Neuropsychology of Art

Talent in art

Humans are remarkably creative in many endeavors, but art is particularly suitable for expressions of creativity (e.g., Goldstein, 2014). Raw talent is considered to be abilities and skills with a strong innate basis. They are expressed through interaction with creativity in different forms of art (Guilford, 1950; Sternberg, 1988). Teasing these factors apart is no simple matter.

The notion of talent is known to so-called primitive societies. In Papua New Guinea, people in the Sepik River region allocate the task of producing art works only to special individuals whose skills are admired. Similarly, the Gola people in Africa regard talented artists as being special people, inspired by unique forces (Dissanayake, 1988). In Western society, a great deal of respect, admiration, and appreciation is similarly directed to exceptional and successful artists. Still, if artistic talent is innate, it is still amenable to nurture—that is, to shaping through experience and learning in normal individuals (see Amabile, 2001; Fein, Obler, & Gardner, 1988; Howe et al., 1998).

Creativity in art

The practice of art allows experimentation and innovation, and, to the extent that the society allows this, the practice is a reflection of cognitive and emotional flexibility. Similarly, the extent to which artists in their work can rise above the conventional, established, familiar, stereotypical, and accepted and create something novel is a measure of their inventiveness. There is no agreement among researchers and theoreticians on “standardized tests” for measuring creativity (Sternberg, 1988). Writers, poets, dancers, scientists, film directors, and business people are creative individuals and their works have produced just as much awe and wonderment as the works of visual and musical artists (Zaidel, 2014). Although in the popular media and some textbooks the right hemisphere has been characterized as “creative” there has been no good evidence that this is so. If anything, as illustrated in this book, one could put up an argument in favor of left hemisphere cognition giving rise to creativity. Specialization in language draws on cognitive modes that support a combinatorial system with infinite possibilities of pairings that convey meaning. Such a broad range of pairings and conjoining could provide the basis for creativity. Attending to details in the environment, remembering details, cardinality, and piecemeal approaches to problems all contribute to the cognitive ability to think deductively and logically. This together with combinatorial cognition gives the left hemisphere an edge in the creative process.

Language is not antithetical to creativity, as evidenced by literary arts. Language is but a part of a cognitive system specialized in the left hemisphere. Imagery seems to be an essential element of the insight process, for instance, the realization moment of the long-sought-after solution to a scientific problem, and this is when the right hemisphere may be optimally involved (but see discussion on imagery below). But then, scientific and mathematical solutions have presented themselves in dreams, typically after an individual has spent days, weeks, and months on alternative solutions. Both the left and right hemispheres are active in dreaming (Buchsbaum, Hazlett, Wu, & Bunney, 2001; Hobson & Pace-Schott, 2003; McCormick et al., 1997, 2000). In general, it is highly likely that independently of the medium or mode of expression there is bilateral involvement of the two hemispheres in the creative process, albeit in asymmetric and complementary ways. In the context of this book, the most parsimonious evidence is intactness of creativity in established artists with injury in the left or the right hemisphere.

The artist Georges Braque provides us with an additional insight into the thinking behind the creative process, particularly in visual art:

In my paintings, if fantasy is non-existent, the effect of surprise nonetheless plays a role. Take my large canvas “In Full Flight”, which is in the exhibition at the Louvre. So. It is finished, as harmonious as anyone could wish. At the end of four months, after seeing it every day, living with it, I noticed that I had become too used to it. Too comfortable for the eye. I therefore decided to create a disruption by painting in the lower left of the picture another bird confined in a sort of white rectangular frame, everything imposed there like a trademark, a stamp. By creating contradiction, and not disharmony, the entire picture comes to life in a more unexpected manner. Sometimes these effects of surprise are necessary. It prevents routine from setting in.

(Braque, quoted in Wilkin, 1991, p. 103)

Neuropsychology of creativity

Unfortunately, the noun “creativity” has too often been confused with the verb to “create” when art works are described (Zaidel, 2014). Linguistic semantics interferes with scientific logic in this case. In fact, when something in art is created, it is produced, fashioned, crafted, or sculpted, but the end product is not necessarily creative.

