Art for Science's Sake

Dr. Miller’s talk on visual creativity and brain disease gave us a very good insight of art’s involvement in medicine and neuroscience, and vice versa. He began his lecture by mentioning the importance of art in human life—from the cave paintings in La Croix to Renaissance paintings to computer graphics designs, art has played a big part in exercising human individuality and creativity, and is undoubtedly one of the greatest conceptions of the human mind. In addition to this, Dr. Miller states that “art is uniquely human,” since there were no evidences of (visual) art production during the Neanderthal and non- human primates era. And like the saying, “art imitates life, while life imitates art” goes, we can find out a lot about an individual through his artworks. And yes, this includes the severity of his neurological disorder.

[image source]

To gain a more in- depth knowledge of how dementia and other neurological disorders affect a person's artistic capabilities, Dr. Miller and his colleagues followed the degeneration of their patients' disease by taking note of the changes in their artworks. In their review, Portraits of Artists, Dr. Miller and his colleague survey the various parts of the brain that are affected by dementia, as well as how these damages could possibly affect the artistic output of individuals. For instance, dorsal stream dysfunction gives patients a hard time in localizing the scene they are about to paint. Their report notes that a patient who suffered from dorsal stream dysfunction made great changes in their artistic work. Before the onset of the disease, the patient created "rich and complex scenes from her memory" (Miller & Hou, 2004). However, her artworks after the stroke consisted of simple creations that were more about the individual components of the whole artwork, thus suggesting the patient's problem in putting down their idealized scene as a whole. Dr. Miller and his colleague also mentioned the effects of frontotemporal dementia in a person's artistic outputs, stating that more realistic or surrealistic creations were produced. This is because some parts of the brain attributed to artistic creativity have been spared, such as the posterior parieotemporal regions.

A similar study published by the British Brain: a Journal of Neurology recently supported Dr. Miller's review that artistic juices could flow more in the face of a neurological disorder such as dementia, as well as other neurological problems including Parkinson's disease, autism, and dementia. This change in artistic style was attributed to the patient's inner feeling of a need to create art, as well as well as changes in the posterior right hemisphere. These conclusions were made after studying the changes in the artwork of the patients as the disease progressed. Even patients who had no previous interest in making art found artistic activities engaging after the onset of the disease (Schott, 2012). Co-morbidity with synaesthesia, a disorder pertaining to "a joining together of sensations that are normally experienced separately" was also noticed upon the onset of the disorder. An example of this would be seeing colors even in plain,black letters, or seeing colors in sounds.

Another similar study by Shimura, et al. reported changes in their patient's artistic style before the manifestation the symptoms of their patient's Parkinson's Disease. The patient, who has been painting since his twenties, usually creates abstract paintings until before the early emergence of the usual symptoms of Parkinson's Disease. The patient reported that his old artistic style was becoming more challenging to create, since "it was difficult for him to deconstruct a realistic image and reconstruct it into an abstract image" (Shimura, Tanaka, Urabe, Tanaka & Hattori, 2012). He also reported that his artistic skills were disintegrating, such that he could only use "half of his imagination." Shimura and his colleagues observed that there was indeed a change in his painting style, with his later works being extremely realistic compared to his earlier works. Biologically, the researchers attributed this to nondopaminergic neurons that were already beginning to become affected by the patient's Parkinson's Disease, which made it harder for him to translate reality into something abstract. The researchers conclude that disturbances in some structures in the brain could already be occurring and could already start to manifest even before the "standard" symptoms begin to appear.



Another study, still connected to art and neurological disorders, looked into the therapeutic effects of art to patients who are suffering from dementia. In a study done by Eekelaar, Camic, & Springham, patients suffering from dementia were brought to art galleries to view portraits, landscapes, and narrative paintings for nineety minutes over the course of three weeks. After viewing artworks and engaging in a facilitated discussion, patients were presented with art and coloring materials and were encouraged to create their own masterpieces. When they were interviewed after the program, the researchers noticed that the patients improved in recalling episodic memories, fluency of speech, and verbalization, as compared to when they were interviewed pre- art gallery program (Eekelaar, Camic & Springham, 2012). Although the researchers clearly state that the art gallery program should not be thought of as the cause for these breakthroughs, they suggested that such programs could probably be be helpful in engaging the minds of people suffering from dementia. They also encouraged a more in-depth study of their results.

Horatius Cocles defending the Bridge by Charles Le Brun (c. 1642–43) is among the paintings shown to the patients. [image source]

Dr. Miller's research, as well as the other studies, opens a new window to our knowledge of dementia and other neurological disorders. Indeed, there seem to be some "gains" for the patient, although of course, we still should not dismiss the greater effect of the disorder. Additionally, how these cognitive and neurological changes are manifested physically in the visual arts is definitely interesting and should be studied more in the coming years. 


Works Cited:

Eekelaar, C., Camic, P. M., & Springham, N. (2012). Art galleries, episodic memory and verbal

fluency in dementia: an exploratory study. Psychology of Aesthetics, creativity, and the

arts, 6(3), 262-272. 

Miller, B., & Hou, C. (2004). Portraits of artists emergence of visual creativity in dementia. Archives 

 of Neurology, 61, 842-844.

Schott, G. (2012). Pictures as a neurological tool: lessons from enhanced and emergent artistry in 

brain disease. Brain : a journal of neurology, 135(6), 1947-1963. Retrieved from

http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/22300875

Shimura, H., Tanaka, R., Urabe, T., Tanaka, S., & Hattori, N. (2012). Art and parkinson’s disease: a 

dramatic change in an artist’s style as an initial symptom. Journal of neurology, 259(5),

879-881. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00415-011-6271-y