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Evolutionary Perspectives 2nd Edition

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Neuropsychology of Art
Neurological, Cognitive, and Evolutionary Perspectives
Second edition

Dahlia W. Zaidel
Second edition published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2016 Dahlia W. Zaidel

The right of Dahlia W. Zaidel to be identified as the author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections
77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

First edition published 2005 by Routledge

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalog record for this title has been requested.

ISBN: 978-1-138-85607-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-85608-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-71993-1 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo
by Out of House Publishing
Dedicated to the memory of Roger W. Sperry, Nobel Laureate, scientist, and artist
Contents

List of figures
Series preface
Preface to the first edition
Preface to the second edition

1 Approaches to the neuropsychology of art

Introduction
Definitions and purpose of art
Why do humans create art?
Early beginnings of art production by humans
Beauty and its role in art and brain evolution
Art production and brain damage in established artists
Sensations, perception, and neuropsychology
Artistic depictions, brain, and neuropsychology
Color, art, and neuropsychology
Music and dance and the brain
Artistic creativity and the brain
Language and art
Language lateralization and disorders of language (aphasia)
Talent and sensory deficits as clues to neuropsychology of art
Neuroaesthetics: aesthetic reactions to art in the brain
Summary
Further readings
2 The effects of brain damage in established visual artists

Introduction
Art production following left hemisphere damage
Art production following right hemisphere damage
Slow brain diseases: progressive neurodegeneration
Neurofilament intermediate inclusions disease (NIFID)
Pick’s disease with semantic dementia
Effects of localized brain damage in literary artists
Effects of dementia on a literary artist
Other writers and visual artists
Dance choreography and the brain
Summary
Further readings

3 The eye and brain in artist and viewer: alterations in visionand color perception

Introduction
Human color vision and the retina
Specialized neural cells in the retina
Visual pathways and the two visual half-fields
Localization of color processing in the brain: effects of brain damage
Health status of the eyes in visual artists
Specific established artists with compromised vision
Summary
Further readings

4 Special visual artists: the effects of savant autism and slow brain atrophy on art production
and creativity

Introduction
 Untypical artists
Savant visual artists
Slow brain atrophy and art
Summary
Further readings

5 Musical art and brain damage I: established composers

Introduction
Composers and slow brain disease
Composers and localized damage due to stroke
Additional composers and brain damage
Neurological consequences in established composers
Summary
Further readings

6 Musical art and brain damage II: performing and listening to music

Introduction
Art of music and language
Amusia and the art of music
Music localization in the brain
Melodies and the role of musical training
Unilateral brain damage in trained musicians
The neuropsychology of singing
Brain representation of musicians’ hands
Music brain activation in fMRI and PET studies
Summary
Further readings

7 Artists and viewers: components of perception and cognition in visual art

 Introduction
Art, perceptual constancy, and canonical views
Hemispheric categorization and perspective views in pictures
Unilateral damage and pictorial object recognition
Disembedding in pictures and the left hemisphere
Figure–ground and visual search in art works
Global–local, wholes, and details in visual art works
Unconscious influences on perception of art works
Right hemisphere specialization, representation of space, and art history
Depth perception in pictures
Convergent and linear perspective in the history of art
Summary
Further readings

8 Neuropsychological considerations of drawing and seeing pictures

Introduction
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD)
Art professor and Sabadel
Handedness in artists
Drawings and the parietal lobes
Drawings in neurological patients
Hemi-neglect and attention
Pictorial scenes: simultanagnosia
Scenes, eye movements, and the frontal eye fields
Summary
Further readings

9 Reactions to art works: beauty, pleasure, and emotions

 Introduction
Beauty as an emergent property of art
Beauty and aesthetics
Neuroaesthetics: brain activity and art aesthetics
Pleasure and the reward system
Experiments on brain activity and aesthetics: some examples
Aesthetics, the oblique effect, and properties of the visual cortex
Left–right perception and aesthetic preference in pictures
Hemispheric aesthetic preference
The special case of faces: biological nature of beauty in faces
Painted portraiture
Beauty in colors: the film
Dancing and the brain s reactions to dance
Neuropsychology and emotional reactions to art
Summary
Further readings

10 Biology, human brain evolution, and the early emergence of art

Introduction
Biology and display of art
Visual arts
Origins of music in human brain evolution
Dance
Symbolic nature of art and language
Summary
Further readings

11 Further considerations: talent, creativity, and imagination

 Introduction
Talent in art
Creativity in art
Neuropsychology of creativity
Art creativity and dementia
Language and artistic creativity: clues from FTD
Left hemisphere art and creativity: clues from savants with autism
Neurotransmitters and art creativity: clues from Parkinson s disease treatment
Imagery and imagination
Complexities of visual art
Summary
Further readings

12 Conclusion and the future of the neuropsychology of art

Lessons from brain damage in artists

Art in human existence
Clinical applications of art: art therapy
Uniqueness of the human brain: clues to art production
Convergence of evidence
The future of the neuropsychology of art

