On Sat, 11 Dec 1999, mcbride3 wrote of Bruno Deschenes:
> But I feel that his argument is a mixture of intuitions and half
> baked science.
Pardon me if I make the same statement back to Mr. McBride. The idea he
supports that on physiological terms perception is all the same is not,
from my perspective, valid.
The physical properties of the neuronal connections in the visual system
and the auditory system are not precisely the same. Even the physiology
of the individual nerve cells involved is only the same in the most
surface reading -- they make spikes. It is not just a question of the
brain's geography, unless you want to say that the Rocky Mountains are
just like the White Mountains except for location on the continent.
Climbers and geologists both would argue the point.
> It is complex, isn't it?
It is. The neural connections are not just wires, but rather adjustable
inputs with dynamic gain control. The processing circuitry is another
story entirely, and then there's the feed-in from the processing centers
to the association cortices...
The brain is a gray box, in that we know enough about it that it is not a
black box, yet not enough to say that we know how it works.
> For David Zaig's problem, however, it doesn't seem to say much for
> Brain activity. What it does suggest is that if one wants discuss
> aesthetic issues in terms of brain studies, then it will be necessary to
> really do just that: Discuss aesthetics.
Then let me start by throwing out one neurobiological answer to David's
question about why some art appeals and some does not: The brain responds
to familliar patterns, even those it does not consciously recognize.
Here's the experiment: Subjects were presented with pairs of simple black
and white pictures which had no emotional valence, two different kanji to
someone who doesn't know Asian languages, for example. They are
asked to pick which of the two they prefer. Unknown to the subjects,
right before the images are presented, one of the two is presented in what
is called a masked format. In other words, it is presented so quickly and
in such a way that the subjects have no conscious memory of it. When the
two images are presented, the subjects will tell you that they don't
recognize either of them. Yet when choosing a prefered image, they almost
always choose the one that had been presented in a masked format.
Now I realize that this experiment has nothing to do with ideas of form or
the sorts of patterns and symmetries that humans tend to find appealing.
It is also counter to the neophile nature of most academics and other
highbrows. My point is that aesthetic choices made by individual people
will be informed by what they have seen before, whether consciously or
not.
Peg.
M. S. AtKisson
Department of Neuroscience
Tufts Medical School
Boston, MA.
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