Neuroesthetics, Love and Literature

Finally got around to retyping my notes from the Semir Zeki and A S Byatt's Lecture at University of Bristol a few weeks ago.
Lost my notes twice already, thank you very little safari, third times a charm.

Not ideal, but I am going to organize my notes just with bullets and indentations.

A lot of the notes are very simple/obvious. There was soo much more covered, the main goal of my notes was just to trigger my memory about everything discussed since I couldn't is all down at the time.

Regular type represents notes from the lecture,
Italics represent my personal thoughts and reactions at the time the topics were discussed.

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NOTES


• The potential for reward is in a sense more fulfilling than the actual reward in contributing to happiness

• The anticipation is better than the actual thing

• Transgression of the forbidden, heightens the pleasure, or potential for pleasure

• Freud pinpoints love as the only time that a person goes out of his narcissistic state

•Is love a disease?

- Zeki argues 'yes' in the sense that if you were to go to a hospital to take the reading of your bodily functions and levels you would find chemicals such as serotonin and others that differ from the normal level

- Comparison of love and obsessive compulsive disorder

• Can neuroscience ever explain fully the importance of the metaphor?

• Why is it so important to us that one thing must represent another?

- Art usually seeks to express with metaphors, therefore will neuroscience ever be able to fully explain art

- Zeki never fully argues whether neuroscience will be able to or not

• Zeki speaks of the incapacity of the human brain to fully realize the concepts behind a work of art, if all the metaphors were completely realized, it would destroy the art

(what about the artist? Are they unconscious of the metaphors they are creating? Can they not fully be realized even by him due to his own lack of knowledge of all human nature and instinct? Or is the artist aware, but because meaning may be different between persons, is it that reason it can never be fully realized by anyone other than the person that created it? Is this discussed further in his book?)

• Zeki wonders if you can ever be fully satisfied with a metaphor?
(Possibly because it is always going to be a one-step removed indirect means?)

• The task of art can be so great at times, to create a single metaphot for what is to be expressed

-i.e. artist (name?) wanted to make a painting to represent all of the women he loved but could never have

• Zeki said the only way to have a successful single metaphor is to freeze an experience and not allow it to change or develop
(not fully sure what that means if there is an example of it or if it is only theoretical ideal)

• In mothers, passive activity in their brain when they look at their child (baby) is the same as lovers looking at each-other

- Except hypothalamus is not active (involved with sex)
- Both follow same basic pattern of love in the brain

• Cognitive thinking triggering physical response question asked by audience, such as getting butterflies when you see your lover. Is there are difference between the sexes?

- Seki hasn't seen large difference between male and female brain differences, hasn't seen any convincing evidence that there is a difference

- Male behavior in falling in love is very similar to female, possibly not as complex.

• Audience question about if animals experience love and happiness and attachment in the same was as people do

- Voles-> Neurochemically become very attached to each-other, become suicidal if partner is removed, also happens with monkeys

- Dogs-> Attach themselves obsessively and almost jealously to a particular person, just as people may to each-other

- Animals do have memory and desire, only problem for them is they do not have language to communicate it with
(Debatable? What about whales/dolphins communication with each-other, birds, etc etc?)

• Zeki wonders if even our language is adequate for fully expressing emotions such as love

- A S Byatt argues our language is adequate, while Zeki is not convinced, why then are their some emotions such as love, or powerful visuals experience, etc that are so strong yet intangible so they cannot be described verbally?

• Zeki does not believe in paternal love (audience looked shocked).

He beleieve that fathers see their children as a product of themselves so they have a more selfish/narcissitic love compared to maternal love, which is more genuine.

• Romantic love VS Maternal love

- Both are preparing for agressive behavior,
- Both follow almost same basic brain pattern

- Zeki proposed a 3 year max on passionate love

- Audience member tries to convince him citing Shakespear's Antony and Cleopatra, Zeki is not convinced

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(^A S Byatt on left, Semir Zeki on right)
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TOMORROW! Tuesday, November 25, 2008

SEMIR ZEKI and A S Byatt's Lecture

Neuroesthetics, Love and Literature

6pm at the University of Bristol, Wills Memorial Building, Queen's Road, Clifton


You do not even understand how much I want to meet this man!


more info
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See you there...

