I'm not in this area per se, but I recently read an old paper that gives me an idea of how recognition memory might influence aesthetic judgements. The paper is called "Preattentive Mere Exposure Effects." It's actually from the Journal of Consumer Research, but it cites a lot of the old Robert Zajonc research on the mere exposure effect. I haven't read anything by Zajonc in a long time, but my understanding is that a big explanation for mere exposure is perceptual fluency. Repeated exposure increases the ease with which a stimulus is processed, and ease with which a stimulus is processed is associated with positive affect. Now perceptual fluency can enhance recognition, or even lead recognition memory illusions. Perhaps one might be exposed to a ubiquitous image like the Mona Lisa, but never really pay attention to it. One day, one might look at the Mona Lisa and get a sense that it's familiar. Part of it would be ease with which the stimulus is processed and part of it could also be true recognition. One wouldn't have to explicitly remember having ever seen it to recognize it. Tulving distinguished between the "Remember" and "Know" judgements because he believed that remember judgements relied on the episodic memory system and know judgments relied on the semantic memory system. Since this sense of familiarity, enhanced by perceptual fluency, has no episodic source memory, the familiarity might be interpreted as liking the Mona Lisa.

At least, that's my idea. I'm not sure how well I've interpreted the literature, but perhaps recognition and perceptual fluency could influence our aesthetic preferences over time. Hence, one of our memory systems could enhance our appreciation of fine art without our conscious awareness.

I've written a paper that goes some way to explain this effect. It's based on traditional schemata (PDP) theory. The idea is that familiarity is created as schemas are formed. These are 'thought nuggets' that don't need to be broken down - we know what they mean. Schemas (the known') can be processed automatically - using a latent attentional system that uses very little juice (dopamine). The unknown - aberrant perceptions, on the other hand require more dopamine, and they draw much more attention. They may (as William James put it) "quite literally take possession of the mind." The paper discusses familiarity and the neuroscience behind it and the saliency phenomena. It does so in an attempt to explain schizophrenia, a bizarre condition that plays havoc with 'normal' saliency ques and memetic processes. Take a look (Golembiewski, J. (2013). "The subcortical confinement hypothesis " Curēus 5(5): e118. http://www.cureus.com/articles/2248-the-subcortical-confinement-hypothesis-a-neurological-model-for-schizotypal-hallucinations#.Uuhk1Hd9Jcw )

Hi!

Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel has written a book "Age of Insight" (2012) where he focus on art and neuroscience. A brilliant book.

Dear Paul, a fascinating cross disciplinary question. While I have read Samit Gupta's interesting post above, I would disagree that there is no literature on the subject. Some interesting reading:

1. Bell's 1844 book "The anatomy and philosophy of expression"

2. Eric Kandel's 2012 book " The age of insight" which looks at art from 1900 onwards, illustrated with pictures by Klimt, Kokoshka, Schiele and van Gogh ;(qv :http://ljcdsneuro2011.wikispaces.com/file/view/The+Age+of+Insight+byEric+Kandel.pdf).

3. " In the eye of the beholder" (Oxford University Press) by Andy Young and Vicki Bruce based on an exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1998.

4. Degas was fascinated with anatomy and physiology in the production of his own art, and there was a useful exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art, London, I think the catalogue of the exhibition was published last year.

5. Evidence from face perception after brain injury: Brain (1993), 116, 941

6. Evidence from neuroimaging in Capgras delusion. Psychopathology (1994), 27, 211

Hope this helps

I would also like to emphasize that indeed there is some literature on this topic which (it seems to me) is a particularly interesting one for many researchers, because it combines their hobby and job.

Additionally to the works mentioned above (I really enjoyed Kandel's book), there is also a very formal approach to aesthetics in the fine arts, truly focusing on the importance of memory:

Leder, H., Belke, B., Oeberst, A., & Augustin, D. (2004). A model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments. British Journal of Psychology, 95(4), 489-508.

