The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human

Finally, a fourth, less prosaic reason for art’s timeless appeal may be that it speaks an oneiric, right-hemisphere-based language that is unintelligible—alien, even—to the more literal-minded left hemisphere. Art conveys nuances of meaning and subtleties of mood that can only be dimly apprehended or conveyed through spoken language. The neural codes used by the two hemispheres for representing higher cognitive functions may be utterly different. Perhaps art facilitates communion between these two modes of thinking that would otherwise remain mutually unintelligible and walled off. Perhaps emotions also need a virtual reality rehearsal to increase their range and subtlety for future use, just as we engage in athletics for motor rehearsal and frown over crossword puzzles or ponder over Gödel’s theorem for intellectual invigoration. Art, in this view, is the right hemisphere’s aerobics. It’s a pity that it isn’t emphasized more in our schools.

SO FAR, WE have said very little about the creation—as opposed to the perception—of art. Steve Kosslyn and Martha Farah of Harvard have used brain-imaging techniques to show that creatively conjuring up a visual image probably involves the inner (ventromedial cortex) portion of the frontal lobes. This portion of the brain has back-and-forth connections with parts of the temporal lobes concerned with visual memories. A crude template of the desired image is initially evoked through these connections. Back-and-forth interactions between this template and what’s being painted or sculpted lead to progressive embellishments and refinements of the painting, resulting in the multiple, stage-by-stage mini-“Ahas!” we spoke of earlier. When the self-amplifying echoes between these layers of visual processing reach a critical volume, they get delivered as a final, kick-ass “Aha!” to reward centers such as the septal nuclei and the nucleus accumbens. The artist can then relax with her cigarette, cognac, and muse.

Thus the creative production of art and the appreciation of art may be tapping into the same pathways (except for the frontal involvement in the former). We have seen that faces and objects enhanced through peak shifts (caricatures, in other words) hyperactivate cells in the fusiform gyrus. Overall scene layout—as in landscape paintings—probably requires the right inferior parietal lobule, whereas “metaphorical,” or conceptual aspects of art might require both the left and right angular gyri. A more thorough study of artists with damage to different portions of either the right or left hemisphere might be worthwhile—especially bearing in mind our laws of aesthetics.

Clearly we have a long way to go. Meanwhile, it’s fun to speculate. As Charles Darwin said in his Descent of Man,

false facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path toward errors is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened.

CHAPTER 9

  An Ape with a Soul: How Introspection Evolved

Hang up philosophy! Unless philosophy can make a Juliet…

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

JASON MURDOCH WAS AN INPATIENT AT A REHABILITATION CENTER in San Diego. After a serious head injury in a car accident near the Mexican border, he had been in a semiconscious state of vigilant coma (also called akinetic mutism) for nearly three months before my colleague, Dr. Subramaniam Sriram, examined him. Because of damage to the anterior cingulate cortex in the front of his brain, Jason couldn’t walk, talk, or initiate actions. His sleep-wake cycle was normal but he was bedridden. When awake he seemed alert and conscious (if that’s the right word—words lose their resolving power when dealing with such states). He sometimes had slight “ouch” withdrawal in response to pain, but not consistently. He could move his eyes, often swiveling them around to follow people. Yet he couldn’t recognize anyone—not even his parents or siblings. He could not talk or comprehend speech, nor could he interact with people meaningfully.

But if his father, Mr. Murdoch, phoned him from next door, Jason suddenly became alert and talkative, recognizing his dad and engaging him in conversation. That is until Mr. Murdoch went back into the room. Then Jason lapsed back into his semiconscious “zombie” state. Jason’s cluster of symptoms has a name: telephone syndrome. He could be made to flip back and forth between the two states, depending on whether his father was directly in his presence or not.