Thinking art

Can we measure creativity? Professor Semir Zeki of the University College, London, certainly thinks so. And the scientist has been given more than £1 million (Dh7.3 million) to prove it.

Zeki feels this area has been sorely neglected by neurobiologists. But now, the Wellcome Trust, UK's biggest medical-research charity, which recently opened the Wellcome Collection, a £30 million (Dh220 million) cultural venue dedicated to medicine, life and art, is backing his research.

With his colleague, Professor Ray Dolan, Zeki will use the funding to establish a programme of research into “neuroaesthetics'', turning a scientific spotlight on questions that writers, artists and philosophers have debated for millennia.

This isn't as strange as it sounds: Artists are, after all, closet neuroscientists who unconsciously understand what excites the brain.

Their ability to abstract the essentials of an image and discard the redundant information mirrors what the brain has evolved to do over millions of years.

Intuitive grasp

Brain cells that combine clues to visual depth, such as texture and shading, with form and perspective, were unwittingly exploited by Paul Cezanne to summon form out of texture.

Abstract artists intuitively grasp the rules that the brain uses to depict shape and know how to exaggerate that activity in their work.

Zeki points out that one of the brain's primordial functions is to acquire knowledge about the world, “and art constitutes another means of doing so''.

His work is also spurred by the idea that, in one limited sense, your brain is easy to understand. The most complex object in the known universe, it has been honed by evolution to do one job — help you survive to pass on your genes.

From that simple purpose sprouts complicated
machinery.

The circuitry tells you when fruit looks ripe, or reveals a good mate. When we say someone is beautiful, our grey matter is telling us that this person is worth wooing.

Our minds may have evolved not just as survival machines but as courtship machines, employing music and art to get the most promising sets of genes into bed.

Leaving the brain out

Yet discussions of why art is such a conspicuous feature of all societies are usually conducted without reference to the brain —through which all art is created and appreciated.

Zeki says neuroscientists are failing to appreciate how works of art mirror the workings of the brain. “Neuroaesthetics will teach biologists to use the products of the brain in art, music, literature and mathematics to understand how the brain functions,'' Zeki says.

“The results will not only increase our knowledge about the workings of the human brain but also give deep insights into human nature,'' he adds.

There could be practical implications. Studies of art created by people with autism and Alzheimer's can shed fascinating light on these disorders.

Equally, a diminution in our ability to appreciate beauty is a hallmark of depression. Zeki says emotional pain can enhance our ability to create and appreciate art. Perhaps, we will soon be able to prove that great painters really do suffer for their art.

TITBIT

Solving the Enigma

About 15 years ago, Professor Zeki found that an image called Enigma, one that produced an illusion of swirling movement, stimulated the motion centres in the thin rind at the back of the brain.

We now know that the Op Art of Bridget Riley exploits the fact that the brain contains separate pathways for processing motion, colour and form to create shimmering effects.

While scanning the brains of volunteers gazing at paintings they classified as ugly or beautiful, Zeki even found that beauty engaged a part of the brain called the orbito-frontal cortex — the more a painting impresses, the more that centre crackles with activity.