This image could in turn point the way to identifying other contributing factors to consciousness that would also need counterparts in the functioning nervous system. I myself have opted for a dimmer switch to give the idea of consciousness being graded not only within the animal kingdom, but even from one waking moment to the next.Once a metaphor has been found, its value could be not only to give a vivid description, but actually to bootstrap further ideas. If we had a metaphor in the form of a visual image, then that would provide a framework for contemplating the problem. Francis Crick once suggested that consciousness was like a “searchlight”. Obvious perhaps for those who point to the heart as a pump or the lungs as bellows – but what about the brain? Its structure gives no clues as to how, for example, it might be responsible for consciousness Enter the artist.

One under-explored but exciting issue is whether visual images could actually inspire new turns in science. For example, the interpretation of patients’ artwork might provide insights into minds disrupted by schizophrenia; or the analysis of an individual’s visual imagery might throw light on processes for memory. But could art be more central still in aiding science? After all, design can certainly inspire technology: in designer Nick Butler’s devices form and function are inseparable – be they scissors that pull apart to function as knives, or complex machines where closing a lid will automatically entail a requisite cleaning.Even when Nature has done the construction and design work, the scientist might still use the anatomical structure to extrapolate function. There has been an awesome minority of all-rounders such as Descartes and da Vinci, who have eloquently expressed scientific theories with aesthetic images, and the idea that science might present a new angle to artists is neither surprising nor particularly controversial.

High-tech images of the brain, or high magnification of body parts can indeed be aesthetic. Abstracted scientific images have now proved arresting too – Mandelbrot set, for example, where lop-sided spheres laced with little protuberances offer infinite possibilities of magnification as each protuberance is itself revealed to be a lop-sided sphere covered with protuberances, and so on.
But that is still not the point. Such was the success of these and related shows that Laurence Smaje, Ken Arnold and others at the Wellcome Trust went further and developed the Sci-Art initiative to bring together scientific and artistic communities. This clear example of science inspiring art led to the Wellcome Trust hosting an exhibition (“Look Hear”) for propounding the idea of mixing the two. From The start I liked the logo: a fistful of blue test-tubes placed like brushes through a red artist’s palette, encapsulating the possible interaction between art and science, “Sci-Art”. Sci-Art is a remarkable scheme initiated recently by the Wellcome Trust. It arose from an unlikely beginning: a physiologist specializing in the inner ear, Dr Matthew Holley, had used highly magnified images of it for decorative enamels.

As Nikki Mathurin says: “People who know me like me for who I am not what I am, they like me for my personality. I think people think of me as a hard worker who does well on my courses, and as a very bouncy person who’s very friendly and easy going to be with.”. Can be extremely distressed by sounds such as washing machines, vacuum cleaners and planes, and by certain individual tones.All development is retarded. Language starts late but advances quickly to the characteristic fluency and adult-like phrasing and excessive chatter.Extremely emotional, swinging from exaggerated displays of fear, excitement, sadness, happiness.Short attention span, highly distractable but also subject to all-engrossing obsessions.Over-friendly and tactile and lacking recognition of social boundaries.For all this catalogue of difficulties, the one word consistently used by family, carers and clinicians to describe Williams syndrome people is “charming”.