Creativity is producing something new that did not exist previously, with positive, aesthetic appeal to society, whether in art, science, politics, or business (Zaidel, 2013b, 2014). Obviously, there is a continuum of what can be considered to be creativity—some productions are more creative than others; the degree of “newness” is a sliding scale, albeit with defined limits. Importantly, creativity is a positive concept that implies an aesthetic and useful product for society. The basic principle in creativity is the ability to transcend the given, the known, the conventional, and the established formula, by producing something new. That which is long known is entrenched in our long-term representation of experience, guiding our behavior, forming our concepts, directing accumulation of new information, and influencing what we remember and think. The truly creative individuals throughout human history were remarkable in that they created new associations in their minds despite entrenched concepts, and then worked through them relentlessly until the new product emerged. Einstein’s theory of relativity is considered very creative and aesthetic. Newton’s and Galileo’s discoveries and theories are also considered very creative. Giotto, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Bach, Mozart, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Picasso, and Magritte were all innovators in their art form. What part of their brains modulated the creativity? There is no easy answer to this question partly because, problems with clear-cut definitions notwithstanding, the creative time window, its instance of appearance in the mind, the eureka moment, is not known nor could ever be pinpointed, and thus could not be measured with, say, neuroimaging techniques in the same way that those techniques measure language or other cognitive processing in the brain. Even if the producer knows the time of a “creative window,” it is a moment that reflects many hours, days, weeks, months, or years of previous work. For now it is worthwhile to speculate, discuss, and conduct experiments that potentially could tease apart some of the components of creativity and their control by the brain.

Art creativity and dementia

Can brain damage, particularly in dementia, increase artistic creativity? Several studies have examined this question directly because of claims that frontal lobe damage releases inhibition over behavior and the release facilitates generation of creativity. Putting this question to a direct study in frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients through the use of the standardized Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, de Souza and colleagues (2010) found that the dementia does not lead to increased creativity. This study concurred with earlier observations by others (Fornazzari, 2005; Rankin, 2007). Subsequent studies have come to similar conclusions (Palmiero, Di Giacomo, & Passafiume, 2012). Cases from several different types of dementia are described in Chapters 2 and 4. Gretton and ffytche (2014) have reviewed the art of these cases, and of additional ones, and noted that each dementia has a characteristic visual art expression. The profile for each type reflects both the brain regions that have atrophied and the functions that have been lost as a result of the damage, as well as those regions that remain relatively intact. That is, the art reflects the presence of disease and healthy tissue. None of the dementias, however, lead to increased artistic creativity, remarkable artistic innovation, or anything that resembles sophisticated productions.

Language and artistic creativity: clues from FTD

In Chapter 4, the visual artistic work of patients with FTD was described. Here, additional cases are discussed from the perspective of creativity: we can obtain further clues to the neural substrates of creativity by considering dementia cases, particularly those with known pre-morbid accomplishments (Miller et al., 2000). Two remarkable inventors had FTD, a neurodegenerative disease that gradually affected the frontal and temporal lobes and the connectivity between them, while sparing parietal and occipital regions. Widespread cortical atrophy eventually resulted in dementia. One case was an inventor who designed a chemical detector (Miller et al., 2000). Her progressive aphasia symptoms began at age 68 years; they became increasingly worse and extended to the inability to read. The remarkable feature in her condition was that despite the disease and until age 74 years she successfully worked on her inventions, as evidenced by the fact that she obtained new patents. The parietal and occipital regions as well as frontal lobe regions were spared. The other case was an airplane designer who had patents for related inventions. At age 69 years he began to experience language and memory difficulties. Yet, his topographical navigation remained unimpaired, as did his designing and engineering capabilities. All of this is post-disease diagnosis. He, too, had sparing of frontal, parietal, and occipital lobes.

What shall we make of these two cases as far as creativity is concerned? When everything is taken into account, the significance of the cases lies in demonstrating that inventions in pre-morbid intellectual areas of expertise—both patients did not invent in previously unpracticed fields—can proceed post-diagnosis despite brain deterioration in localized brain areas, including those that subserve language. However, these patients did not develop new inventive abilities. Post-diagnosis, the first case perfected her previous inventions. The report does not state that she went on to invent in brand new fields. The second case did not invent new patents or design brand new airplanes. The obvious inference is that intact parts of their brains contributed to their ability to work on what they already were proficient at doing (see neuroanatomical basis in Chapter 4, in the section on slow brain changes and serial lesion effects). The fact that language was severely compromised, and in one case that memory was deteriorating, shows that professional expertise can proceed independently of the intactness of language—as was the case throughout most of these patients’ lives when their language was intact, and when language was deteriorating in the course of their disease. In other words, talent and excellence in specific skills are independent of language; they could, in fact, reflect general intelligence level. Language and creativity do not have to be mutually exclusive; of course, they could coexist or not coexist.

