Neuroscience
Returning to a fav topic of mine, here is a new research study:
The right hemisphere in esthetic perception
Front Hum Neurosci. 2011;5:109
Bromberger B, Sternschein R, Widick P, Smith W, Chatterjee A
Abstract
Little about the neuropsychology of art perception and evaluation is known. Most neuropsychological approaches to art have focused on art production and have been anecdotal and qualitative. The field is in desperate need of quantitative methods if it is to advance. Here, we combine a quantitative approach to the assessment of art with modern voxel-lesion-symptom-mapping methods to determine brain-behavior relationships in art perception. We hypothesized that perception of different attributes of art are likely to be disrupted by damage to different regions of the brain. Twenty participants with right hemisphere damage were given the Assessment of Art Attributes, which is designed to quantify judgments of descriptive attributes of visual art. Each participant rated 24 paintings on 6 conceptual attributes (depictive accuracy, abstractness, emotion, symbolism, realism, and animacy) and 6 perceptual attributes (depth, color temperature, color saturation, balance, stroke, and simplicity) and their interest in and preference for these paintings. Deviation scores were obtained for each brain-damaged participant for each attribute based on correlations with group average ratings from 30 age-matched healthy participants. Right hemisphere damage affected participants' judgments of abstractness, accuracy, and stroke quality. Damage to areas within different parts of the frontal parietal and lateral temporal cortices produced deviation in judgments in four of six conceptual attributes (abstractness, symbolism, realism, and animacy). Of the formal attributes, only depth was affected by inferior prefrontal damage. No areas of brain damage were associated with deviations in interestingness or preference judgments. The perception of conceptual and formal attributes in artwork may in part dissociate from each other and from evaluative judgments. More generally, this approach demonstrates the feasibility of quantitative approaches to the neuropsychology of art.
PMID: 22016728 [PubMed - in process]
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Neuroscience
Neuropsychology Abstract of the Day: Art and Neuroscience
Returning to a fav topic of mine, here is a new research study:
The right hemisphere in esthetic perception
Front Hum Neurosci. 2011;5:109
Bromberger B, Sternschein R, Widick P, Smith W, Chatterjee A
Abstract
Little about the neuropsychology of art perception and evaluation is known. Most neuropsychological approaches to art have focused on art production and have been anecdotal and qualitative. The field is in desperate need of quantitative methods if it is to advance. Here, we combine a quantitative approach to the assessment of art with modern voxel-lesion-symptom-mapping methods to determine brain-behavior relationships in art perception. We hypothesized that perception of different attributes of art are likely to be disrupted by damage to different regions of the brain. Twenty participants with right hemisphere damage were given the Assessment of Art Attributes, which is designed to quantify judgments of descriptive attributes of visual art. Each participant rated 24 paintings on 6 conceptual attributes (depictive accuracy, abstractness, emotion, symbolism, realism, and animacy) and 6 perceptual attributes (depth, color temperature, color saturation, balance, stroke, and simplicity) and their interest in and preference for these paintings. Deviation scores were obtained for each brain-damaged participant for each attribute based on correlations with group average ratings from 30 age-matched healthy participants. Right hemisphere damage affected participants' judgments of abstractness, accuracy, and stroke quality. Damage to areas within different parts of the frontal parietal and lateral temporal cortices produced deviation in judgments in four of six conceptual attributes (abstractness, symbolism, realism, and animacy). Of the formal attributes, only depth was affected by inferior prefrontal damage. No areas of brain damage were associated with deviations in interestingness or preference judgments. The perception of conceptual and formal attributes in artwork may in part dissociate from each other and from evaluative judgments. More generally, this approach demonstrates the feasibility of quantitative approaches to the neuropsychology of art.
PMID: 22016728 [PubMed - in process]
- Pain & Paintings: Beholding Beauty Reduces Pain Perception And Laser Evoked Potentials
-Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 Neuroesthetics, a term coined by Semir Zeki, is "the attempt to use neuroscience to understand art and aesthetic behaviour" (as defined in an excellent overview by BRAINETHICS). Some would say the venture...
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Today's recommended paper reflects one of my research interests when I was an undergraduate: Experiencing Art: The Influence of Expertise and Painting Abstraction Level. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 2011;5:94 Authors: Pihko E, Virtanen A, Saarinen...
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There is an acceleration of interest in promoting cognitive and neuropsychological 'exercise' for a healthy brain, especially over the course of aging. Though most mainstream-media articles about this report it as a new phenomenon, it really is...
- Hoarding Behavior In Brain Damage
From a University of Iowa press release:Brain Region Identified That Controls Collecting Behavior [snip] By studying patients who developed abnormal hoarding behavior following brain injury, neurology researchers in the University of Iowa Roy J....
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