The artist as neuroscientist

When a flat picture is viewed from different angles, the 3D scene can still be perceived without jarring distortions.


Vuilleumier et al. found that the blurry, fearful face on the right activated the amygdala more than the sharply detailed or unfiltered versions.

The neuroscience of art
Paintings and drawings are a 40,000-year record of experiments in visual neuroscience, exploring how depth and structure can best be conveyed in an artificial medium. Artists are driven by a desire for impact and economy: thousands of years of trial and error have revealed effective techniques that bend the laws of physics without penalty. We can look at their work to find a naive physics that uncovers deep and ancient insights into the workings of our brain. Discrepancies between the real world and the world depicted by artists reveal as much about the brain within us as the artist reveals about the world around us.

From www.nature.com/nature/focus/arts/index.html