These two exceptional individuals also demonstrate the notion of redundancy in storage and preservation of long-term experience in the face of brain atrophy. Had they gone on to invent brand new things in fields that they had not previously tackled, the meaning of creativity and its relationship to language would have to be drastically revised and reconsidered. The fact remains that when their language abilities were intact, in the long pre-morbid period of their lives, they created with originality and inventiveness all those products for which they received their first patents. There is a strong positive correlation between intelligence as measured in standardized intelligence tests and creativity (see Zaidel, 2014).

Left hemisphere art creativity: clues from savants with autism

Further insight into the neuropsychology of creativity can be obtained from exploring the productions of untypical artists (first described in Chapter 4). Let us consider savants with autism; they have congenital brain dysfunction that prevents them from normal social and communication interaction with people and the world (Mottron et al., 2003; Sacks, 1995; Selfe, 1977; Treffert & Wallace, 2002). Since autistic individuals suffer from severe language and communication problems, left hemisphere dysfunction is assumed to be mainly responsible for the disorder, although there is no specific convincing evidence for left hemisphere damage.

However, if as some have claimed their remarkable graphic skills are largely controlled by the right hemisphere (their left hemisphere being presumably dysfunctional, as deduced from the fact that their language skills are either non-existent or extremely poor), applying the logic of inferring function from brain damage, the absence of creativity in their works is due to lack of support from the left hemisphere as a result of its poor functioning. Their art displays great graphic skills, but it is a highly realistic kind of art, one with little abstraction, few signs of originality, and little innovation. Nadia, EC, and Stephen Wiltshire have all received art instruction but benefited very little. If their art lacks creativity and their art does represent capacities of an intact right hemisphere then, by inference, the control of creativity in art comes mainly from the left hemisphere in the non-autistic person. While the right parietal lobe provides support for accurate depiction of reality including representations of three-dimensional space and good depictions of depth, something we see in the art of autistic artists, the contributions to creativity are doubtful. Thus, from the work of these untypical artists it is reasonable to infer that the left hemisphere in the normal brain is more capable of reshaping existing concepts, giving rise to originality and innovation, than the right.

Neurotransmitters and art creativity: clues from Parkinson’s disease treatment

Talent may lie dormant until a particular neurological event uncovers its presence. Another neurological case in whom artistic expression emerged is that of a Parkinson’s disease patient who developed Parkinson symptoms at age 40 and who eventually began to write high-quality poetry for the first time in his life (Schrag & Trimble, 2001). Initially, the tremor and dystonia were lateralized to the left hand and leg, which implies greater right hemisphere dysfunction. In the course of four years the symptoms worsened and treatment in the form of the dopamine agonist lisuride as well as levodopa was initiated. Within the first month symptoms improved and he began to produce poems for the very first time. An increase in libido was also a consequence of the drug treatment. In that same year, he wrote 10 poems. Subsequently he published some poems and even won a prestigious poetry prize. He continued to write poems for many years despite the progression of Parkinson’s symptoms and changes in levels of medication. The authors of the article note, however, that the patient’s grandfather on his mother’s side had written poetry. They speculate that dopaminergic and serotonergic stimulation (induced by drug treatment) together with loss of inhibition due to frontal lobe dysfunction allowed the emergence of new literary creativity. While their analysis may bear out as the best explanation, one has to wonder the extent to which elements of poetry conceptualization expressed themselves in the patient’s pre-morbid existence. But, then, one would still have to explain why such presumed conceptualization and cognition emerged only when drug treatment began and not when actual symptoms began. The implication is that neurotransmitter upheaval or imbalance together with specific structural brain alterations can go a long way to contribute to creative artistic production.

