Sites

• http://www.ndgo.net/sfn/nerve/• Bibliography of papers:

http://consc.net/mindpapers• Suffering souls:• http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/

2008/11/10/081110fa_fact_seabrook• Moral psych: http://www.prospect-

magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10126

Neuroesthetics

How neuroscience informs art

How art informs neuroscience

Neuroscience View

• Explanation of perception: visual and auditory

• Explanation of emotional reaction to art

• Explanation of cognitive content

• Basis of creativity

Artist’s view

• Proust Was a Neuroscientist (Jonah Leher, 2007)

• Artists often anticipated findings of neuroscience

• Walt Whitman “I sing the Body Electric”

• Marcel Proust Aroma and memory

• Paul Cezanne “I could not copy nature”

Other Sources

• Conversations between Art and Science, U. Bristol (2008)

• http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cms/go/lectures/autumn-art/

• Art and Mind, U.Winchester (2004)

• Explanation of creativity

• http://www.artandmind.org

Other Sources

• Samir Zeki

• http://www.vislab.ucl.ac.uk/

Neuroscience Music

• Musicophilia (Oliver Sacks 2008)• Musical seizures/hallucinations• Amusia: rhythm, tone, harmony etc• Absolute Pitch: age, blindness, autism

(Mozart not Wagner)• Musical Savants: autistic, retarded, (TMS)• Music and Synesthesia: color effects

(Scriabin, Rimsky-Korsakov)

Sacks Video

• http://fora.tv/2007/10/21/Oliver_Sacks_Musicophilia

Neuroscience Music

• This is Your Brain on Music (Daniel Levitin, 2007)

• What is music? Sound to emotions

• What makes a musician? Some inate characteristics plus 10,000 hours

Levitin Video

• http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Sn45Z9X-vgg

• http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.aspx?rID=6861&fID=2070

Neuroscience Visual Art

• V Ramachandran suggested 10 universal laws (principles) of art in A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness (2004)

• Another video: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0NzShMiqKgQ&feature=related

10 principles of artistic delight

• Peak shift: herring gull, figurative primitives

• Grouping: combining similar parts into a whole

• Contrast: focus attention• Isolation: line drawings focus attention• Perceptual problem solving: visual foreplay• Symmetry: pleasing

10 Principles

• Abhorrence of coincidence/generic viewpoint

• Repetition, rhythm, and orderliness

• Balance

• Metaphor

• http://www.imprint.co.uk/rama/art.pdf

A definition of art

• Optimize the neurological states corresponding to heightened awareness of specific qualia

• Artist creates the objects that stimulate these states by intuition or by trial and error

Mirror Neurons

• Why Empathy?

• How does art communicate? (drama, music, dance, observing an object)

• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204/01.html (14min)

Art and New Biology of MindColumbia Univ

• http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/media/06/412_davidFreedberg/index.html

• http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/media/06/421_neuroBioArts/

Neuroscience of Magic

• Misdirection, overt and covert• Overt: Direct focus of attention away from

“action”• Covert: change blindness and inattention blindness• http://www.mindscience.org/magicsymposium

• Magicians and Neuroscientists• http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/08/psychology-of-

magic-3-critical.php

Magicians show Neuroscientists

• http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/08/psychology-of-magic-3-critical.php

• http://www.mindscience.org/magicsymposium/

Video Wed

• Frontiers of Science (Alan Alda,Make Up your Mind) OR

• Columbia Symposium: Art and New Biology of Mind OR

• Ramachandran and Levitin OR…….