Autumn Art Lectures 2008
The Creative Brain: Conversations between Art and Science


25 November 2008
Neuroesthetics, Love and Literature
Semir Zeki and A S Byatt
(obviously going to be related to Zeki's book that comes out this week)

2 December 2008
Art Inspired by Science
Lizzie Burns and Karen Ingham

9 December 2008
In Two Minds: Neuroscience of Perception and Creativity
Mark Lythgoe and Richard Wentworth

15 December 2008
The Power of Art and Science to Understand the World
Paul Nurse and Jason Brooks
CANCELLED!

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All events take place at 6pm in the University of Bristol, Wills Memorial Building, Queen's Road, Clifton.
Open to all, no prior booking.
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Visual Perception + Neuroscience x4

The Neural Correlates of Desire
by Hideaki Kawabata and Semir Zeki



Abstract:
In an event-related fMRI study, we scanned eighteen normal human subjects while they viewed three categories of pictures (events, objects and persons) which they classified according to desirability (desirable, indifferent or undesirable). Each category produced activity in a distinct part of the visual brain, thus reflecting its functional specialization. We used conjunction analysis to learn whether there is a brain area which is always active when a desirable picture is viewed, regardless of the category to which it belongs. The conjunction analysis of the contrast desirable > undesirable revealed activity in the superior orbito-frontal cortex. This activity bore a positive linear relationship to the declared level of desirability. The conjunction analysis of desirable > indifferent revealed activity in the mid-cingulate cortex and in the anterior cingulate cortex. In the former, activity was greater for desirable and undesirable stimuli than for stimuli classed as indifferent. Other conjunction analyses produced no significant effects. These results show that categorizing any stimulus according to its desirability activates three different brain areas: the superior orbito-frontal, the mid-cingulate, and the anterior cingulate cortices.
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The Encoding of Temporally Irregular and Regular Visual Patterns in the Human Brain
by Semir Zeki, Oliver J. Hulme, Barrie Roulston, Michael Atiyah



Abstract:
In the work reported here, we set out to study the neural systems that detect predictable temporal patterns and departures from them. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to locate activity in the brains of subjects when they viewed temporally regular and irregular patterns produced by letters, numbers, colors and luminance. Activity induced by irregular sequences was located within dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, including an area that was responsive to irregular patterns regardless of the type of visual stimuli producing them. Conversely, temporally regular arrangements resulted in activity in the right frontal lobe (medial frontal gyrus), in the left orbito-frontal cortex and in the left pallidum. The results show that there is an abstractive system in the brain for detecting temporal irregularity, regardless of the source producing it.
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Seeing without Seeing? Degraded Conscious Vision in a Blindsight Patient
by Morten Overgaard, Katrin Fehl, Kim Mouridsen, Bo Bergholt, Axel Cleeremans



Abstract:
Blindsight patients, whose primary visual cortex is lesioned, exhibit preserved ability to discriminate visual stimuli presented in their “blind” field, yet report no visual awareness hereof. Blindsight is generally studied in experimental investigations of single patients, as very few patients have been given this “diagnosis”. In our single case study of patient GR, we ask whether blindsight is best described as unconscious vision, or rather as conscious, yet severely degraded vision. In experiment 1 and 2, we successfully replicate the typical findings of previous studies on blindsight. The third experiment, however, suggests that GR's ability to discriminate amongst visual stimuli does not reflect unconscious vision, but rather degraded, yet conscious vision. As our finding results from using a method for obtaining subjective reports that has not previously used in blindsight studies (but validated in studies of healthy subjects and other patients with brain injury), our results call for a reconsideration of blindsight, and, arguably also of many previous studies of unconscious perception in healthy subject
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The Golden Beauty: Brain Response to Classical and Renaissance Sculptures
by Cinzia Di Dio, Emiliano Macaluso, Giacomo Rizzolatti