Imagery and imagination

Are imagination and imagery one and the same? Is mental visualization as in mental rotation equivalent to creativity in art? Imagery has sometimes been equated with insightful inventiveness in art and science (A. Miller, 2000, 2002). Scientists have described seeing in their mind’s eye long-sought solutions to problems, reporting that the eureka moment consisted of some kind of a mental visual image. With artists, it has been assumed that imagery plays a critical role in the production process, in the visual and musical arts as well as in the literary and theater arts. This indeed may be the case and a topic of further research in the future (but see Chapter 7; see also Winner & Casey, 1992).

Studies typically include verbal instructions to their subjects to imagine something specific. One functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study reported selective activation of the left inferior frontal and temporal lobes upon verbal imagery instructions (Yomogida et al., 2004). Another fMRI study involving playing the piano in the mind’s eye reported bilateral activation in the pre-motor areas as well as the fronto-parietal motor network and the precuneus (Meister et al., 2004; see also Figure 1.1). In a study of participants blind from birth, mental imagery instructions activated visual cortices bilaterally, including the occipital and parietal lobes, and similar visual networks to those activated in sighted subjects (Amedi et al., 2008; Bonino et al., 2015; Kupers & Petito, 2011; Lambert, Sampaio, Mauss, & Scheiber, 2004). When internally generated imagery was required in the context of deductive reasoning and spatial thinking, bilateral activation of several cortical regions was again observed (Knauff, Mulack, Kassubek, Salih, & Greenlee, 2002). Areas other than the V5 were found to be active bilaterally in mental rotation tasks, and the precuneus (located in the posterior parietal lobe; see Figure 3.3) was activated bilaterally (Barnes et al., 2000). The V5 complex (also known as the MT area, for middle temporal) is in the posterior bank of the superior temporal sulcus (Zeki, 2004); it contains motion-sensitive neurons and one would expect this complex to be involved in mental rotations (see Figure 1.1). In all, V5 was active depending on the nature of the mental rotation task required, thereby indicating that there are types of rotations and different neural substrates that are engaged selectively. Indeed, the Barnes et al. (2000) study found that Brodmann Area 19 (anterior portion of the occipital lobe) and the supplementary pre-motor area (anterior to the pre-motor gyrus in the frontal lobe) were active in the rotation tasks (see Figure 1.1).

In a meta-analysis of mental rotation tasks measured with fMRI (Zacks, 2007), consistent activity was observed more in the right superior parietal region than in the left, whereas consistent activity was more prevalent in the left frontal lobe than in the right. In addition, bilateral activation was also observed in the inferotemporal cortex, superior parietal lobes, and frontal lobes. Clearly both hemispheres appear to be involved in mental transformations of visual images and within each hemisphere several neural networks are active. Moreover, there are subtle differences in tasks that require mental rotations and transformations (Thompson, Slotnick, Burrage, & Kosslyn, 2009). Imagery, presumably, is one of the underpinning ingredients in creativity. The relationship between imagery and creativity was investigated in a meta-analytic study and the results indicated that the association is not at all strong, nor is it obvious given individual differences and task paradigms (LeBoutillier & Marks, 2003). Future studies will determine whether such transformations reflect idea-generation and artistic endeavors.

Complexities of visual art

While the neurological evidence indicates that the right parietal lobe is much more important for perceiving and rendering spatial relationships than the left, it is not so that all there is to visual art is spatial relationships (see Chapter 8). Consider the representation of light and its varying presence on different portions of the canvas. When Monet painted the same object under varying degrees of sunlight, it is hard to see how his understanding, analysis, and talent of execution of those effects were critically dependent on good spatial perception and mentation. Placing a dab of one color here and another color there to deliberately connote the interaction of light and object may only mildly require the use of spatial relationship skills. Similarly, mixing of colors on a painter’s palette to obtain just the desired pigment is not necessarily related to spatial knowledge. Other features in Monet’s paintings do indeed depend on spatial skills; the use of convergence and linear perspective would reflect such dependence.