Glossary
References
Index
List of Figures

1.1 Schematic side view (lateral) of the left hemisphere showing the frontal, temporal, parietal,
and occipital lobes.
1.2 Diagrammatic lateral view of the left cortex showing theperi-Sylvian language areas in the
left hemisphere.
2.1 A 19-year-old art student and professional artist with left hemisphere damage in the
fronto-parietal region showed progressive improvement in her artistic expression in the six
weeks that followed an accident (resulting in a depressed skull fracture) and surgery.
3.1 A cross-section of the eyeball.
3.2 A schematic diagram showing a top view of the two hemi-fields and visual pathways.
3.3 A schematic medial view of the cortex, showing the location of the lingual gyrus, fusiform
gyrus, and precuneus.
3.4 When light enters the eye and reaches the retina, the projected image is inverted.
7.1 Different views of a cylinder.
7.2 Overlapping figures.
7.3 Rod-and-frame.
7.4 Global local perception.
7.5 The Necker cube.
7.6 Kohs blocks.
7.7 Being able to complete these figures in the mind’s eye taps right hemisphere specialization.
7.8 Convergent railroad lines and linear perspective, taking into account the way things look
at a distance versus close up, is what interested artists from the very start of the Renaissance
in Italy.
Brain, Behaviour and Cognition

From being an area primarily on the periphery of mainstream behavioural and cognitive
science, neuropsychology has developed in recent years into an area of central concern for a
range of disciplines. We are witnessing not only a revolution in the way in which brain-
behaviour-cognition relationships are viewed, but also a widening of interest concerning
developments in neuropsychology on the part of a range of workers in a variety of fields.
Major advances in brain imaging techniques and the cognitive modelling of the impairments
following brain injury promise a wider understanding of the nature of the representation of
cognition and behaviour in the damaged and undamaged brain.
Neuropsychology is now centrally important for those working with brain-damaged
people, but the very rate of expansion in the area makes it difficult to keep up with findings
from the current research. The aim of the Brain, Behaviour and Cognition series is to publish a
wide range of books that present comprehensive and up-to-date overviews of current
developments in specific areas of interest.
These books will be of particular interest to those working with the brain-damaged. It is the
editors’ intention that undergraduates, postgraduates, clinicians and researchers in psychology,
speech pathology and medicine will find this series a useful source of information on
important current developments. The authors and editors of the books in the series are experts
in their respective fields, working at the forefront of contemporary research. They have
produced texts that are accessible and scholarly. We thank them for their contribution and
their hard work in fulfilling the aims of the series.
Chris Code and Glyn W. Humphreys
University of Exeter, UK, and University of Birmingham, UK
Series Editors
Preface to the First Edition

