This is Your Brain on Art
The Washington Post
By Sarah L. Kaufman, Dani Player, Jayne Orenstein, May-Ying Lam, Elizabeth Hart and Shelly Tan
Published Sept. 18, 2017
WHEN WE EXPERIENCE ART, WE FEEL CONNECTED TO SOMETHING LARGER. WHY?
If you think about it, having a great time at the theater defies logic in many ways. We’re surrounded by strangers, bombarded with unusual images and often faced with a wordless language of symbols. Yet, on a good night, we generally laugh more, cry more and enjoy ourselves more at a live performance than when we’re watching TV at home. We may even lose ourselves and feel connected to something larger. How does this happen?
Some of the answers to art’s mysteries can be found in the realm of science. Art is considered the domain of the heart, but its transporting effects start in the brain, where intricate systems perceive and interpret it with dazzling speed. Using brain-imaging and other tools of neuroscience, the new field of neuroaesthetics is probing the relationship between art and the brain.
WE LOVE TO BE ENTERTAINED IN A CROWD
Social connection is one of the strengths of our species — it’s how we learn from others by imitation. We’re keenly attuned to the emotions and actions of people around us, because our brains are designed for this.
If, for example, you’ve ever gone to an experimental performance-art piece where there’s hardly anyone in the audience but you, and you’ve felt a little exposed and awkward, this is why. We crave social connection. And the cues we get from those around us help our brains make sense of our surroundings. This starts from the moment we walk into a crowd.
SOCIAL CONNECTION IS A KEY FUNCTION OF OUR BRAINS
It helps us make sense of human behavior, a large part of which is evaluating movement and emotion within us and around us. Our brains like to share emotions with others. This is just one reason that seeing a live performance — a concert, play, opera, etc. — is a neural rush. With our brain’s capacity for emotion and empathy, even in the wordless art of dance we can begin to discover meaning — and a story.
WE LOVE A STORY
A narrative conveys information from one person’s brain to another’s in an effective way. We can learn vicariously through another’s experience from a safe space, without really being involved, which is why storytelling is so powerful.
We embark on a journey constructed by someone else, and, as we’ll see using the ballet “Swan Lake” as an example, we can empathize with what the characters go through without suffering the full force of fresh heartbreak.
MOVEMENT IS IRRESISTIBLE
Major parts of the brain are mainly concerned with movement and sending motor commands to our muscles so that our bodies can function and we can move as we need to for survival.
The brain is highly stimulated by motion, body language, facial expression, gestures — all the motor perceptions that could affect survival and our success in social settings. These elements combine in the “Swan Lake”
But we’re not only visually pulled to the movements of others. We feel them, in some small way, in our bodies.
When we watch a dancer spring across the stage, we may experience a little internal hippity-hop, too. According to the mirror system theory, our brain automatically mimics other people’s actions through its motor system. Let’s look at this through a series of moves, step by step.
When a dancer leaps or turns, we may empathetically feel a soaring sensation in response.
Many scientists believe we map other people’s actions into our own somatosensory system, which conveys sensation through the brain and body and helps us feel the emotions we perceive in others as if they were our own.
This allows us to take in a performer’s separate motions as one psychologically rich phrase.
A series of jumps can become an expression of yearning, because we automatically grasp the emotion attached to it.
THE LOGIC OF ART IS A NEURAL TURN-ON
Scientists studying various aspects of the arts believe certain components especially excite the brain. Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran proposes several universal laws of art, or common patterns found in works of art across time and cultures. These principles powerfully activate our visual centers. In theory, they tap into evolved survival responses. Among those found in “Swan Lake” are:
Isolation
Singling out one element helps the brain block other sensory information and focus attention. This magnifies our emotional reaction, especially when the element is simplified to bare essentials. Odette is set apart from the rest of the cast, and she is recognizable as a swan with just a few gestures.
Contrast
The brain detects boundaries best when the edges are distinct, especially for objects next to each other. The black-and-white color scheme of “Swan Lake” sets the main characters apart.
Metaphor
Linking seemingly unrelated elements can heighten emotion and empathy. Our brains create meaning from Odette’s swan movements, and this deepens our perception of her pain.
BODY SHAPES STIR DIFFERENT EMOTIONS
Neuroscientist Julia F. Christensen and her colleagues at City, University of London, had subjects rate their emotions triggered by brief, silent videos of ballet dancers, with neither music nor facial expressions to influence them.
Soft, round and open body shapes elicited positive feelings, as in Odette’s whirling images of flight.
Edgy body shapes triggered negative emotions, such as the Black Swan’s spiky, asymmetrical moves. They’re impressive but also a little alarming.
MUSIC IS THE PERFECT PARTNER
In another study, Christensen and her colleagues showed subjects silent dance clips and ones that included music. The subjects wore fingertip sweat-detection devices to monitor their raw emotional responses.
In Christensen’s study, when the music and dance matched — that is, sad music plus sad dancing — the subjects’ bodily responses and their reported feelings were stronger. If the music did not match, the responses were weaker.
Something happens when emotionally compatible music and dance combine, which is more powerful than a random combination.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
When you go to the ballet — or any other show — you’re entering into a highly controlled experience. If everything works as planned, all the elements contribute to a kind of shared consciousness. In effect, your billions of brain cells are interacting with billions of other brain cells, busily making the microscopic connections that yoke together the brains of those present with an almost inescapable force.
This happens from the moment we automatically tune ourselves to the audience. Soon we’re watching a story unfold that connects us with the performers, vicariously feeling and making meaning out of the actions on stage, responding to the magnetism of specific visual cues, experiencing heightened emotions as music and movement entwine and even bonding with those around us. It’s just as the artists — choreographers, directors, playwrights, composers, performers — intended. And this magical transformation starts within the architecture of one brain.
Yours.
Art has emerged from the human brain for tens of thousands of years, and every human culture makes it. Yet scientists are only beginning to understand how the brain perceives and produces art, and why.
Like so many artworks, the brain is largely an object of mystery. One secret yet to be discovered is how the fragile folds of matter locked inside our skulls can not only conceive art, create it and contemplate it, but can also experience being transported by it, out of the head, out of the body, out of space and time and reality itself.