Artists have been unwittingly involved in brain and vision research for 40,000 years, according to Dr Patrick Cavanagh of Harvard University. New advances in understanding what part of the brain is activated by specific stimuli have meant that researchers can watch as it processes information.
This helps us to learn how the brain works but also gives insights into learning, memory and the interpretation of data. Researchers at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Anaheim, California, discussed the brain circuitry involved when stimulated by a work of art.
Dr V.S. Ramachandran, of the centre for brain and cognition at the University of California, San Diego, said artists, either consciously or unconsciously, deployed a range of techniques to titillate the visual areas of the brain, in particular the limbic system. He described one technique as the "peak shift effect" which in tests had shown that a rat rewarded with food for identifying a rectangle would respond with even more excitement if the rectangle was longer and skinnier than the original.
He believes this principle explains not only caricatures, but all art. A sketch of a nude, for example, selectively accentuates those feminine form attributes that allow one to discriminate it from a male figure. Van Gogh or Monet might be considered to be producing caricatures in colour rather than in form. Visual art of this kind particularly stimulates the limbic system.
"The limbic system likes that. That is the way it is wired up," he said. The images and forms chosen by artists were therefore not only stimulating these brain areas but amplifying and distorting this reaction.
"The brain is what enables art," explained Dr Cavanagh. The artist unconsciously finds ways that improve the brain's response to the image. He cited the Renaissance discovery of perspective, which more closely matched what the eye sees. Early users of the technique were poor at applying the shadowing of objects however, often confusing the location of the light source and therefore where the shadows should fall. This suggested that while the brain readily processed and interpreted line, shadow and shading were less important to our understanding. "Artists and our brains know which lines are important to convey the message," he said.