The artist’s studio, regardless of its location and time in history, is a natural laboratory for
neuropsychology and neuroscience. Unlike the deliberate theory-driven stimuli created in
scientific laboratories for the purpose of deriving models of behavior and the mind, artists
often create their works spontaneously, their productions reflecting the mind in the brain in a
natural setting. Art expression is by and large unique to humans and, basically, no different
from language expression in the sense that both represent diverse communication forms each
with potentially infinite combinations. At the same time, neuropsychological evidence from
artists with brain damage suggests that the two forms are not necessarily related, that is,
language can become severely affected in a given artist following damage while art
expression is only minimally or not at all affected. This in turn raises the possibility that at the
dawn of human brain evolution, language and art were not that closely intertwined. In the
absence of fossil and archaeological evidence to the contrary, this still remains an open
question, and one that will always be difficult to resolve. In the evolutionary scheme of things
art could have developed earlier than language, preceding it not because of its non-verbal
format, but because of its symbolic, abstract, and communicative value; alternatively, art
making and language could have emerged slowly, and in parallel, in the same evolutionary
window. The emergence of both modes of communication likely relied on pre-existing
biological mechanisms and neuroanatomical arrangements that supported cognitive
abstraction, something that probably took millions of years to evolve.
This book is intended for neuropsychologists, neuroscientists, neurologists, psychologists,
anthropologists, archaeologists, artists—advanced students, clinicians, researchers—anyone
working with or who is interested in the human brain, brain damage, and the relationship
between art and brain. It discusses both visual and musical arts.
There are no specific neuropsychological tests that measure the essence of art or its unique
features, whereas there are numerous tests that measure neuro-components of language, and
other types of cognition, and their localization in the brain. We know only a few of the
equivalents of “words” and “grammar” in art although we are able to derive meaning from art
without being aware of its vocabulary and syntax. In the visual arts, for instance, the
vocabulary is based on forms, shapes, and patterns that are represented with angles,
perspective lines, convergence, vanishing points, overlap, light–dark gradations, illusory depth,
canonical views, embedding, texture, medium, colors, shadows, edges, and much more. These
examples name but a few of the alphabetical primitives in the visual arts, and they do not all
have ready interpretations within existing neuropsychological tools or models. Clarifying the
relationship between art and brain has not been top priority in neuroscientific research, despite
the enormous intellectual appeal inherent in the relationship; it is barely in its initial stages of
scrutiny. Moreover, the significance of the full artistic composition, as a whole, lies in
interpreting the cultural (and ecological, environmental) context in which the art is produced
and is experienced. An interdisciplinary approach to the neuropsychology of art is thus
essential.
The core of neuropsychology has been built from investigations of neurological patients
with localized brain damage. However, neuropsychological and neurological reports of artists
with brain lesions are rare, commonly not empirical, and are published by non-artists. In the
majority of those published cases, little information is provided for the immediate post-
damage period, to say nothing of the ensuing few months, and hardly any empirical data are
provided; the reports are based predominantly on observations. With the famous artists, there
could have been an incentive not to hold on to documentation of initial attempts at art
production particularly when preserved art skills emerged subsequently with time.
Documentation of very early works could be extremely useful and revealing for
neuropsychology, even if complicated by the immediate neurophysiological reactions in the
brain to the damage. The best that neuropsychologists can do with the data is be guided by
existing neuropsychological principles (derived and gleaned from non-artists) that tap known
components of general perception and cognition. Exploration of art following acquired
neurological brain disorders in established artists, in artists with congenital brain disorders, and
in artists with sensory deficits, helps build up a broad elucidation of the relationship between
art and brain. All of this is attempted in this book.
Neuropsychologists have traditionally separated sensory deficits from central impairments
in order to be sure that the behavior under study is due to brain rather than to sensory
damage. Sensory issues that are not clarified muddy the neuropsychological picture. For this
reason, clarification of any sensory deficits in artists further informs the relationship between
neuropsychology, the brain, and art. It is particularly important not to ignore deficits in vision
and hearing in a field as little explored as this. For example, in assessing central control of
visual art, eye health has to be taken into account, either explained or ruled out. Exploring the
nature of art from its early beginning hundreds of thousands of years ago through its
development and multi-formed practice, as is done in this book, enhances the potential for
insights into art’s neural substrates and propels the extraction of meaningful patterns. An
understanding of the neuropsychology of art requires an interdisciplinary approach: combining
such diverse fields as neuropsychology, neurology, and psychology with art history,
anthropology, archaeology, and evolutionary and biological theories means talking about
some basic essentials of these fields and creating a knowledge base for the reader. In addition,
society’s preoccupations and expectations at the time of production are invaluable for
obtaining a judicious perspective on the art. In the dawn of human evolution, habitat, climatic
conditions, terrain, predators, food sources, and more, all played roles in what could be
produced by way of art.
The literary and written arts are not examined in depth in this book simply because
neurological cases of literary artists are exceptionally rare. They have ceased to produce
(artistic works) following left hemisphere damage [the second edition of this book illustrates
otherwise], and no published cases with right hemisphere damage from the literary arts are
known to me. Unlike the visual and musical arts, in the production aspect of the literary arts
artists rely heavily (perhaps even principally) on the workings of the left hemisphere. Any role
that the right hemisphere might have in these arts is little explored and is uncertain, largely
because of a paucity of relevant neurological cases. While there is continuing debate on the
components of language to which the right hemisphere contributes (e.g., jokes, humor), in the
normal or damaged brain, there is wide agreement on the main specialization of the left
hemisphere in language functions (see end of Chapter 1 for discussion of aphasia and
laterality). Consequently, for now, it is difficult to meaningfully explore the ways in which
brain damage fragments elements of literary writing and the whole cognitive and creative
thinking that goes into it.
Both the visual and musical arts are explored here; more discussion is devoted to the former
than to the latter. The elements that enter into artistic productions in the artist and the
reactions to them by viewers are important. Questions about the neural substrates of art
(neuro-components) have been a source of deep fascination in diverse and wide scholarly and
scientific fields. Neurological evidence from brain-damaged artists is critical, even if such cases
are relatively rare, because ultimately the damage breaks behavior into units that help shed
light on the artist’s brain and cognition. Extracting and distilling the post-damage artistic
behavior in order to formulate a unitary theory of the neuropsychology of art can, however,
be complicated by lack of uniformity in the behavior.
I discuss the visual and musical arts against the background of early human beginnings and
the biological origin and significance of the practice of art, as well as the effects of brain
damage on art productions by established artists. I consider, too, special groups of artists such
as autistic visual savants, and dementia patients. I examine the relationship between art and
functional localization in the brain, hemispheric specialization, handedness, the health status of
the eye, neurocognitive abilities and the brain, stored concepts in long-term memory and
experience, emotions, film (cinema), colors, talent, creativity, beauty, art history, and relevant
neuropsychological issues. The bottom line in art production is talent, an elusive, ill-defined
attribute, which, considering the evidence presented in this book, may be diffusely represented
in the brain and thus explain preservation of skills and creativity despite neurological damage.