Unequal Scenes, Unequal Brains: A Visual Story of Health Disparity

In this perspective, Atlantic Fellows Joaquín Migeot, Johnny Miller, and Agustín Ibáñez, along with Agustina Legaz, reflect on their collaboration on Unequal Scenes Chile—merging neuroscience and visual storytelling to offer a striking new view of inequality and its impact on brain health.

^{The edge of the expanding city of Santiago is a mix of working class, informality, and wealth—seen here in Padre Hurtado. Taken from Unequal Scenes - Chile}

What if we told you that your brain health—from your first breath to your final years—could be shaped not by genetics or luck, but by something as simple as your postal code? In Latin America—a region defined by vibrant diversity and deep inequality—this isn’t a hypothesis. It’s our reality.

To expose this reality, we need new ways of seeing. That’s where Unequal Scenes comes in. Captured in Chile for the first time, Johnny Miller’s aerial photography project marks a powerful convergence of art and brain health, revealing the hidden spatial truths of inequality.

Though often praised for its economic growth, Chile remains one of Latin America’s most unequal societies—a legacy of the dictatorship era “eradication” policies that displaced thousands to Santiago’s outskirts. Today, wealth is concentrated in the eastern highland communes, while chronic vulnerability persists in the city’s southern and northwestern zones, a divide reflected starkly during the COVID-19 pandemic, revealing how structural and health inequalities are closely intertwined.

Merging Neuroscience and Visual Storytelling

In collaboration with the Latin American Brain Health Institute, we have shown that inequality impacts dementia in multiple dimensions: not just by how many years of education someone receives and how much money they have, but also by the quality of that education and the uneven access to social goods where someone lives. The social and environmental conditions we experience over a lifetime—also known as exposomes— get built into our biology, shaping how our brains develop, how resilient our thinking becomes, and how we age.

In February, Santiago hosted an AAIC Neuroscience Next hub, highlighting diverse topics—including how inequality damages the brain. Here Agustina and Joaquín presented research on how inequality becomes biologically embedded, while Johnny shared his Unequal Scenes project, an aerial documentation of inequality around the world. United by a desire to expose inequality al desnudo—its raw, unfiltered reality—we created a strategy to align our research in a new iteration of Unequal Scenes, this time in Chile—merging neuroscience with visual storytelling to provide a striking new view of inequality.

Visualizing Inequality: The Geography of Brain Health Risk

^{Cerro San Cristobal separates poorer neighborhoods like this one from the wealthy parts of downtown Santiago. Unequal Scenes - Chile}

^{Most of Santiago's informal areas are quickly being formalized by the government. Every single one we found had new apartment blocks being built nearby, including this one in Cerrillos, probably the largest in the city. Unequal Scenes - Chile}

^{Partitioned neighborhoods in the wealthy Peñalolén area. Unequal Scenes - Chile}

^{Houses are squeezed into the limited space available on the side of a highway in Maipú. Unequal Scenes - Chile}

These images do more than document inequality—they force us to see it. They strip away the comforting abstraction of statistics and confront us with inequality's physical, tangible consequences. Through the lens of a drone, what was once hidden in plain sight becomes undeniable: the spatial grammar of injustice, the architecture of exclusion, the everyday environments that either nourish or erode our well-being. In a city like Santiago, where inequality has become so normalized it can vanish into the background, upheld by the myth that success is solely a matter of effort, these photos force us to see again. They stir discomfort, awareness, and hopefully action.

From Exposure to Biology: How Inequality Becomes Risk

In Chile, social conditions strongly shape dementia risk. These factors explain 62% of dementia cases—nearly 20% higher than the global estimate—meaning most cases could be prevented by addressing risk factors like hypertension, physical inactivity, obesity, depression, and social isolation. These aren’t just lifestyle choices; they reflect deeper inequalities in education, healthcare access, nutrition, and community engagement.

To confront dementia in Latin America and particularly in Chile, we must look beyond behavior change and dismantle the social structures that make healthy choices inaccessible. Solutions should begin in communities, not clinics. The first step in creating these solutions lies in visualizing the problem, and that’s why the aerial images of Unequal Scenes matter to brain health. They render visible what science and policy often obscures—how inequality sculpts risk, resilience, and, ultimately, the health of our brains.

More Information

Johnny, an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity, recently visited GBHI at Trinity, connecting with Atlantic Fellows for Equity in Brain Health as part of ongoing efforts to build transdisciplinary bridges across the Atlantic Fellows community. His visit also served as an early pilot of a creative residency initiative currently being explored by GBHI at Trinity.

visit the Unequal Scenes website.