There is also Patrick Cavanagh's 2005 article in Nature 434, 301-7, where he said on the same subject “Impressionism and Cubism in particular rely on this memory-based reconstruction to complete scenes from partial representation.” Artists, he writes, use “an alternative physics” because certain deviations from true physics “do not matter to the viewer". The artist “can take shortcuts presenting cues more economically.”

Avijit Datta's comment has also reminded me of one line of research in aesthetics that is very tightly linked to memory - namely processing fluency. Such theories basically state that something that can be easily processed elects more positive affect which in turn leads to a more positive aesthetic judgement. One might argue that pictures which need only little working memory capacity are more fluently processed, thus establishing a direct link between memory and aesthetic judgement.

Two related articles would be:

Belke, B., Leder, H., Strobach, T., & Carbon, C. C. (2010). Cognitive fluency: High-level processing dynamics in art appreciation. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 4(4), 214.

Reber, R., Schwarz, N., & Winkielman, P. (2004). Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure: is beauty in the perceiver's processing experience?. Personality and social psychology review, 8(4), 364-382.

This work is on music - not visual art, but it's a very good example of how visual neuroscience art research might proceed. Great fine art play with a complex interaction between the familiar (too familiar is boring) and unfamiliar (too random doesn't connect with any prior memory).

Science 12 April 2013:

Vol. 340 no. 6129 pp. 216-219

DOI: 10.1126/science.1231059

Report

Interactions Between the Nucleus Accumbens and Auditory Cortices Predict Music Reward Value

1. Valorie N. Salimpoor1,2,3,*,

2. Iris van den Bosch4,

3. Natasa Kovacevic2,

4. Anthony Randal McIntosh2,

5. Alain Dagher1,

6. Robert J. Zatorre1,3

+ Author Affiliations

1. 1Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3A2B4, Canada.

2. 2The Rotman Research Institute, Toronto, Ontario M6A2E1, Canada.

3. 3BRAMS International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

4. 4Utrecht University, 3508 TC Utrecht, Netherlands.

1. ↵*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

Editor's Summary

Dear John, thanks for the reference. I agree with what you are dying about music and that the same, or analogous processes are at work in the appreciation of art. I have read some work on this but the authors elude me at the moment. Does anyone else know about this?

Dear Aenne, thanks for the 2 links. This sounds very interesting.

A possible intriguing link between the creative process and memory:

- One romantic view about the personality of an aritist is that of a highly authentic individual, sensitive for subconscious shifts or absurdities in society, expressing this in his work and being ahead of his time, considered to be a misunderstood genius.

- Latent Inhibition (LI) is a measure in psychology for the the capacity to ignore irrelevant stimuli and to respond with relevant adaptation to the actual context. A high LI stands for high adapted behaviour.

- In shizophrenic patients LI is significantly reduced ("disrupted"). When treated with neuroleptics LI normalizes.

- In highly intelligent and succesfull people however, LI can also be lower, hence this test has been associated, not with madness alone but on the contrary with creativity also, as associative originality.

- It has become popular to link artistic authenticity, geniality to dissociate objects from their usual context in unusual associations with a personality trait in which LI would be lowered. Association between geniality and madness (1).

Central circuits of interest:

- A circuit playing a role in attention, selection and memory of contextual relevancy is situated in the medial forebrain (medial septum & vertical limb of diagonal (2) band of Broca) with the hippocampus (long term memory), is necessary for LI..

- Of course artistic expression can also be considered to be a learned skill, based on performantial memory (basal ganglia - cerebellum) in the relation from master to trainee in learning tradition and actualizing it in the present.

- Recognizing patterns has been studied in "adaptive resonance theory" ("ART") (3). But concerning aesthetic recognition of patters, this line of inquiry seems still philosophical to me (4).

- Work has been done to find correlation with neural foundations of esthetic appreciation with functional imaging (magnetoelectroencephaolgraphy): they found greater cortical synchronization when the subject perceived something as beautiful versus non-beautiful (5).

- Work has been done on affective preference due to recongition of symmetric patterns (6).

Neuroscience-memory-fine art: fascinating :-).

