Brain and Art

Brain and Art PDF

Author: Bruno Colombo

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2019-08-29

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 3030235807

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This book analyzes and discusses in detail art therapy, a specific tool used to sustain health in affective developments, rehabilitation, motor skills and cognitive functions. Art therapy is based on the assumption that the process of making art (music, dance, painting) sparks emotions and enhances brain activity. Art therapy is used to encourage personal growth, facilitate particular brain areas or activity patterns, and improve neural connectivity. Treating neurological diseases using artistic strategies offers us a unique option for engaging brain structural networks that enhance the brain’s ability to form new connections. Based on brain plasticity, art therapy has the potential to increase our repertoire for treating neurological diseases. Neural substrates are the basis of complex emotions relative to art experiences, and involve a widespread activation of cognitive and motor systems. Accordingly, art therapy has the capacity to modulate behavior, cognition, attention and movement. In this context, art therapy can offer effective tools for improving general well-being, quality of life and motivation in connection with neurological diseases. The book discusses art therapy as a potential group of techniques for the treatment of neurological disturbances and approaches the relationship between humanistic disciplines and neurology from a holistic perspective, reflecting the growing interest in this interconnection.

Vision and Art (Updated and Expanded Edition)

Vision and Art (Updated and Expanded Edition) PDF

Author: Margaret S. Livingstone

Publisher: Harry N. Abrams

Published: 2014-03-25

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9781419706929

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A Harvard neurobiologist explains how vision works, citing the scientific origins of artistic genius and providing coverage of such topics as optical illusions and the correlation between learning disabilities and artistic skill.

Arts with the Brain in Mind

Arts with the Brain in Mind PDF

Author: Eric Jensen

Publisher: ASCD

Published: 2001-05-15

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 1416600744

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How do the arts stack up as a major discipline? What is their effect on the brain, learning, and human development? How might schools best implement and assess an arts program? Eric Jensen answers these questions--and more--in this book. To push for higher standards of learning, many policymakers are eliminating arts programs. To Jensen, that's a mistake. This book presents the definitive case, based on what we know about the brain and learning, for making arts a core part of the basic curriculum and thoughtfully integrating them into every subject. Separate chapters address musical, visual, and kinesthetic arts in ways that reveal their influence on learning. What are the effects of a fully implemented arts program? The evidence points to the following: * Fewer dropouts * Higher attendance * Better team players * An increased love of learning * Greater student dignity * Enhanced creativity * A more prepared citizen for the workplace of tomorrow * Greater cultural awareness as a bonus To Jensen, it's not a matter of choosing, say, the musical arts over the kinesthetic. Rather, ask what kind of art makes sense for what purposes. How much time per day? At what ages? What kind of music? What kind of movement? Should the arts be required? How do we assess arts programs? In answering these real-world questions, Jensen provides dozens of practical, detailed suggestions for incorporating the arts into every classroom. Note: This product listing is for the Adobe Acrobat (PDF) version of the book.

Your Brain on Art

Your Brain on Art PDF

Author: Susan Magsamen

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2023-03-21

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0593449231

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A life-altering journey through the science of neuroaesthetics, which offers proof for how our brains and bodies transform when we participate in the arts—and how this knowledge can improve our health, enable us to flourish, and build stronger communities. “This book blew my mind!”—Angela Duckworth, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Grit Many of us think of the arts as entertainment—a luxury of some kind. In Your Brain on Art, authors Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross show how activities from painting and dancing to expressive writing, architecture, and more are essential to our lives. We’re on the verge of a cultural shift in which the arts can deliver potent, accessible, and proven solutions for the well-being of everyone. Magsamen and Ross offer compelling research that shows how engaging in an art project for as little as forty-five minutes reduces the stress hormone cortisol, no matter your skill level, and just one art experience per month can extend your life by ten years. They expand our understanding of how playing music builds cognitive skills and enhances learning; the vibrations of a tuning fork create sound waves to counteract stress; virtual reality can provide cutting-edge therapeutic benefit; and interactive exhibits dissolve the boundaries between art and viewers, engaging all of our senses and strengthening memory. Doctors have even been prescribing museum visits to address loneliness, dementia, and many other physical and mental health concerns. Your Brain on Art is a portal into this new understanding about how the arts and aesthetics can help us transform traditional medicine, build healthier communities, and mend an aching planet. Featuring conversations with artists such as David Byrne, Renée Fleming, and evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson, Your Brain On Art is an authoritative guide to neuroaesthetics. The book weaves a tapestry of breakthrough research, insights from multidisciplinary pioneers, and compelling stories from people who are using the arts to enhance their lives.

