Hi! I’m Simon from Nomensa.

This is my presentation

Neuroaesthetics: science

embraces art from UX

Bristol 2013.

I’ve added my notes to each

of the slides. Any questions,

please contact me on

simon@nomensa.com!

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Jan Vermeer painting A girl

with pearl earring c.1665

What does her look mean?

33

Paul Cezanne’s Ile De France

Landscape c. 1880

Such an incredibly detailed scene

using coarse brush strokes and

shapes.

44

Claude Monet Impression Sunrise

c. 1872

The name of the picture has the

name of the art movement

‘impressionist’ in the title even

though it was heavily criticised at

the time.

5

Impression Sunrise in black-and-white.Whilst the sun was the brightest object in the sky in the previous picture it is hardly distinguishable when the colour is removed. The sun should always be brighter than the sun if painting in a representational style. Obviously, Monet knew how to paint the sun and the sky so it would shimmer and therefore by breaking the purely representational style creates something totally new and different: the impressionist art movement.

Neuroaesthetics: science embraces art

So, Neuroaesthetics: science embraces art.Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy concerned with art, beauty and taste has been discussed for thousands of years since the time of Plato. It is obviously pretty important!

This presentation will provide a quick tour of the domain of neuroaesthetics and therefore start by looking at the brain, its function and how insights from this domain can be applied to design.

But firstly, a definition...

“The field of neuroaesthetics, viewed

broadly, is the application of neuroscience to

problems in the psychology of art and aesthetics.”

Skov & Vartanian

It raises an interesting question...

Why are some things beautiful?

Aesthetics can be considered a fundamental part of our lives. Our need to define what is beautiful or not! It covers all of our senses not just vision.

Is beauty a characteristic of an object as Plato believed? Or is beauty a characteristic of the perceiver as Kant outlined in his ‘Critique of Esthetic Judgement’? I tend to agree with Kant, the aesthetic we perceive is in our brains.

Zeki refers to these perceptions of the brain as ‘Brain Concepts’ explaining that they exist in art and love. I believe just as with art we can extend this idea of brain concept to design. Therefore, discovering the general rules of aesthetics can equally be applied to design.

Therefore beautiful design like a beautiful work of art exists in on our brains as an individual and unique brain concept.

What is the function of the brain?

So it brings us onto another

important question.

What is the function of the brain?

“the acquisition of knowledge...”

Zeki

I appreciate that there can be many

different definitions of the brain yet

the one by Zeki is particularity

poignant...

“the acquisition of knowledge in

which the brain is ceaselessly

engaged.”

Simir Zeki is Professor of Neuroaesthetics at the University College of London and founded the Institute of Neuroaesthetics in 2001 at Berkeley, California.

Zeki is known among other things for the discovery of the many visual areas of the brain and their functional specialisation for different visual attributes such as colour, motion and form.

For example discovering neurones in a part of the monkey visual system that would respond only when a particular colour, rather than a particular wavelength, was in their receptive fields. For example, he showed that a red-sensitive neurone would continue to respond to a red stimulus, even when it was illuminated mainly by green light. This was important because it was the first study relating colour perception to single cell physiology in the brain.

This is really interesting and maybe even a little controversial because it challenges the orthodox view that processing sites in the visual brain are separate from perceptual sites but in fact, that processing sites can also be perceptual sites. An idea Zeki calls Micro-consciousness!

An MRI scanner

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMRI), or magnetic resonance tomography (MRT) is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to visualize internal structures of the body in detail. MRI makes use of the property of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to image nuclei of atoms inside the body. MRI can create more detailed images of the human body than are possible with X-rays.

Image showing activation in the Primary Visual Cortex V1

It is important to note that there is no single area where all specialized visual circuitry connect and therefore no single neural center exists and it is more likely to me a neural network.

The architecture of the cerebral

cortex is composed of a few cellular

types, namely Pyramidal or pyramid

cells (a) and Stellate or star cells

(b).

The cortex has 6 layers typically

with layers 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 being

pyramid cells and layer 4 being star

cells.

What is really interesting is the

same anatomical structure can

have such profoundly different

functions. It would be hard to tell

by anatomical analysis the

difference between the areas for

touch, smell or hearing. Compare

this to other areas of the body

where the differences can be vary

obvious even by the untrained

observer looking at the retina or the

cochlea.

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The architecture of the cerebral cortex is composed of a few cellular

types, namely Pyramidal or pyramid cells (a) and Stellate or star cells (b).