(1) Schizophr Bull. 2010 Mar;36(2):388-99. doi: 10.1093/schbul/sbn098. Relating schizotypy and personality to the phenomenology of creativity. Nelson B, Rawlings D.

(2) Learn Mem. 2014 Jan 17;21(2):105-18. doi: 10.1101/lm.032433.113.

Learning to ignore: A modeling study of a decremental cholinergic pathway and its influence on attention and learning. Oros N, Chiba AA, Nitz DA, Krichmar JL. Neural Netw. 2013 Jan;37:1-47. doi: 10.1016/j.neunet.2012.09.017.

(3) Adaptive Resonance Theory: how a brain learns to consciously attend, learn, and recognize a changing world. Grossberg S.

(4) A universal model of esthetic perception based on the sensory coding of natural stimuli. Christoph Redies, Institute of Anatomy I, School of Medicine, Friedrich Schiller University, D-07740 Jena, Germany.

(5) Prog Neurobiol. 2011 Jun;94(1):39-48. doi: 10.1016/j.pneurobio.2011.03.003.

The neural foundations of aesthetic appreciation. Cela-Conde CJ, Agnati L, Huston JP, Mora F, Nadal M.

(6) Emotion. 2012 Oct;12(5):1021-30. doi: 10.1037/a0026924. Implicit affective evaluation of visual symmetry. Makin AD, Pecchinenda A, Bertamini M.

Thanks Jean, you have given me a lot to think about and to read. I may get back to you afterwards if that's okay? Thanks.

Of course, I'm glad you enjoyed the contribution :-).

Paul, When you say "fine art," I assume you mean the experience of fine art, and primarily visual fine art. Unless we have good measures of the experience of fine art across time, we have no criteria against which to estimate the associated neuroscience processes. The last time I looked, philosophers and students of fine art were quite wary of measuring the quality of this experience - as a viewer scans across a painting for example. And we might expect this experience to vary with expert scholars' measure of the absolute quality of the art, and the sophistication of the viewer etc. And we'd need controls - art that is not "fine." Until these basic cognitive/affective issues have been studied, I see little basis for identifying fine art experience to neuroscience processes.

Allow me to respectfully partially disagree with John Antrobus. I think neuroscience and psychology could study the experience of enjoying fine art. Let me first say that it's a great point that philosophers and students of art are wary of measuring the quality of experience. I've had friends who studied philosophy and a lot of them don't even want to define "art," let alone distinguish between fine and non-fine art. And that argument is beyond what science can or should address. But what science can investigate is what areas of the brain are involved in aesthetic pleasure. What nuerotransmitter systems are involved? Are different areas involved in the enjoyment of music as opposed to the enjoyment of visual art? Does self reported enjoyment of a painting predict the strength of activation in certain areas? How does the brain react to a work of art from an unfamiliar culture? Does the brain's response to unfamiliar forms of art change over time? These are all answerable empirical questions. No science will ever have all of the answers, and neuroscience will likely never be able to answer big questions like, "What demarcates art from non-art," or "what demarcates fine art from kitsch?" However, it can get a handle on what the brain is doing during enjoyment of art. And that could be a contribution that could actually be of interest to students of art.

Hello Paul

to return to your original question "What role does memory play in the appreciation of fine art (paintings, drawings, sculpture, print-making etc)."

Some responders have addressed questions of the nature of art. As an artist, I will address the question of memory. What do you mean when you use the term 'memory'? Clearly every reaction (beyond reflex) I have to anything is related to memory of some sort. I may innately associate the small of grilling hamburger with nutrition, but billboard images of big macs and recollections of greasy spoon diners are present almost immediately. Is knowledge of a language 'memory'? If I had never learned to see pictures the way we do in the western tradition, I would not relate to paintings the way I do. Memory seems to be central to to human culture. Any cultural artifact has meaning only because it is recognised as such. So (as perhaps Merlin Donald might argue) culture exists as a parallel mirroring of exograms and memory. (?)

You make good points Simon. Are you aware of any neuroscience research into this area?

