Over the years neuroscientists globally have tried to get insight into the cognitive and neural processes that underpin artistic expression. Although past studies have identified several brain areas associated with art creations, there is still little know-how on the comprehensive neural processes picture behind artistic cognition.
Now, Lyon Neuroscience Research Centre (CRNL) researchers have conducted a study focussed on joining the pieces of the puzzle through a review of past studies. The researcher considers studies that studied the neural processes responsible for artistic cognition. The study published by MIT press in the Leonardo journal offers insight regarding the competitive brain processes’ role in artistic cognition.
In the last twenty years, understanding of the human brain has significantly changed and neuroscientists now consider it an ecosystem. Most importantly, this ecosystem comprises of processes competing or cooperating with each other.
One of the study researchers, Dezso Nemeth said that the brain processes competition is very fascinating and it leads to dynamic interactions that explain cognitive performances such as most real-life observations, memory, and learning. Nemeth added that in line with the new understanding of the brain it is easier to get insight into how people see, perceive, and represent the surrounding world. The researcher also added that among the primary functions the study looked at is implicit learning that often correlates with intuition.
In the paper, the researchers took a step towards understanding artistic cognition from the view of cognitive neuroscience. The study aimed to get insight into how the human brain handles art and perceives the world, creates representations, and employs neural processes associated with intuition.
Nemeth explained that their work was a theoretical instigation whereby they linked previous empirical study results in cognitive neuroscience especially those on artistic cognition. He said that the researchers sought to understand implicit learning processes’ role in artistic cognition and how different brain network’s competition can result in enhanced artistic intuition.