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Photo

Sun, 19 May 2013 18:52:34 -0400

neurosciencestuff: Can Brain Scans Really Tell Us What Makes...

Sun, 19 May 2013 18:49:31 -0400

Can Brain Scans Really Tell Us What Makes Something Beautiful?

When art meets neuroscience, strange things happen.

Consider the Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art in Oregon which features rugs and knitting based on a brain scan motif. Or the neuroscientist at the University of Nevada-Reno who scanned the brain of a portrait artist while he drew a picture of a face.

And then there’s the ongoing war of words between scientists who think it’s possible to use analysis of brain activity to define beauty–or even art–and their critics who argue that it’s absurd to try to make sense of something so interpretive and contextual by tying it to biology and the behavior of neurons.

Beauty and the brain

On one side you have the likes of Semir Zeki, who heads a research center called the Institute of Neuroesthetics at London’s University College. A few years ago he started studying what happens in a person’s brain when they look at a painting or listen to a piece of music they find beautiful. He looked at the flip side, too–what goes on in there when something strikes us as ugly.

What he found is that when his study’s subjects experienced a piece of art or music they described as beautiful, their medial orbito-frontal cortex–the part of the brain just behind the eyes–”lit up” in brain scans. Art they found ugly stimulated their motor cortex instead. Zeki also discovered that whether the beauty came through their ears, in music, or their eyes, in art, the brain’s response was the same–it had increased blood flow to what’s known as its pleasure center. Beauty gave the brains a dopamine reward.

Zeki doesn’t go so far as to suggest that the essence of art can be captured in a brain scan. He insists his research really isn’t about explaining what art is, but rather what our neurons’ response to it can tell us about how brains work. But if, in the process, we learn about common characteristics in things our brains find beautiful, his thinking goes, what harm is there in that?

Beware of brain rules?

Plenty, potentially, responds the critics’ chorus. Writing recently in the journal Nature, Philip Ball makes the point that this line of research ultimately could lead to rule-making about beauty, to “creating criteria of right or wrong, either in the art itself or in individual reactions to it.” It conceivably could devolve to “scientific” formulas for beauty, guidelines for what, in music or art or literature, gets the dopamine flowing.

Adds Ball:

Although it is worth knowing that musical ‘chills’ are neurologically akin to the responses invoked by sex or drugs, an approach that cannot distinguish Bach from barbiturates is surely limited.

Others, such as University of California philosophy professor Alva Noe, suggest that to this point at least, brain science is too limiting in what it can reveal, that it focuses more on beauty as shaped by people’s preferences, as opposed to addressing the big questions, such as “Why does art move us?” and “Why does art matter?”

And he wonders if a science built around analyzing events in an individual’s brain can ever answer them. As he wrote in the New York Times:

…there can be nothing like a settled, once-and-for-all account of what art is, just as there can be no all-purpose account of what happens when people communicate or when they laugh together. Art, even for those who make it and love it, is always a question, a problem for itself. What is art? The question must arise, but it allows no definitive answer.

Fad or fortune?

So what of neuroaesthetics? Is it just another part of the “neuro” wave, where brain scans are being billed as neurological Rosetta Stones that proponents claim can explain or even predict behavior–from who’s likely to commit crimes to why people make financial decisions to who’s going to gain weight in the next six months.

More jaded souls have suggested that neuroaesthetics and its bulky cousin, neurohumanities, are attempts to capture enough scientific sheen to attract research money back to liberal arts. Alissa Quart, writing in The Nation earlier this month, cut to the chase:

Neurohumanities offers a way to tap the popular enthusiasm for science and, in part, gin up more funding for humanities. It may also be a bid to give more authority to disciplines that are more qualitative and thus are construed, in today’s scientized and digitalized world, as less desirable or powerful.

Samir Zeki, of course, believes this is about much more than research grants. He really isn’t sure where neuroaesthetics will lead, but he’s convinced that only by “understanding the neural laws,” as he puts it, can we begin to make sense of morality, religion and yes, art.

Photo

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:09:50 -0400

organic-waters: d-aisychild: i-n-f-i-n-itebitch: hellxiareblog...

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:09:42 -0400

organic-waters:

d-aisychild:

i-n-f-i-n-itebitch:

hellxiareblog:

rosalarian:

lenoralenoire:

This is really powerful.

Oh my god, this is such a perfect way to make a statement.

Reblogging this again because it’s so fucking good

this is fucking amazing

i’ll never not reblog

It is the civic duty of a female to reblog this, regardless of blog style.

socialismartnature: Anti-sexual harassment stickers up around...

Tue, 14 May 2013 19:01:17 -0400

socialismartnature:

Anti-sexual harassment stickers up around Lake Merritt: “Stop telling women to smile.”

Gifs from Chris Hadfield’s Space Oddity [X]

Tue, 14 May 2013 19:01:04 -0400

Gifs from Chris Hadfield’s Space Oddity [X]

oxytocin-m: instagram: priscillacartac

Tue, 14 May 2013 19:00:49 -0400

oxytocin-m:

instagram: priscillacartac

Photo

Mon, 13 May 2013 20:42:02 -0400

nevver: Covers From The US Space Program

Mon, 13 May 2013 20:41:20 -0400

nevver:

Covers From The US Space Program

balanceandperfection: Pure ballet blog!

Mon, 13 May 2013 20:35:17 -0400

balanceandperfection:

Pure ballet blog!

Photo

Mon, 13 May 2013 20:33:39 -0400

hautekills: Yves Saint Laurent s/s 2011

Mon, 13 May 2013 20:33:17 -0400

hautekills:

Yves Saint Laurent s/s 2011

mostdopeschwag: Untitled on We Heart It -...

Mon, 13 May 2013 20:32:57 -0400

mostdopeschwag:

Untitled on We Heart It - http://weheartit.com/entry/54158820/via/OneYoungDreamer

lololol

fjordreview: Dancing meme! ha

Mon, 13 May 2013 20:31:39 -0400

fjordreview:

Dancing meme!

markdanielharley: Santiago Ramon y Cajal, ”Structure of...

Mon, 13 May 2013 20:31:09 -0400

markdanielharley:

Santiago Ramon y Cajal, ”Structure of the Mammalian Retina”, Madrid, 1900

Aaron Canipe texted me a great quote just the other day:

“I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.

- Theodore Roethke

wink-smile-pout: Vlada Roslyakova by Lina Scheynius for Hobbs...

Mon, 13 May 2013 20:30:41 -0400

wink-smile-pout:

Vlada Roslyakova by Lina Scheynius for Hobbs S/S 2012

tselentis-arch: Bill Viola, Tristan’s Ascension, 2005 via LA...

Mon, 13 May 2013 20:30:20 -0400

tselentis-arch:

Bill Viola, Tristan’s Ascension, 2005

via LA JETÉE

Art

actuallygrimes: shes so good if this is footage from fantasia,...

Sun, 12 May 2013 11:21:57 -0400

actuallygrimes:

shes so good

if this is footage from fantasia, which i think it is, that’s amazing

cool fact: fantasia was made at the height of world war II and if you watch it in the context of that it’s a really intensely emotional experience. every single sequence is about death

ANOTHER Gilmore Girls Mariah Carey reference. I am in heaven.

Sat, 11 May 2013 12:09:57 -0400

ANOTHER Gilmore Girls Mariah Carey reference. I am in heaven.

superdames: —Miss Fury #7 (1945) by Tarpé Mills

Fri, 10 May 2013 06:07:47 -0400

superdames:

—Miss Fury #7 (1945) by Tarpé Mills