Photo Blog Forty: New Year’s Light

Illuminated ‘neurons and synapses’

What’s happening in our brain circuits? Pops of light and sparks, as dendrites conduct electrical signals to other neurons, sending information to your limbs to carry out a motion, or to your higher-order brain regions of consciousness to support thought. (I don’t know actually about the pops of light and sparks, but the rest is true!) I took this photo at a shutter speed of 2 seconds, an aperture of 6.3, and an ISO of 100.

Before working on this blog prompt, I didn’t know how to take long-exposure photos, but I fell in love with the beautiful effects we can create through applying it to light. This image, a zoomed-in view of a foil Christmas tree with small LED lights embedded at points in its branches, reminded me of our neural anatomy and the processes of how our physical biology influences our higher-order functions like remembering, planning ahead, communicating, and reasoning.