Week 7: Neuroscience + Art
One of my best friends has long been interested in the field of neuroscience so this topic somewhat resonates with me. He once told me that the human brain holds the key to our nature as conscious beings.
Still, I was shocked to hear that neuroaesthetics - a
combined discipline involving neuroscience and art - is a flourishing field.
Among the factors motivating this new collaborative venture is the epiphany
that artists have made groundbreaking discoveries about the human brain that
scientists are just beginning to unearth. According to Zeki, “most painters are
also neurologists” (2). Given that artists have been a proponent of studying
the way in which the world is perceived, it isn’t surprising that they have
uncovered certain characteristics of the way we sense shapes, colors or depth.
Interestingly, this is nothing new. Patrick Cavanagh, an eminent vision researcher and professor, claims that line drawings likely date back to our ancestors tracing lines in the sand and realizing that they bear a resemblance to animals. Indeed, humans of the stone age did such drawings, and so did ancient Egyptians with their figures. As it turns out, these outlines tap into the same neural processes as the edges of real-world objects.
Figure 2. Medieval painting of Virgin Mary.
In the modern-day, we especially see this with emojis. The creators of the emoji - artists in their own right - successfully found a simple yet effective way to enhance communication. Consider one study at the Tokyo Denki University wherein participants were shown images of various emojis as well as actual faces while being placed in a brain imaging machine. In both cases, they showed increased activity in their inferior frontal gyrus (emotional processing unit), but only when showed the actual faces did they also show an increase in the fusiform gyrus (face-processing unit). As a result, emojis are able to convey emotion without cognition of faces (Yuasa et al.)
Figure 3. Yuasa et al., right fusiform gyrus (1), right infer frontal gyrus (2), right middle frontal gyrus (3), and right inferior parietal tube (4), 2006.
To conclude, I’ll leave you with an interesting shower thought: We humans are but a brain piloting a skeleton wearing flesh armor. Be sure to think about it.Cavanagh,
Patrick. "Patrick Cavanagh - The Science of Art and Illusion." Youtube,
uploaded by Convergence, 30 Dec.
2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP4EOuFhsLA
Changeux, Jean-Pierre. “Art and Neuroscience.” Leonardo, vol. 27, no. 3, 1994, p. 189., https://doi.org/10.2307/1576051.
Chatzichristos, Christos, et al. “Emojis Influence Autobiographical Memory Retrieval from Reading Words: AN Fmri-Based Study.” PLOS ONE, vol. 15, no. 7, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234104.
Konopka, Lukasz M. “Where Art Meets Neuroscience: A New Horizon of Art Therapy.” Croatian Medical Journal, vol. 55, no. 1, 2014, pp. 73–74., https://doi.org/10.3325/cmj.2014.55.73.
Landau, Elizabeth. “What the Brain Draws from: Art and Neuroscience | CNN.” CNN, 15 Sept. 2012, https://www.cnn.com/2012/09/15/health/art-brain-mind/index.html.
Mileti, Isabella. “Art and Neuroscience: The Start of a Scientific Approach to the Art Perception.” MOH, 21 Mar. 2022, https://www.mohbari.eu/en/art-neuroscience-start-scientific-approach-to-art-perception/.
“Nazca Lines.” History, 4 Dec. 2017, https://www.history.com/topics/south-america/nazca-lines. Accessed 10 Apr. 2022.
Parziale, Daniel. “Medieval Virgin Mary.” Pinterest, https://www.pinterest.com/pin/471963235931487750/. Accessed 10 Apr. 2022.
Yuasa, Masahide, et al. “Emoticons Convey Emotions without Cognition of Faces.” CHI '06 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2006, https://doi.org/10.1145/1125451.1125737.
Zeki, Semir. Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain. Oxford University Press, 2003.
What a wonderful post! It genuinely surprised me to learn that “emojis are able to convey emotion without cognition of faces”, as you stated. I never put much thought when I’m hitting an emoji to send to a friend, it’s amazing how we can associate those little icons with neurological explanations! I’ll pose a question in regards to this - emojis are constantly creating new definitions with trends and the influence of social media, for instance, the laughing emoji becoming “cringey”, leaves being used to reference substances, the shout emoji + red exclamation points becoming part of a joke trend. With all of these developments in what these emojis mean paired with “inside” jokes on apps like TikTok, do you think that, as a community, our neurological reaction to these emoticons is ever-changing? Did the artists anticipate this shift when creating the faces?
ReplyDeleteHi!
ReplyDeleteIt was really interesting to read about the beginnings of art and its connection with biology. I never knew that early Egyptians produced images that conveyed similarities between the human body and animals' bodies. Your analysis of emojis was really thought-provoking as well; simple images of a smiling or laughing face can convey so much emotion (although it's all digital). The impact an emoji can have on the brain is truly astonishing, as they're essentially just pictures that we scan within our minds. I wonder if some emojis evoke stronger responses in the brain than others, and if the visual presentation of the emoji matters at all. Overall, I really enjoyed your post!