"Art Is in the Eye of the Beholder"
Exploring Neuroscience, Aesthetics, & Performance

PRAXIS 2015
New York University, Department of Performance Studies
February 21, 2015

This lecture-demonstration will offer a historical overview of neuroaesthetics and a critical examination of several issues that confound research methodology in this field. Neuroaesthetics is a nascent, but highly interdisciplinary field of research that examines the neural basis of the human aesthetic experience using neurobiology, psychology, and philosophy. It is a subdiscipline of empirical aesthetics concerned with the cognitive and affective processes engaged when an individual responds to a work of art, a non-artistic object, or a natural phenomenon.

Neuroaesthetics is currently at the forefront of neuroscience, but scholars in this field of research are also part of a grand tradition of artistes, philosophers, psychologists, and scientists who have pondered over the physiological basis of aesthetic creation and appreciation since the mid-eighteenth century. Their works, in conjunction with significant advances in neuroscience, psychology, and imaging technology, eventually led to the development of neuroaesthetics.

Yet, current research in neuroaesthetics still strongly resonates with western notions of aesthetics, and it is essential that a new methodology be developed which takes into consideration cultural differences in the perception and appreciation of art. Neuroaesthetics is also curiously lacking in research on western and eastern performing arts which stem from the glaring challenges of studying non-visual art forms such as dance and theatre in a laboratory setting. If researchers can somehow resolve these methodological issues, then a much more subtle and realistic model of how the brain processes complex art and brings forth an aesthetic response can finally be developed.

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