</em></a><em>.</em></p>
Future applications<p>The team said the findings could have many applications down the road, but more research is needed.</p><p>"The overriding motivation of this research is to help people with disorders of consciousness to live better lives," Redinbaugh told Cell Press. "We have to start by understanding the minimum mechanism that is necessary or sufficient for consciousness, so that the correct part of the brain can be targeted clinically."</p><p>"It's possible we may be able to use these kinds of deep-brain stimulating electrodes to bring people out of comas. Our findings may also be useful for developing new ways to monitor patients under clinical anesthesia, to make sure they are safely unconscious."</p>
The coronavirus pandemic has brought out the perception of selfishness among many.
- Selfish behavior has been analyzed by philosophers and psychologists for centuries.
- New research shows people may be wired for altruistic behavior and get more benefits from it.
- Crisis times tend to increase self-centered acts.
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