Funding: Art on the brain

19 December 2007

Professor Semir Zeki at University College London has received a Wellcome Trust Strategic Award to study what happens in the brain when we create or perceive art and beauty.

This new field - dubbed ‘neuroaesthetics’ by Professor Zeki - combines the arts and humanities with cutting-edge science. His team will use brain-imaging techniques and other tools to measure neural activity when people are engaged in the arts.

These objective measures of subjective experience will help to address ancient philosophical questions, such as: where do the impulse and determinants of creativity lie? How do we appreciate art and beauty, including mathematical and architectural beauty? How is this related to the reward and pleasure centres in our brains - and to the experience of love, including maternal love?

Professor Zeki will be working in collaboration with other neuroscientists at UCL, including Professor Ray Dolan - Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging - who is investigating the role of emotions in decision making.

The research also offers many opportunities to engage the public with science, since these questions - why we respond to beauty, fall in love, and love our children - are ones that intrigue us all.

Image credit: Anthea Sieveking, Wellcome Images