The artist's brain: they are both right!

A new neuroscience study surfaced, focused on what makes artists' brains different from non-artists' ones!

The scientists used MRI to find out, put plainly, what areas of the brain got bigger in people who could draw from observation, and in people who went through artistic training, compared to the average.

Their findings?

"Observational drawing ability relates to changes in structures pertaining to fine motor control and procedural memory, and that artistic training in addition is associated with enhancement of structures pertaining to visual imagery."

The changes also seem to be in proportion to artistic skill.

What is noteworthy is that the three structures that visibly develop more gray matter in us artists are in the right hemisphere, the left hemisphere, and the right side of the cerebellum. There is no "artistic side" neatly located in the "creative" right hemisphere, as the pernicious myth propagated by Betty Edwards claims. Instead, unsurprisingly, drawing is a motor skill supported by visualization.


The science journalists, of course, are blowing this a bit out of proportion. I have encountered the claims that it means that artistic talent may be innate. Even the long pop-science article published by BBC states that:

"The research, published in NeuroImage, suggests that an artist's talent could be innate."

The research suggests little of the sort, yet. It is more than equally likely that the changes in the brain are the result of training than preexisting, because some the same areas are enlarged in people who learn fine motor control, like musicians.

The only way it could demonstrate any support for innate talent would be by finding that children who had preexisting enhanced brain areas ended up in art schools. But that kind of study was not done - and children aren't born able to draw, we all have to start from zero. At most, such preexisting enhanced processor would enable you to learn to draw a little faster. But you still have to learn.

Instead, it is now known that the brain is malleable and adaptable. What this enhancement of brain areas means is that with enough exercise, you can learn to draw. With enough exercise, you can learn visual imagination. There is no magic, just hard work.

Here is the BBC article: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26925271
Here is the original abstract: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811914002237

April 12, 1961

Dougal Dixon's Greenworld surfaces in an interview

This is a page from Greenworld, by Dougal Dixon known for his speculative evolution books like the seminal After Man: A Zoology of the Future. Unfortunately, the two-volume work detailing the prolonged human impact on an alien planet had been published only in Japan:

I hope there is going to be an English version. I haven't even heard of this until I stumbled upon an interview with Dixon by Darren Neish which I recommend to read. Dixon and Neish discuss the creation of After Man and its spin-offs, the complications of getting it published, the new Greenworld book, and assorted tasty paleontology. There are illustrations aplenty, including Dixon's sketches and even maquettes.

 Incidentally, Dixon called Man After Man a "disaster of a project" in that interview. This makes me glad: the thing is as abysmal as After Man is delightful, and this dismissal demonstrates his true integrity. He didn't give detail on that, but you can catch hints of him being co-opted into a spin-off which went into ludicrous deviations he was not happy with.

Go read the interview.