Thank you for your thoughts Eric which I find interesting. Perhaps what differentiates fine art from non-art or art which is non-fine-art at the neurological level is that the areas of the brain that are involved along with the visual areas may differ for each of these?

Paul -

"Perhaps what differentiates fine art from non-art or art which is non-fine-art at the neurological level is that the areas of the brain that are involved along with the visual areas may differ for each of these?"

Paul, I'm dubious. The notion of 'Fine' art is culturally and historically specific. What is 'fine' art anyway? What is the difference between fine art and non-fine-art and non-art? As a lifelong artists and teacher, while I value the work of certain art and artists, the distinction between high and low art seems unclear and shifting. That's the nature of art.

Eric -

"How does the brain react to a work of art from an unfamiliar culture? Does the brain's response to unfamiliar forms of art change over time? These are all answerable empirical questions."

They may be empirically answerable question but that does not mean the answers would be useful. The question 'what color car goes fastest' is also empirically answerable, but that doesn't mean the answer is worth much.

Recently I heard of a neuroscience experiment which claimed to demonstrate that the estimation of distance in time, space and social 'distance' occurred in in the same brain area. This is a typical case of getting the right answer to the wrong question. I'd wager that that brain area would also fire up when judging the relationship between colors or verbs. ie that brain area senses proximity in some abstract sense. It does not prove some dubious association between time and sociality.

According to Lakoff et al, the physical experience of, ie, nearness and farness - embodied experiences - give rise to the possibility of deploying the concept in an abstract sense.

Simon, I was making a similar point to you but this didn't come across. What I meant was that visual art is visual art at the neurological level and is distinguished by visual characteristics. Art, fine art and non-art based visual stimuli may be associated with other regions of the brain not necessarily associated with the detection of visual stimuli but with associating meaning to these.

Simon, in terms of your response to Eric saying "How does the brain react to a work of art from an unfamiliar culture? Does the brain's response to unfamiliar forms of art change over time? These are all answerable empirical questions." my last posting to you represents my thoughts here. I also feel that your comparison between questions such as "Does the brain's response to unfamiliar forms of art change over time?" and "what color car goes fastest" is a little unfair as answers to the former would probably be based within certain theories whilst the latter is somewhat fascicle and a different quality of enquiry.

As to your second point about brain area proximity, I agree with you that caution needs to be employed here. To simply know that certain different stimuli produce responses in similar areas of the brain is of limited use. I feel that as neuroscience has developed, as is developing further, much more theory driven research is being undertaken. We have a lot more knowledge about neuroscience which enables better hypothetical models based upon the findings of previous research to be proposed and tested. I think there will be a change over the next decade in neuroscience research and the statements that arise from this. I would be interested to hear from others, more qualified than I, who have an opinion.

In your last statement Simon, I agree. Were Lakoff teal saying that a concrete phenomena must first exist before we are able to think abstractly about this?

Hi Paul

"Art, fine art and non-art based visual stimuli may be associated with other regions of the brain not necessarily associated with the detection of visual stimuli but with associating meaning to these."

No doubt. But I also want to maintain space for a not-so-internalist view of aesthetic experience. My critique of neuroaesthetics is that it - in certain quarters - has a theoretical retrogressive tendency, wanting to find the location of aesthetic experience (exclusively) in the brain. I do not support this tendency.

" I also feel that your comparison between questions such as "Does the brain's response to unfamiliar forms of art change over time?" and "what color car goes fastest" is a little unfair"

To be fair, I should have omitted the sentence ("How does the brain react to a work of art from an unfamiliar culture? ) from my quotation. I was really referring to the first question. While I offered a simplistic examply otoh, in order to make clear my objection, I apologise to Eric if my response came across as parody, not intended.

"I think there will be a change over the next decade in neuroscience research and the statements that arise from this." I agree

"Were Lakoff teal saying that a concrete phenomena must first exist before we are able to think abstractly about this?" Yes, that is their general position. ;concepts' arise as a generalisation or abstraction upon sensorimotor experience, AND the concepts reside in those sensorimotor circuits! See attched paper which I highly recommend