In this together: New home for neuroscience at USC is as much a visual triumph as an embodiment of the belief that neuroscience and the humanities belong together

November 1, 2012 — The newest building at USC is organized like a brain, with spaces for both rational inquiry and appreciation of the beautiful. It’s a fitting home for a research center that merges the latest advances in neuroscience with ancient questions of what it means to be human: What drives us to create? How do we seek meaning? Where do feelings come from?

Opening Nov. 6 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and performances, the USC Brain and Creativity Institute building is located in the Dornsife Neuroscience Pavilion, which also houses the Dornsife Neuroimaging Center. The building makes the case that artists and theorists and scientists need one another, to tackle the biggest questions of human existence. We are in this together — and now physically under one roof.

“Poets and novelists have been after these same questions in all of the time we have been on earth,” says neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, director of the USC Brain and Creativity Institute. “As scientists, we’re trying to understand the same deep issues.”

The lead gift for the building came from Dana and David Dornsife. As the architect-of-record, the LA-based Perkins+Will carved the USC Brain and Creativity Institute out of space between existing structures. The design of the institute reflects the context of the university while creating a dynamic new research environment that advances teaching and discovery.

The 20,000 sq.-ft building features science labs and performance space side-by-side, anchored by advanced neuroimaging machines and a world-class concert hall.

On the left side as you enter is the dramatic Joyce J. Cammilleri Hall designed by Yasuhisa Toyota, the acoustician also responsible for the concert hall at Walt Disney Concert Hall and the New World Symphony, among other top performance spaces worldwide. Each plank of the hollow stage floor was hand-selected by Toyota, to create the perfect swell of sound.

On the right is a different sort of hum: of laboratories, EEG and MRI machines, of high-resolution, real-time brain scans.

Like any brain, the conduits in the building are the most critical. Laboratories and practice spaces are connected by spaces for gathering and solitary contemplation, and by a central glass-enclosed courtyard that spans all three levels. Throughout the building, even in the small hallway behind a stairwell in the basement, are thoughtful selections of modern art.

“We wanted to persuade people go back and forth across these worlds, and to help them see how these worlds interconnect,” says Damasio, USC University Professor and professor of neuroscience and psychology in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “It’s important for science and the humanities to work together, and to do so manifestly.”

The small details and larger organization of the building have been a passion project for the last three years for Antonio Damasio, one of the world’s leading practitioners of joining the scientific enterprise with humanistic pursuit, and for Hanna Damasio, another renowned neuroscientist who co-directs the USC Brain and Creativity Institute and directs the Dornsife Neuroimaging Center.

Among the USC Brain and Creativity Institute’s current research projects is a major collaboration with the LA Philharmonic. For five years, USC neuroscientists and music educators with the USC Thornton School of Music will track students in the LAPhil’s acclaimed youth orchestra, led by Gustavo Dudamel. The project, which began this fall, starts with students who are about 6 years old and encountering musical training for the first time, and will provide critical data on how intense music training affects brain development in children, as it actually happens.

“We should not be studying music without musicians. By the way, explaining why people cry at the opera will not stop them from being moved by the music,” says Antonio Damasio.

Other projects from the USC Brain and Creativity Institute include research on how the brain processes emotions, such as compassion and gratitude, and how the brain generates feelings of pain, sadness and joy, a project relevant to the understanding of depression and drug addictions, two of the major afflictions of humanity.

“By understanding how the brain generates these feelings at the deepest level, we can find medical solutions for the problems they pose,” Damasio says. “That’s the underying beauty of having side-by-side the classic ways of dealing with suffering, as in music or poetry, and the scientific ways of exploring the problem.”

At the same time, researchers with the Dornsife Neuroimaging Center are looking at new modes of imaging the brain and new techniques to study the structures of our brain and thoughts, including a project in collaboration with the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

In recent years, these advances in technology have moved neuroscience beyond mapping or understanding “brain tubing.” Still, Damasio cautions, scientists should be wary of thinking that all mysteries are explainable: “Ever since the dawn of humanity, we have reflected on our role in the world and our destiny, and what it means to be human. We’re joining this traditional strand of inquiry with the world of neuroscience, and we are nowhere near the end of the road.”

FOR MEDIA: The USC Brain and Creativity Institute in the Dornsife Neuroimaging Pavilion opens Nov. 6, with a ribbon-cutting at 1:30 p.m. and a performance in the new Cammilleri Hall by acclaimed cellist Ralph Kirshbaum, Gregor Piatigorsky Chair in Violoncello at the USC Thornton School of Music. Kirshbaum will perform Sarabande from Bach Suite 3 in C for Cello. USC Thornton School of Music student Martin Leung will also perform, playing Tarantelle by Liszt for Piano.

To RSVP or for media parking, or to request an interview, contact Suzanne Wu at suzanne.wu@usc.edu. Press images are available upon request.

About the USC Brain and Creativity Institute

The USC Brain and Creativity Institute was founded by Antonio Damasio and Hanna Damasio in 2006. Since ancient times, thinkers and scientists have sought to explain how we perceive, interpret, and shape our existence. However, until very recently, researchers interested in these questions have had to rely entirely on conjecture or indirect evidence. Recent advances in brain imaging and fresh insights into the functioning of the human brain at the level of systems, cells and molecules, now provide opportunities for uncovering the neurological basis for a large array of mental functions — from emotion and decision-making to the creativity expressed in the arts, sciences and technology.

Drawing on partners from the social sciences, the humanities, and several professional disciplines, the USC Brain and Creativity Institute provides a framework for tackling issues ranging from the personal (such as individual health problems), to the societal and global (such as education and political conflict). The Institute is a groundbreaking effort to make use of important new discoveries from the mind and brain sciences and confront pressing issues of our time.

As of 2012, the USC Brain and Creativity Institute will be housed in a new building. The design illustrates its mission. Side by side with laboratories dedicated to scientific methods of investigating mind and brain, such as magnetic resonance scanning (MR) and electroencephalography (EEG), sits one of the oldest instruments for understanding of the human mind: a classical auditorium, with state-of-the-art acoustics, devoted to music and theater performances, literary readings, and scientific presentations. For more information, visit https://www.usc.edu/schools/college/bci/.

Contact: Suzanne Wu at (213) 740-0252 or suzanne.wu@usc.edu