In yesterday’s post on neuroaesthetics, I brought down the atomic elbow on the conceptual premise being put forward by scientists. (Maybe I was a little hard on them?) There is some merit to their ideas, but they’re not nearly as glamorous as they are made out to be.

I’d like to start today by introducing V. S. Ramachandran, a neuroscientist and author who is likely the most prominent spokesman for neuroaesthetics. It was through an interview with Ramachandran that I first discovered this new field of study and I was rather impressed with him–so much so that I went and read one of his books, A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness, which I highly recommend. It’s a short book and an easy read for the layperson. What makes it interesting is that he describes how different parts of the brain work by giving real life examples of what happens when those parts aren’t working properly. Yes, there is also a section on neuroaesthetics as well. But I digress.

At the end of Part 1, I suggested that neuroaesthetics is really about color, line, shape, and texture, not art. To begin to illustrate this point, here are several excerpts from one of Ramachandran’s lectures:

…you need to go and look at ethology, especially the work of Niko Tinbergen at Oxford more than fifty years ago. And he was doing some very elegant experiments on seagull chicks.

As soon as the herring-gull chick hatches, it looks at its mother. The mother has a long yellow beak with a red spot on it. And the chick starts pecking at the red spot, begging for food. The mother then regurgitates half-digested food into the chick’s gaping mouth, the chick swallows the food and is happy. Then Tinbergen asked himself: “How does the chick know as soon as it’s hatched who’s mother? Why doesn’t it beg for food from a person who is passing by or a pig?”

And he found that you don’t need a mother.

You can take a dead seagull, pluck its beak away and wave the disembodied beak in front of the chick and the chick will beg just as much for food, pecking at this disembodied beak.

…

But what Tinbergen found next is that you don’t need even a beak. He took a long yellow stick with three red stripes, which doesn’t look anything like a beak – and that’s important. And he waved it in front of the chicks and the chicks go berserk. They actually peck at this long thing with the three red stripes more than they would for a real beak. They prefer it to a real beak – even though it doesn’t resemble a beak. It’s as though he has stumbled on a superbeak or what I call an ultrabeak.

Why does this happen?

We don’t know exactly why, but obviously there are neural circuits in the visual pathways of the chick’s brain that are specialized for detecting beaks as soon as the chick hatches. They fire when seeing the beak. Perhaps because of the way they are wired up, they may actually respond more powerfully to the stick with the three stripes than to a real beak. Maybe the neurons’ receptive field embodies a rule such as “The more red contour the better,” and it’s more effective in driving the neuron, even though the stick doesn’t look like a beak to you and me – or maybe even to the chick. And a message from this beak-detecting neuron now goes to the emotional limbic centres in the chick’s brain giving it a big jolt and saying: “Wow, what a super beak!” and the chick is absolutely mesmerized.

This seems to be Ramachandran’s favorite example as he shares it just about everywhere he goes.

And it makes a lot of sense that herring gulls would have evolved a neurological response to the visual stimulus of that red spot so that certain behaviors would be triggered when Big Momma Gull shows up with dinner.

From this one example it’s only a short step to theorize that we humans also must have neurological triggers of our own. And then from there it is again another small step to think that artists know of and use these triggers in the art they make (subconsciously, that is). “Artists are, in a sense, neurologists who study the capacities of the visual brain with techniques that are unique to them.” But what Ramachandran neglects to mention is that this is hardly an ability exclusive to visual artists alone–it’s in use everywhere. The very same principle is used when making TV commercials and in designing product packaging. There’s a reason stop signs are red. Rooms painted yellow feel warmer than rooms painted blue (even though they are the same temperature when measured objectively). And you can bet there are similar triggers in the other four senses as well (but I won’t go into them there).

But while studying the psychological and neurological mechanisms behind these triggers is a worthwhile endeavor, will it really lead to an understanding of “what art really is”? It may give scientists new insight into the workings of the human brain, it may provide scientific backing for the visual principles artists and others are already aware of, but there is much more in heaven and art than are dreamt of in Ramachandran’s philosophy.

In Part 3, we’ll take a look at Ramachandran’s 10 principles of art.

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Further Reading:
The Emerging Mind: Lecture 3: The Artful Brain
Wikipedia – Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
How Art Made the World: V. S. Ramachandran: The Herring Gull Test
All in the Mind: The Marco Polo of Neuroscience: V.S Ramachandran
Wikipedia – Color Symbolism and Psychology
AlphaPsy – What is Neuroaesthetics About Anyway?

Filed under: Pretentiousness

Discussion: 1 Comment »

One Response to “Neuroaesthetics, Part 2”

1. Aasp:
   June 12th, 2007 at 11:08 am

   superbeaks, ultrabeaksthe secret is in the beak