THE ART OF THE BRAIN

What do painters and neuroscientists have in common? As the painters and artists among us know, both painters and neuroscientists have a strong interest in uncovering the laws by which the brain paints a picture of reality. Though painters’ techniques clearly differ from the scientific method, by understanding and playing with neurologic and perceptual rules, painters have intuitively revealed secrets of the visual brain.

Engaging in art can allow you to gain insights into how visual perception arises. Leonardo da Vinci is one prime example of a painter and scientist who studied gradual changes in light to understand the visual perception of form and depth. In fact, Helmholtz emphasised during his lecture in 1871 how artists should be viewed as investigators who through numerous observations and experiments create work that due to its vividness and accuracy manifests a series of pertinent facts that physiologists cannot ignore. According to Harvard psychologist Patrick Cavanagh, artists are indeed neuroscientists in that they understand how the visual brain uses a basic approach to see the world, which can be reflected onto the canvas in ways that are invisible to the viewer.

These observations can strike a chord with us when we believe painting is essentially seeing, mentally and physically playing with colours, contours and contrasts. When you stand in front of one of the many Stillleben in the Borghese Gallery in Rome, the artist in you will mentally decompose the painting and recreate it to meaningfully understand the painter’s use of perspective, colours and light.

It is clear that art is a truly unique way of viewing the world that is distinct from the scientific method. By understanding how art engages us at different levels such as emotion, cognition and intellect, any information revealed can help us, when integrated with the scientific perspective, to create a better understanding of reality. Thus, by training your eye to dissect reality via engaging in art, the creative process will give you insights into the construction of visual perception. To help you pick up your painting brush to get you started on your first artwork, you can have a look at various close-ups depicting different structures of the nervous system to inspire you to focus your eye on the true beauty of the brain!

Thus, while the relationship between neuroscience and art can be studied by how art is perceived by the brain, i.e. how we hear sounds, view colours and feel rhythm, it is equally useful to consider the brain through the lens of art. By studying the brain during the execution of art, art will present itself as a reflection of the inner neural scenery of one’s subjective experience. This branch of the interdisciplinary field termed as neuroaesthetics by Semir Zeki, is known as John Onians’ idea of ‘Neuroarthistory’. It can be studied to better understand artistic aspects such as style, and more complex questions such as what the origin of art is. By observing and appreciating your consciousness first-hand while engaging in artistic activities, you can experience how your nervous system is giving rise to art.

While we are at the topic of art and the brain, is it true that music can help us improve our thought processes? While previous research has debunked the myth of the ‘Mozart effect’, which first came to the surface in a Nature report in 1993 that claimed listening to Mozart for 10 minutes enhanced participants’ performance on spatial tasks, recent evidence suggests there is an effect of music training on IQ development in developing brains. According to a study at the Northwestern University in Chicago, learning to play music helps children toward the development of a neurophysiological distinction between certain sounds, which can help them with their literacy. Active engagement and participation in creating music, specifically, predicted neural processing strength after music lessons. Moreover, when coupled with consistency in attending music training, active class participation was revealed to lead to enhanced effects on speech processing and reading scores.

As an adult, could you still expect to see any benefits if you take up an instrument late in life? Luckily, the answer is yes! A study at the University of South Florida that looked into the impact of piano training on adults aged between 60-85 demonstrated how after 6 months of piano training recipients of lessons improved in verbal fluency, planning, memory and pace at which information is processed in contrast to non-recipients of piano lessons.

No matter if you never played an instrument or have not played music in decades, it is undeniable that the power of music impacts on more than our cognitive and emotional development. As the Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran said ‘Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife’.

Moreover, creating art provides ample mental health benefits such as relieving stress, as well as symptoms of depression and anxiety. It can serve as a vehicle for alleviating the burden of chronic disease. Engagement with art can also stimulate creative thinking, and increase brain connectivity and plasticity. Apart from painting and music, other ways to engage with art include movement-based creative expression, and expressive writing. Writing poetry, specifically, encourages emotional and intellectual growth as it involves the symbolic representation of experience through language. Engaging in writing poetry therefore lets the inner poet in you express how your brain makes you feel.

There are endless creative possibilities to express yourself. Creativity is the language of our soul, and so our creativity isn’t confined to just any one human language. This means you can express yourself creatively in any human language you want. So in a sense poetry is a feeling that you can put in word using multiple colours and flavours. Each colour or flavour is like a different language with its own deep rhythm, rich sound, vivid tone, exotic feel and fine shades of meaning that allow your soul to creatively express itself in a unique way. Reading a poem in English will therefore feel different to reading a poem in Italian, and so it will naturally leave a different sensation or taste on your mind, or feeling on your soul so to speak. On that note, why not have a go at writing your first poem!?