The cortex has 6 layers typically with layers 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 being

pyramid cells and layer 4 being star cells.

What is really interesting is the same anatomical structure can have such

profoundly different functions. It would be hard to tell by anatomical

analysis the difference between the areas for touch, smell or hearing.

Compare this to other areas of the body where the differences can be

vary obvious even by the untrained observer looking at the retina or the

cochlea.

brain concepts?

I mentioned earlier a term ‘brain

concept’ but what are a brain concepts?

...there are two kinds [brain concepts], inherited and acquired. The two kinds are intimately linked and one could not exist without the other.”

Zeki

inherited or acquired

The inherited concepts organising the signals that come into the brain so as to instill meaning into them and thus make sense of them.

The acquired concepts are generated throughout life by the brain, and make it significantly independent of the continual change in the information reaching the brain; they make it easier for us to perceive and recognise and thus obtain knowledge of things and situations.

A good example of an inherited brain concept is the perception or seeing of colour. A person with a normal brain cannot control or ignore the colour the see.

We have cells in our Primary Visual Cortex that are orientation-selective e.g. cells that only respond to straight lines.

So horizontal orientation-selective cells will not respond to a vertical stimulus.

Zeki’s consider this brain ability of cells to fire for specific stimuli to represent the neural building blocks of form perception.

Zeki also considers it a form of micro-consciousness that operates below normal cognitive operation.

constancy

Zeki outlines other important functions of the brain; perceptual constancy and abstraction.

Perceptual Constancy allows us to maintain visual stimuli when variables such as distance, viewing angle and illumination change. In other words the brain maintains an object’s ‘constancy’ (example of a banana or a face).

It has been argued that art exposes this constancy because it allows us to capture the essence of an object.

However, abstraction is different and requires hierarchical neural coordination. Therefore, general representation can be applied to many particulars. So in the case of art it externalises the functions of abstraction in the brain. However, the actual processes involved with abstraction are currently unknown to cognitive neurobiology.

Visual brain - Constancy:

“seek knowledge of the constant and essential properties of objects and surfaces, when the information reaching it changes from moment to moment.”

Represents a primordial function of the visual brain.

abstraction

Abstraction:

“the particular is subordinated to the general, so what is represented is applicable to many particulars.”

Memory limitations therefore abstraction allows the brain to behave efficiently within the need for storing and recalling every detail.

Memory is reconstructed after all.

ambiguity

Like abstraction and constancy, ambiguity can be considered a fundamental brain behaviour that can operate at different levels.

Essentially, the brain is very good at producing many different interpretations.

The Necker cube.

A Visual Illusion discovered in 1832 by

the Swiss chrystallographer L. A.

Necker.

It presents an example of a physically

unvarying stimulus and how our brains

produce 3 possibly interpretations which

all are equally valid.

2323

Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci c.1517

What does her smile mean?

It could mean a great many things and

has been described as enigmatic. It

certainly will have more than one

interpretation.

How can we use insights from neuroaesthetics in design?

What insights can we use from

neuroaesthetics?

Just as we have mental models for

everything. We also have inherited and

acquired brain concepts. Maybe

inherited and acquired concepts are the

neurological foundation on which mental

models are generated? The

perspective originated by Kant that the

aesthetic of an object resides in the

mind rather than the object is getting

increasing support from neuroscience.

Pleasure and Patterns

We have known about the role of the limbic system in the perception of pleasure.

We could consider aesthetic perception as the processing of the visual centres in the brain such as V1 in the visual cortex.

We also know that the brain processes patterns in its continual quest for knowledge.

We also know that the more quickly and more accurately we can represent a pattern the more enjoyable it is, e.g. we recognise the face of a mother, father or child more quickly.

Patterns that are ambiguous will increase the number of interpretations we generate. The more interpretations the more information we need to process as well as the potential uncertainty we feel.

Patterns include:- visual layouts, such as pages, and therefore a pages overall symmetry;- elements within visual layouts (recognition of detail e.g. a specific feature or function such as the carousel);-the flow or interaction between pages.

All these elements have an aesthetic that needs to be considered when designing them. The aesthetic is not just the colour or arrangement, and it is also more than the total combined elements. Aesthetics have a Gestalt-like effect.

Thank you for you attention :-)

Final thought: we have become

increasingly aware of the importance of

psychology in the design of digital

systems and interaction. We need to

understand the underlying neurology

and brain behaviours and the

relationship it has with psychology. I

believe as designers we can prosper

significantly from enriching our

understanding of design by learning

more about neuroaesthetics.