BW: If the reward system is activated when we appreciate art, what is the difference — from a neuroscientific perspective — with other perceptions that stimulate the reward system, such as eating a delicious meal?
AC: There is an idea that dates back to the 18th century by scholars like Immanuel Kant and the Earl of Shaftesbury. They suggested that a core part of the aesthetic experience is “disinterested interest.” It turns out that within the reward system, there are two systems — the liking and the wanting. The idea is that we typically like what we want and want what we like. We go out and seek things that we like, and when we get them, we enjoy them. In the brain, the neurochemistry of these two subsystems is quite different. Wanting tends to be driven by dopamine, a particular chemical in the brain that is also involved in motor behavior and different kinds of learning. So the motivation part of wanting things appears to be driven by dopamine.
As for liking, pleasurable experiences are driven by receptors that are sensitive to opioids and cannabinoids — as such drugs can be used for sedating or calming down. These affect a different system, which has more to do with intrinsic pleasure and less with motivation. However, these two systems can dissociate. For example, you have people who are quite addicted to a controlled substance. They have substantial cravings, and yet once they get the drugs, they don’t actually enjoy it as much as when they had less cravings. You have a lot of wanting and less liking.
We think that the idea of “disinterested interest” is the opposite, and might be at the core of aesthetic experiences. Liking occurs out of proportion to wanting. This state represents an intrinsic, pleasurable experience.
BW: Can you give an example?
AC: I might be in a museum and looking at a painting that I find very, very beautiful. I can approach it in different ways simultaneously. I can look at it and say, “Oh that would really look great in my house, I could impress my friends if I had it in my house.” Or I can say, “I should buy that because I think it is an artist that is on the rise, and five years from now this painting will be valued much higher than now” — thinking of it as an investment. So those are ways to engage with paintings that have to do with wanting. That engagement contrasts with being completely immersed with the painting and enjoying it without anything besides the experience of sheer enjoyment.
BW: Are there any parallels between what goes on in the brain when we perceive art and when we make art?
AC: Production of art is hard to study because many of the studies about perception of art are done with people lying still in a magnetic imaging scanner. It is hard to conduct analogous studies for the people who are producing art, because their head has to be very still to detect a neural signal. It is very difficult to actually move the body to make art.
So we don’t know the precise answer to this question. Some models suggest that the production of art might have some parallels to what happens when we perceive art. If we look at making art, the artist may start with an idea, then sketch out the idea, then work on the details. The general notion is that, on the perception side, you reverse that. You first notice the visual display, its visual form, and then unearth the idea behind the form. You arrive at the point where production probably started.
BW: What about our preferences? Why do we have strong preferences when it comes to art — why do we strongly like or dislike something?
AC: Preferences of natural objects, such as faces and landscapes, tend to be relatively consistent across people. Generally, people agree if you ask, “Is this a beautiful face?” It is a very different story with artwork. As I said earlier, expertise through exposure is one of the elements that produces differences in what people like and don’t like. But art is also very much embedded in the local dynamics of a culture.
Take the example of Marcel Duchamp. A hundred years ago, he put a urinal on a pedestal and proclaimed it art. Later Andy Warhol recreated Brillo boxes, a commercial object, and labeled them as art. Those objects are only regarded as art in a very specific cultural context. If you showed them in a different country, at a different time, people would probably be unable to engage with them. So, people’s exposure to art, and the way in which art is embedded in a culture, has a huge impact on what people like and don’t like.
Another classic example are the impressionists. Toward the end of the 19th century, when the impressionists first displayed their work, they were not appreciated by the art world. Now, people like impressionist paintings more than any other kind of art. Our brains have not changed in the last 150 years. So the response is different because of context, education, and exposure. Those factors determine why people like different things. Having said that, even if you really like Edward Hopper and I really like Henri Matisse, the responses in our brain to those paintings will be similar.
This article is updated from its initial publication in Brain World Magazine’s Summer 2016 issue.
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