Art has been around since the time of the caveman and arguably since the dawn of humans consciousness began. What makes art so spectacular is the creativity humans are capable of and the ability for humans to understand art. Both of these feats can take place no where else but within the brain. The brains role in art is a recent interest not only to the neuroscience community, but to all lovers of art whether an artist creating or a philosopher striving to understand beauty. Bruce L. Miller, M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco recently gave a talk at Loyola University Chicago about his findings of renewed creativity in some of his patients with degenerative brain diseases. Within his presentation he not only marveled about the remarkable art skills some of his patients exhibited, but Dr. Miller also speculated on the origins of art with in the brain. Besides Dr. Millers fascination with the connections of brain and creativity, CNN new recently published an article giving an overview neuroscience findings in relation to the human brain and art. Since art has been rooted in human culture for centuries it is easy to study the progress art has made and how art reflects innate features of the human mind and its creative faculties.
Dr. Miller's research with patients who have primary progressive aphasia, PPA, which is a degenerative disease that affects the language networks in the brain, showed structural changes with in the brain particularly an increase in grey matter in the right posterior neo-cortical areas of the brain. The posterior neo-cortical is not a dominating part of the brain, but when lesions take place in more dominating areas of the brain such as left temporal regions, as they do in PPA, the plasticity of the brain allows for structural and functional changes. Dr. Miller draws a connection to some of his PPA patients and their increased creativity due to the fact that the less dominant parts throughout their lives have suddenly gained dominance because of their brain disease and with this new structural and functional change comes an increased visual creativity. Though not all PPA patients are drawn to the arts, this visual creativity in patients help those who are loosing and have lost words express the world around them - possibly eluding to the pureness expressed through creating and expressing through art.
Within the article "What the brain draws from: Art and Neuroscience," one important theme is about visual circuity in the brain and how it perceives art. Scientists have studied how human visual neurons perceive lines and colors; it is fascinating how something drawn within two dimensions can reflect something in the three dimensional world and the brain can distinguish with ease. What is even more amazing is the brains ability to take in simple representations of the external world from art and know fully what it portrays. The perceptions art creates is not just as straightforward as lines and colors shaping a representation of the world, but abstract art is striking in that it triggers our emotional responses. When looking at faces within art the aymgdala responds - even this ":)" signals a face in the brain, and the amygdala also responds to the emotions a work of art tries to portray, even in a lifeless painting the brain tries to illuminate it. Art doesn't have to be an accurate portrayal of the external - it actually more or less plays tricks on the neural networks and visual sensitivities to achieve the goals of art.
Dr. Miller's talk showed his interest in trying to understand where within the brain art comes from; he ended by drawing conclusions that art uses both brain hemispheres maybe even some sort of double consciousness. Art, though its creative powers may appear once the brain becomes ill within patients, uses all part of the brain to create and enjoy. The study of art and neuroscience as stated by both Dr. Miller and the article see art as a new way to study the brain. Dr. Miller uses art to find new sights into the degenerative processes in his patients and in PPA patients to help see associations the left hemisphere might have in art. The article talks about the emergence of a possible new branch of neuroscience called neuroesthetics which would focus on the neural networks involved in the appreciation of beauty and art; this field though does draw criticism since this new branch has nor produced new insights.
The future of studying art in neuroscience looks bright since human nature ceases to lack in its affinity for the arts and is continuously breaking the grounds of creativity. Art has much to teach about the brain since it is so tightly incorporated into both hemispheres and there are many medias of art to study. Art is a trait that is uniquely human and the study of art will help neuroscience to even further understand what makes the human mind distinctively human and maybe even lead to further under standing of human consciousness.
Sources:
Landau, Elizabeth. "What the Brain Draws From: Art and Neuroscience." CNN. Cable News Network, 15 Sept. 2012. Web. 12 Dec. 2012. <http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/15/health/art-brain-mind/index.html>.
Seeley, William W., Brandy R. Matthews, Richard K. Crawford, Maria L. Gorno-Tempini, Dean Forti, Ian R. Mackenzie, and Bruce L. Miller. "Unraveling Bolero: Progressive Aphasia, Transmodal Creativity and the Right Posterior Neocortex." Brain 131 (2008): 39-49. Print.
No comments:
Post a Comment