How Art Works

How Art Works PDF

Author: Ellen Winner

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0190863358

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"How Art Works explores puzzles that have preoccupied philosophers as well as the general public: Can art be defined? How do we decide what is good art? Why do we gravitate to sadness in art? Why do we devalue a perfect fake? Could 'my kid have done that'? Does reading fiction enhance empathy? Drawing on careful observations, probing interviews, and clever experiments, Ellen Winner reveals surprising answers to these and other artistic mysteries. We may come away with a new understanding of how art works on us."--Jacket.

Reductionism in Art and Brain Science

Reductionism in Art and Brain Science PDF

Author: Eric R. Kandel

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2016-08-30

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 0231542089

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Are art and science separated by an unbridgeable divide? Can they find common ground? In this new book, neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel, whose remarkable scientific career and deep interest in art give him a unique perspective, demonstrates how science can inform the way we experience a work of art and seek to understand its meaning. Kandel illustrates how reductionism—the distillation of larger scientific or aesthetic concepts into smaller, more tractable components—has been used by scientists and artists alike to pursue their respective truths. He draws on his Nobel Prize-winning work revealing the neurobiological underpinnings of learning and memory in sea slugs to shed light on the complex workings of the mental processes of higher animals. In Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, Kandel shows how this radically reductionist approach, applied to the most complex puzzle of our time—the brain—has been employed by modern artists who distill their subjective world into color, form, and light. Kandel demonstrates through bottom-up sensory and top-down cognitive functions how science can explore the complexities of human perception and help us to perceive, appreciate, and understand great works of art. At the heart of the book is an elegant elucidation of the contribution of reductionism to the evolution of modern art and its role in a monumental shift in artistic perspective. Reductionism steered the transition from figurative art to the first explorations of abstract art reflected in the works of Turner, Monet, Kandinsky, Schoenberg, and Mondrian. Kandel explains how, in the postwar era, Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Louis, Turrell, and Flavin used a reductionist approach to arrive at their abstract expressionism and how Katz, Warhol, Close, and Sandback built upon the advances of the New York School to reimagine figurative and minimal art. Featuring captivating drawings of the brain alongside full-color reproductions of modern art masterpieces, this book draws out the common concerns of science and art and how they illuminate each other.

Drawing with Your Artist's Brain

Drawing with Your Artist's Brain PDF

Author: Carl Purcell

Publisher: North Light Books

Published: 2007-04-11

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781581808117

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SEE like an artist, and draw like a pro! If you think you can't draw, it's all in your head. Every time you pick up a pencil, a battle rages between the two sides of your brain: Your analytical brain, which wants to generalize and take shortcuts; and your visual brain, which sees it like it is. This innovative guide helps the "good guy" always win! Following the success of his first book, Painting with Your Artist's Brain (North Light Books), Carl Purcell shows that the secret to creating true-to-life renderings—and overcoming the most common drawing problems—is silencing your bossy logical nature and letting your artistic side do what it does best. Thirteen interactive exercises and 10 step-by-step demonstrations lead you on an in-depth exploration of essential drawing skills: seeing values correctly searching for relationships of angle, size and position defining form with line and edge exploring the relationship between objects and space tying everything together with value patterns making the most of your sketchbook You'll take the same observation-based approach whether you're drawing a pear, a portrait or a landscape. No subject will be beyond your reach, and you'll be amazed at your sudden mastery of drawing!