Abstract:
Is there an objective, biological basis for the experience of beauty in art? Or is aesthetic experience entirely subjective? Using fMRI technique, we addressed this question by presenting viewers, naïve to art criticism, with images of masterpieces of Classical and Renaissance sculpture. Employing proportion as the independent variable, we produced two sets of stimuli: one composed of images of original sculptures; the other of a modified version of the same images. The stimuli were presented in three conditions: observation, aesthetic judgment, and proportion judgment. In the observation condition, the viewers were required to observe the images with the same mind-set as if they were in a museum. In the other two conditions they were required to give an aesthetic or proportion judgment on the same images. Two types of analyses were carried out: one which contrasted brain response to the canonical and the modified sculptures, and one which contrasted beautiful vs. ugly sculptures as judged by each volunteer. The most striking result was that the observation of original sculptures, relative to the modified ones, produced activation of the right insula as well as of some lateral and medial cortical areas (lateral occipital gyrus, precuneus and prefrontal areas). The activation of the insula was particularly strong during the observation condition. Most interestingly, when volunteers were required to give an overt aesthetic judgment, the images judged as beautiful selectively activated the right amygdala, relative to those judged as ugly. We conclude that, in observers naïve to art criticism, the sense of beauty is mediated by two non-mutually exclusive processes: one based on a joint activation of sets of cortical neurons, triggered by parameters intrinsic to the stimuli, and the insula (objective beauty); the other based on the activation of the amygdala, driven by one's own emotional experiences (subjective beauty).
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The big guns.

I dont think I could possibly forget these guys' names, but this is a reminder for a possible thesis direction I need to think more about later...

Rudolf Arnheim




V. S. Ramachandran




Semir Zeki



Don't even try to tell me these guys don't look like a blast.
Arnheim was blatantly a party animal till the ripe old age of 103!
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More than a little excited.

My fav person, Semir Zeki, is coming out with a new book entitled Splendours and Miseries of the Brain: Love, Creativity and the Quest for Human Happiness



It comes out Nov 14th in the UK, and January 27 in the US.
Score for being in London right now!!!

Below is the book's publishers short description, and then the table of contents for it.
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Splendors and Miseries of the Brain examines the elegant and efficient machinery of the brain, showing that by studying music, art, literature, and love, we can reach important conclusions about how the brain functions. The book, whose title is derived from the novel of Balzac entitled Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes, tries to show that there is a huge price to pay, in terms of human happiness, for the enormously elegant and efficient machinery of the brain.
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Table of Contents:

Introduction.

Part I. Abstraction and the Brain.

    1. Abstraction.
    2. The Brain and Its Concepts.
    3. Inherited Brain Concepts.
    4. The Distributed Knowledge-Acquiring System of the Brain.
    5. The Acquired Synthetic Brain Concepts.
    6. The Synthetic Brain Concept and the Platonic Ideal.
    7. Creativity and the Source of Perfection in the Brain.

Part II. Brain Concepts and Ambiguity.

    8. Ambiguity in the Brain and in Art.
    9. Processing and Perceptual Sites in the Brain.
    10. From Unambiguous to Ambiguous Knowledge.
    11. Higher Levels of Ambiguity.

Part III. Unachievable Brain Concepts.

    Introduction.
    12. Michelangelo and the non-finito.
    13. Paul Cézanne and the Unfinished.
    14. Unfinished Art in Literature.

Part VI. Brain Concepts of Love.

    Conte By Arthur Rimbaud, in English and in French.
    15. The Brain's Concepts of Love.
    16. The Neural Correlates of Love.
    17. Brain Concepts of Unity and Annihilation in Love.
    18. Sacred and Profane.
    19. The Metamorphosis of the Brain Concept of Love in Dante.
    20. Wagner and Tristan und Isolde.
    21. Thomas Mann and Death in Venice.
    22. A neurobiological analysis of Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents
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Literally already have it pre-ordered.

After doing so much research into the psychology and sociology of happiness last year in my information design class,
this book seems like it will just bring everything full circle tying that stuff into all of my visual perception research.
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