This is the first of a trio of cartoons that were inspired by a trip to Philadelphia. I drew them before I went and combined them into an animated montage in the style of film credits for a talk I was giving. I did of course climb these same steps to visit the fantastic art gallery there. I was on my own so did more of a self-conscious jog while humming the tune in my head.
I’d been thinking about doing a cartoon of the idea of brain training for a while and this just felt right. I’m still not sure if I’m depressed or impressed by the amount of money people make from such a (and I’m being charitable here) woolly concept. After my talk I had lunch with the grad students: it’s common for the invited speaker to dispense their scientific wisdom to these fertile young minds over a slice of pizza. Except none of them were really that interested in my data, they’d turned up ‘to talk about the pictures’. At least they were honest and I took it as a compliment although I don’t think the funders envisaged flying me 3,000 miles to talk about cartoon neurons!