Boost Your Brain

Boost Your Brain PDF

Author: Majid Fotuhi

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2013-10-01

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 0062199307

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Based on cutting-edge science, Boost Your Brain is internationally recognized neurologist Majid Fotuhi's complete program for increasing brain size and enhancing brain function, including memory, creativity, comprehension, and concentration. Our brains don't have to decline as we get older, argues Dr. Fotuhi. Depending on the things we do or neglect to do, we can actually get smarter and measurably improve our brain speed. In Boost Your Brain, the founder of the NeurExpand Brain Center and host of the PBS series Fight Alzheimer’s Early offers a three-month brain-optimization program—with noticeable results in just a few weeks. Boost Your Brain explores the very latest neuroscience research and offers actionable, authoritative advice on how readers of every age can experience the benefits of a bigger, better brain. Featuring more than two dozen black-and-white illustrations, Boost Your Brain: The New Art and Science Behind Enhanced Brain Performance includes a foreword by Michael Roizen, M.D., coauthor of the bestselling YOU series and author of the Real Age books.

Pictures of Nothing

Pictures of Nothing PDF

Author: Kirk Varnedoe

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2023-10-17

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0691252963

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An illuminating exploration of the meaning of abstract art by acclaimed art historian Kirk Varnedoe "What is abstract art good for? What's the use—for us as individuals, or for any society—of pictures of nothing, of paintings and sculptures or prints or drawings that do not seem to show anything except themselves?" In this invigorating account of abstract art since Jackson Pollock, eminent art historian Kirk Varnedoe, the former chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, asks these and other questions as he frankly confronts the uncertainties we may have about the nonrepresentational art produced in the past five decades. He makes a compelling argument for its history and value, much as E. H. Gombrich tackled representation fifty years ago in Art and Illusion, another landmark A. W. Mellon Lectures volume. Realizing that these lectures might be his final work, Varnedoe conceived of them as a statement of his faith in modern art and as the culminating example of his lucidly pragmatic and philosophical approach to art history. He delivered the lectures, edited and reproduced here with their illustrations, to overflowing crowds at the National Gallery of Art in Washington in the spring of 2003, just months before his death. With brilliance, passion, and humor, Varnedoe addresses the skeptical attitudes and misunderstandings that we often bring to our experience of abstract art. Resisting grand generalizations, he makes a deliberate and scholarly case for abstraction—showing us that more than just pure looking is necessary to understand the self-made symbolic language of abstract art. Proceeding decade by decade, he brings alive the history and biography that inform the art while also challenging the received wisdom about distinctions between abstraction and representation, modernism and postmodernism, and minimalism and pop. The result is a fascinating and ultimately moving tour through a half century of abstract art, concluding with an unforgettable description of one of Varnedoe's favorite works. Please note: All images in this ebook are presented in black and white and have been reduced in size.

Brain Art and Neuroscience

Brain Art and Neuroscience PDF

Author: David Gruber

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-05-05

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1000052117

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The first of its kind, this book examines artistic representations of the brain after the rise of the contemporary neurosciences, examining the interplay of art and science and tackling some of the critical-cultural implications. Weaving an MRI pattern onto a family quilt. Scanning the brain of a philosopher contemplating her own death and hanging it in a museum. Is this art or science or something in-between? What does it mean? How might we respond? In this ground-breaking new book, David R. Gruber explores the seductive and influential position of the neurosciences amid a growing interest in affect and materiality as manifest in artistic representations of the human brain. Contributing to debates surrounding the value and/or purpose of interdisciplinary engagement happening in the neuro-humanities, Gruber emphasizes the need for critical-cultural analysis within the field. Engaging with New Materialism and Affect Theory, the book provides a current and concrete example of the on-going shift away from constructivist lenses, arguing that the influence of relatively new neuroscience methods (EEG, MRI and fMRI) on the visual arts has not yet been fully realised. In fact, the very idea of a brain as it is seen and encountered today—or "The Brain," as Gruber calls it—remains in need of critical, wild and rebellious re-imagination. Illuminating how artistic engagement with the brain is often sensual and suggestive even if rooted in objectivist impulses and tied to scientific realism, this book is ideal for scholars in Art, Media Studies, Sociology, and English departments, as well visual artists and anyone seriously engaging discourses of the brain.