[인지신경과학] 미술관의 그림을 보고 visual perception과 연관시켜 보기

 
  We internally and selectively note things that are strange and I think something like that can give us satisfaction or feeling of beauty. It is because fundamentally it would be related to some neurotransmitters or action potentials which engage neurons to form new connections. It means we learn something or response actively to something new and become to know about our world more better which may be guarantee for our safety. In addition, neurotransmitters have various functions not only relevant to learning but also to emotion. So, all these things would trigger us to feel kinds of happiness or merry emotions when we appreciate beautiful paintings. In shorts, ‘the new is the exciting and merry’.

At the art exhibition, there are lots of new stimuli which make our eyes and brain work busily. From our two eyes to brain (mainly on ‘WHAT’ pathway), so much information about dots, lines, shapes, colors, and contrast of the paintings excite neurons of visual pathways like a small symphony. Not only freshness, as mentioned in the article (The artist as neuroscientist, Patrick Cavanagh), art pieces are also ambiguous that are mostly different from physical law of real world. Ambiguous cause us vivid action of neurons to percept and pleasure. (like the above process which the new can trigger).
 
  So, the artistic paintings’ properties (new and ambiguous) give a chance to make our own harmony of active neuronal work that can be called, another art or brain art. As a result the process of enormous priming of visual perception neurons toward new and odd paintings can give us pleasure and feeling beauty.

  Move to the second issue, there is a controversy which is about ‘objective beauty vs. subjective beauty’. But I think ending this argue is somehow possible by neuroscience. Neither objective beauty nor the subjective beauty is the core value or right value of feeling beauty. They are just different for neuronal activity.

Figure 1.

Seeing this painting, we can find peoples are doing something busy and assume that place will be agora seem to be support those people with useful information. (The name of this paintings was job supporting center; 직업소개소) 


  Because people have same basic biological mechanism of the brain, the action of neurons when they see artistic features will be same, so they are able to feel some sharing feeling toward beautiful paintings. For example, when I and my friend see the Figure 1 we could feel similar appreciation like little hot but humid air, chattering of many people, and faded dress of them, telling they’re not so rich people.

Figure 2.

 I took a magnified picture of a certain part of the above painting.

  But at the same time, biological factors are also basically composed of variability between individuals, so it can results different preferences toward painting. For instance, as we step forward to see the details of people in the painting (like Figure 2), I and my friend feel preferences at the different points. I feel the texture (embossed brushing) is beautiful but my friend feel their face are interesting. (Although the faces aren’t clearly shown she percepts various kinds of emotional expression.)

  It can be inferred from the above discussion the main key for visual perception is the pattern of neuronal activity of visual pathway. What kind of symphony of visual neuron made decide what we feel. Impression on new and ambiguous painting and similar or different beauty standard between individual are all about which visual-related neurons are activated, which receptive field are associated, which time they co-worked, and so forth. 

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