Neuroaesthetics: Between Art, Philosophy and the Brain

In recent years my research has shifted from dance to more general questions regarding art, aesthetics and the brain. My research grew out of a dissatisfaction with contemporary aesthetics on the one hand and with the work of the handful of neuroscientists who have written about art on the other. Whereas the former ignores recent insights from cognitive neuroscience, the latter ignore much of what is and has been happening in contemporary art. My own approach therefore differs from much of what is presented under the heading neuroaesthetics.

Some of the questions that interest me:

Why are we startled and aroused when we watch a thriller, even though we know it is only a movie?

Why are we sometimes brought to tears when we hear a particular song and why do other songs give us the chills even after hearing it 20 times or more?

Why are we filled with awe when we walk into an immense space?

What is interesting about conceptual art?

Cognitive neuroscience studies the neural mechanisms associated with human behaviour. It is concerned with empirical questions. The answers it provides may tell us more about the conditions that make human capacities such as thinking and feeling possible. It relies on numerous background assumptions and concepts. Philosophy brings these assumptions to light. It clarifies the conceptual schemes that structure our thinking, by mapping out the relationships between existing concepts or coining new concepts. My own references in this respect are Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida, Lyotard, Wittgenstein, Kant, Thierry de Duve, Slavoj Zizek and Jean-Luc Nancy.

Even a synthesis of psychology, philosophy and neurobiology will only tell part of the story. A sociologist might point out that whatever an individual thinks is always a function of the group to which he or she belongs or wants to belong to. An anthropologist might comment that although people are the same in their basic propensities, when it comes to art and aesthetic judgement differences in language and culture cannot be discounted. Still, I believe that such a synthesis will have more explanatory power than each of these disciplines alone.

Neuroscientists who write about art tend to confine their analysis to beauty. This is the majority view of art. Even art and dance critics often praise a work when it is beautiful and denounce it when it isn't. But art does not have to be beautiful. It doesn't have to entertain either. It doesn't have to be anything as long as it is something. It can be boring to watch, yet interesting to see. Such is the paradoxical logic of aesthetic judgement. I believe that a lot can be said about the avant garde, ugliness and the no longer fine arts from the brain's point of view. This is what I'm working on at the moment.

Further Reading

Leder, H., Belke, B., Oeberst, A. and Augustin, D. (2004) A model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments. British Journal of Psychology 95 (Pt 4), 489-508.

Ramachandran, V.S. and Hirstein, W. (1999), The science of art: A neurological theory of aesthetic experience, Journal of Consciousness Studies 6, 15-51.

Koelsch, S. and Siebel, W.A. (2005), Towards a Neural Basis of Music Perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol 9 no 12, 578-584.

Jackendoff, R. and Lerdahl F. (2006), The capacity for music: What is it, and what's special about it?. Cognition, 100: 33-72.

Peretz, I. and Zatorre, R.J. (2005), Brain organization for music processing. Annual Review of Psychology 56: 89-114.