Study of Art Gives Insight Into Brain's Structure

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Understanding what makes a work of art
beautiful might be an important clue into the workings of the human
brain, a scientist reported on Thursday.

In an article in the latest issue of the journal Science, Semir Zeki
proposed a new field of science -- neuroesthetics -- which would study
the relationship between art and the brain.

``Visual art obeys the laws of the visual brain, and thus reveals these
laws to us,'' he wrote.

Artists have a way of tapping into the parts of the brain that are
stimulated by art, said Zeki, a professor of neurobiology at University
College London.

``In a sense they're also studying the brain, but with a different
technique, the technique of painting,'' he said in a telephone interview.

Scientists are just beginning to use art to uncover how the brain pieces
together images into a coherent picture.

The work of processing of images occurs in the visual cortex, which
makes up one-quarter of the brain.

To examine the cortex, Zeki used functional magnetic resonance
imaging and transcranial electronic stimulation, which temporarily
shuts down portions of the brain so that other portions may be
studied.patients samples of art, scientists have pinpointed regions that
respond to motion, color and shapes.

FUTURE PICASSOS AND MICHELANGELOS

But artists discovered these areas unknowingly many years earlier, Zeki
said.

He gave the example of kinetic artists, like Alexander Calder, whose
works of the mid-1900s focused on motion while minimizing the use
of color and shapes.

``Their work should have predicted that there was an area of the brain
that does that, only scientists found it many years later,'' he said. This
area became known as the V5 complex.

Zeki's research now concentrates on how and when the various regions
of the visual brain are triggered.

Scientists once thought that parts of the visual brain react
simultaneously, but Zeki's current research is showing that some areas
respond faster to stimuli than others. V4, which responds to color,
reacts faster than V5, the motion center, Zeki said.

Someday scientists will be able to see whether artists' brains are
different than everybody else's, Zeki said. And further study might be
able to predict children with the talent to be the next Picasso or
Michelangelo.

``A lot of it depends on level of technology and level of resolution. I
think if we're able to get to a high enough level of spatial and temporal
resolution, we'll be able to detect differences, and no doubt there are,''
he said.

Zeki lectures regularly at the Slade School of Art in London and said
artists are curious about the correlation between art and the brain.

``I think they're interested in the apparatus that produces their work,
which is the brain,'' he said. ``I'm not sure they change their style, they
certainly change their views.''
 

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