Week 7: Neuroscience + Art

Carl Jung

Sigmund Freud

This week’s topic is Neuroscience and Art. Personally, I am not familiar with Neuroscience, and I have never thought that Neuroscience can have any relationship with art. However, I am extremely interested in this week’s topic. As we know, art can be created by our mind and brain. On the other side of the coin, art can also affect our mind. In the lecture, Professor introduces two outstanding psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, and their studying of psychology really does help us learn the close interrelationship between our brain and art.

Poster of movie "INCEPTION"

 Carl Jung has his own theory of collective unconscious, and it suggests that psychic innate dispositions are to represent basic human behavior and situations. The unconscious is universal, so people all experience the understanding of images. Carl Jung explained 5 archetypes, and they were linked to human psyches through exploring the worlds of dreams, art, symbols, religions, and mythology. This recalls a movie which is called “Inception”. In the movie, the main character is trapped by some dreams, and he tries to separate between the dreams and real world. If our dream can really show our unconscious, we need to use our dream to illustrate and understand more of our brain.

fMRI

In the article by Frazzetto and Anker, the fMRI shows us human brain’s images, and they are converted into visual art. It connects the Neuroscience and Art together. Neuroscience is very important for us to understand how our mind works. Neuroscience and art affect each other. Our minds create art while art changes our brain by stimulating its different regions.

In our daily life, every one may have different opinion and understanding of art. Our brain can interpret the images or drawings by what we have perceived in our daily life, such as people, animals, plants or foods. The brain automatically gives meaning to arbitrary images. One person’s standard of beauty may not fit other person's beauty standard. This skill was important for our survival in evolution.

Work Cited:

Vesna Victoria. "Neuroscience+Art Lecture " May 17. 2012. Web.      May 17. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFv4owX4MZo>

Frazzetto, Giovanni, and Suzanne Anker. "Neuroculture." Science and Society 10 (2009): 815-821. Print.

Elizabeth Landau. "What the brain draws from: Art and Neuroscience." Sep 15. 2012. Web. May 17. 2015 http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/15/health/art-brain-mind/

Alva Noe. " Arts and the limit of Neuroscience" Dec 4. 2011. Web. May 17. 2015. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/art-and-the-limits-of-neuroscience/?_r=0

"Carl Jung's Biography." Web. May 17. 2015. http://www.crystalinks.com/jung.html

"Concept of Collective Conscious Jung." Web. May 17. 2015. http://www.carl-jung.net/collective_unconscious.html