Another example is artists’ ability to depict fast motion on canvas. Several graphic techniques are used to indicate that something is moving, including balance, partially overlapping frames denoting speed, and controlled patches of fuzziness and blurriness, to name but a few (Cutting, 2002). A famous example of motion depiction on canvas is by the Cubist artist Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, which he painted in 1912. In modern times, it was the school of Futurism that showed particular interest in depicting fast motion, with the idea that art should look to the future and depict that instead of depicting the past (Shlain, 1991). The Futurist painter Giacomo Balla painted Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, also in 1912, and illustrated in a most convincing way the very fast leg movements of a tiny walking dog. Other artists applied this difficult representation of changing time in planar work. The contemporary American artist Susan Rothenberg depicts motion in several of her works, the most famous being Vaulting (Simon, 2000). The idea of motion on a still surface was (possibly) attempted as long ago as 30,000 years in the Chauvet cave in France. Such renditions require deliberate attention to minute details and logical analysis, which draw on left hemisphere cognition.

Some fMRI findings indicate that the brain region engaged in viewing real motion is also engaged in viewing apparent movement. The motion cortex in humans, V5, sits in the medial superior temporal cortex. This region becomes active upon viewing apparent movement as well as viewing pictures (paintings or photographs) depicting humans in action (e.g., someone throwing a ball, a person about to hit a golf ball) and nature scenes depicting motion (e.g., a large rolling sea wave; Kourtzi & Kanwisher, 2000). When seeing art works in which there is implied movement, this region is presumably activated as well (bilaterally). Damage to this area results in motion blindness, also known as akinetopsia, where moving objects appear frozen (Blanke, Landis, Mermoud, Spinelli, & Safran, 2003; Zihl, Von Cramon, & Mai, 1983). Visual perception of forms, shapes, and colors can remain intact in such cases. The issue rests specifically in motion perception. A stream of tea looks frozen in mid-air as it is being poured. Crossing the street is dangerous because cars do not appear to be moving closer. What is particularly significant in the fMRI findings is that the brain region engaged in viewing real motion is the same one that is engaged in viewing apparent movement and implied motion in pictures.

Summary

Art production by established artists represents the activities of several systems of neural substrates. There is no distinct “music center” nor “art center” in the brain but most likely dedicated neural networks. Artistic success stems from many factors including talent, lifelong practice, and creativity. Observable alterations in artists’ work after brain damage do not embody the full gamut of the mental energy that goes into art. While the neurological evidence indicates that the right parietal lobe is much more important for perceiving and rendering spatial relationships than the left, it is not so that all there is to visual art is spatial relationships. Raw talent denotes abilities and skills that are innate. They are expressed through interaction with creativity in different forms of art, and in other fields of human endeavor. Creativity is not confined to visual or musical art works. Writers, poets, dancers, scientists, and business people are creative as well. The role of each hemisphere in the creative process is not at all established. There is no evidence to support a binary hemispheric contribution to creativity; the notion that right hemisphere cognition gives rise to creativity and left hemisphere cognition does not is not parsimonious. Language, which is mainly specialized in the left cerebral hemisphere, is not a cognitive system antithetical to creativity. With artists, it has been assumed that imagery plays a critical role in the production process, but fMRI evidence suggests bilateral hemispheric activation during imagery tasks. The best evidence that creativity is bilaterally controlled comes from intactness of creativity in established artists with damage in either the left or the right hemisphere. If creativity were controlled by one hemisphere, we would expect to see reduced creativity after damage to either hemisphere. A further clue can be obtained from exploring the work of untypical artists. Visual arts savants with autism have severe language and social communication problems; left hemisphere dysfunction is assumed to be mainly responsible for poor language development. Their works are spatially correct but there is not much to see by way of creativity.

The evidence from artists with unilateral damage points to the involvement of several brain regions and to cooperation between the two hemispheres. Talent, extensive practice, and skill all suggest redundancy in functional representation and basis for spared artistic capacity following brain or sensory damage. Skill preservation is remarkable given extent of brain damage. We have seen in the established visual, musical, and literary artists that art and language are dissociable functions but are not antagonistic functions. Both have a reliance on pre-existing biological mechanisms.

The reliance of both art and language on abstract cognition invites the possibility of long-evolving neural substrates to support both of these forms of communication. In the course of human brain evolution, art expression could have preceded language development, possibly even predicting language specialization following prolonged use of non-language forms of symbolism and representation, and then undergoing further modifications together with full-blown specific language development.

11
Further Considerations

Introduction