Artists 'have structurally different brains'

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Artists 'have structurally different brains'

Post by cronus » Thu Apr 17, 2014 10:52 am

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26925271

Artists 'have structurally different brains'

Artists have structurally different brains compared with non-artists, a study has found.

Participants' brain scans revealed that artists had increased neural matter in areas relating to fine motor movements and visual imagery.

The research, published in NeuroImage, suggests that an artist's talent could be innate.

But training and environmental upbringing also play crucial roles in their ability, the authors report.

As in many areas of science, the exact interplay of nature and nurture remains unclear.

Lead author Rebecca Chamberlain from KU Leuven University, Belgium, said she was interested in finding out how artists saw the world differently.

"The people who are better at drawing really seem to have more developed structures in regions of the brain that control for fine motor performance and what we call procedural memory," she explained.

In their small study, researchers peered into the brains of 21 art students and compared them to 23 non-artists using a scanning method called voxel-based morphometry.

These detailed scans revealed that the artist group had significantly more grey matter in an area of the brain called the precuneus in the parietal lobe.

"This region is involved in a range of functions but potentially in things that could be linked to creativity, like visual imagery - being able to manipulate visual images in your brain, combine them and deconstruct them," Dr Chamberlain told the BBC's Inside Science programme.

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Re: Artists 'have structurally different brains'

Post by JimC » Thu Apr 17, 2014 9:45 pm

I suspect my precuneus is very, very small...
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Re: Artists 'have structurally different brains'

Post by mistermack » Fri Apr 18, 2014 9:07 am

Don't believe it.

Anyone can do art. It takes no grey matter whatsoever. Even chimps and elephants can do it.

In Canaletto's day, that might take some skills. Not today.
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Re: Artists 'have structurally different brains'

Post by JacksSmirkingRevenge » Fri Apr 18, 2014 2:22 pm

mistermack wrote:Don't believe it.

Anyone can do art. It takes no grey matter whatsoever. Even chimps and elephants can do it.

In Canaletto's day, that might take some skills. Not today.
I disagree.
Anyone can do bad art.
Good art takes imagination, thought, planning, patience, knowledge and skill.
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Re: Artists 'have structurally different brains'

Post by mistermack » Fri Apr 18, 2014 3:22 pm

JacksSmirkingRevenge wrote:
mistermack wrote:Don't believe it.

Anyone can do art. It takes no grey matter whatsoever. Even chimps and elephants can do it.

In Canaletto's day, that might take some skills. Not today.
I disagree.
Anyone can do bad art.
Good art takes imagination, thought, planning, patience, knowledge and skill.
Problem is, there is no good art any more.

And good riddance. It was over rated anyway.

And hello camera. Shit camera is far better than good art.
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Re: Artists 'have structurally different brains'

Post by JacksSmirkingRevenge » Fri Apr 18, 2014 4:27 pm

Photography is art.
Ok, you don't need a giant precuneus or whatever to operate a digital camera but it requires at least some of the qualities I mentioned to produce something other people might go out of their way to look at. 8-)
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Re: Artists 'have structurally different brains'

Post by Brian Peacock » Fri Apr 18, 2014 9:14 pm

What you do changes who you are.
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Re: Artists 'have structurally different brains'

Post by JimC » Fri Apr 18, 2014 10:25 pm

Brian Peacock wrote:What you do changes who you are.
Cue recent discoveries in brain plasticity...
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Re: Artists 'have structurally different brains'

Post by mistermack » Sat Apr 19, 2014 10:07 am

JacksSmirkingRevenge wrote:Photography is art.
Ok, you don't need a giant precuneus or whatever to operate a digital camera but it requires at least some of the qualities I mentioned to produce something other people might go out of their way to look at. 8-)
Naaaaaaaaah.

Just take lots, and pick the best ones.
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Re: Artists 'have structurally different brains'

Post by cronus » Sat Apr 19, 2014 10:38 am

mistermack wrote:
JacksSmirkingRevenge wrote:Photography is art.
Ok, you don't need a giant precuneus or whatever to operate a digital camera but it requires at least some of the qualities I mentioned to produce something other people might go out of their way to look at. 8-)
Naaaaaaaaah.

Just take lots, and pick the best ones.
A good artist does the same with sketches and composition. It's light, a light show. Not the paint or the pixel. If you can give the light that right nudge then the viewer is in awe. :tup:
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Re: Artists 'have structurally different brains'

Post by mistermack » Sat Apr 19, 2014 10:46 am

Scumple wrote:
mistermack wrote:
JacksSmirkingRevenge wrote:Photography is art.
Ok, you don't need a giant precuneus or whatever to operate a digital camera but it requires at least some of the qualities I mentioned to produce something other people might go out of their way to look at. 8-)
Naaaaaaaaah.

Just take lots, and pick the best ones.
A good artist does the same with sketches and composition. It's light, a light show. Not the paint or the pixel. If you can give the light that right nudge then the viewer is in awe. :tup:
I don't think so.

Put the right name on it, and the viewer is in awe.
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Re: Artists 'have structurally different brains'

Post by cronus » Sat Apr 19, 2014 10:50 am

mistermack wrote:
Scumple wrote:
mistermack wrote:
JacksSmirkingRevenge wrote:Photography is art.
Ok, you don't need a giant precuneus or whatever to operate a digital camera but it requires at least some of the qualities I mentioned to produce something other people might go out of their way to look at. 8-)
Naaaaaaaaah.

Just take lots, and pick the best ones.
A good artist does the same with sketches and composition. It's light, a light show. Not the paint or the pixel. If you can give the light that right nudge then the viewer is in awe. :tup:
I don't think so.

Put the right name on it, and the viewer is in awe.
There's that side too. It's always gonna be the case where the good, the bad, the worst and the best hang out together. Sometimes the worst takes advantage of the best with some bad. :read:
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Re: Artists 'have structurally different brains'

Post by tattuchu » Sat Apr 19, 2014 12:14 pm

So are these artists creating works of art that we're only able to see via brain scan, and we're only now able to see them with modern technology much the same way geoglyphs are only viewable from the air? :what:
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Re: Artists 'have structurally different brains'

Post by cronus » Sat Apr 19, 2014 12:56 pm

The shock art part of the brain is to be found in the madula oblengata, a medium sized knot at the back of the brain on top of the brainstem coincidently responsible for bowel movements.
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