neuroscience

Beauty-Brain Connection Worth ?1 Million

Filed under: Art

Semir Zeki is the world's first professor of neuroaesthetics, which means he's the first neuroaesthetics professor to receive ?1 million to figure out how beauty excites the brain.

Have you ever wondered why, when you gaze upon a painting or house or human body, you like it? The expression "whatever turns you on" – ever thought about how? These are the questions Zeki has been tasked to answer, though perhaps in higher-minded form. He is hunting for beauty's exact location in the brain. "In a year's time," he says, "I might be able to tell you it exists for sure and it lies in the activation of these areas [as he points to his forehead]."

But, the professor has some work to do first.

The grant, by the Wellcome Trust in London, is intended to finance his expedition inside the walls of the skull, as he searches for the mechanism that makes the mind perceive beauty.

Zeki agrees with philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in asserting that the act of seeing is not a passive process. This has been confirmed by MRI scans, which show that information seen is separated immediately and shot off to different parts of the brain. Color is processed before form before motion. Landscapes, still lifes and portraits are appreciated in different parts of the gray matter, as well. Then, all these feelings are all brought back together into a mental mixture that results in a feeling toward a particular piece.

Of course, some may not be thrilled with Zeki's work. "Art critics might feel threatened by some of this," he explains. "They may not like the fact that I could say to you that I know that most people will respond to the beauty of the human figure when it is painted in a particular way because of the way receptors are distributed."

[Photo: Painting by Benjamin Krell]

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Tags: aesthetic, aesthetics, art, artist, artwork, neuroscience

Big Givers: First Kavli Prizes Announced

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Big Givers

Could the Kavli prize someday have the same cachet as the Nobel prize? That's what industrialist Fred Kavli is hoping for. The 80-year-old multimillionaire has created what he believes will be the prize to win in the modern age. The Kavli Foundation rewards research in nanoscience, astrophysics and neuroscience, the three scientific fields he believes are most beneficial to the happiness and survival of the human race. Kavli's foundation has established research institutes at Harvard, Yale, Stanford and 12 other universities.

On Wednesday the first Kavli Prizes in Astrophysics, Nanoscience and Neuroscience were handed out to seven winners, from the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands, Japan and the US. Each will receive a scroll, medal and a share of the $1,000,000 prize for each subject. The astrophysics prize was awarded jointly to Maarten Schmidt, of the California Institute of Technology, US, and Donald Lynden-Bell, of Cambridge University, UK, both of whose work underpins our understanding of quasars. The nanoscience recipients are Louis E. Brus, of Columbia University, US, and Sumio Iijima, of Meijo University in Japan, who share the nanoscience prize for their respective discoveries of colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals, also known as quantum dots, and carbon nanotubes. The neuroscience prize went to three scientists who collectively have deciphered the basic mechanisms that govern the development and functioning of the networks of cells in the brain and spinal cord. Pasko Rakic, of the Yale University School of Medicine, in the US, explained how the neurons in the embryonic brain arrange themselves during development into the complex, densely interconnected circuitry of the adult cerebral cortex. Thomas Jessell, of Columbia University, US, has revealed the chemical signals behind the differentiation of early progenitor cells into the complex assembly of different types of neurons that make up neuronal circuits. Sten Grillner, of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden showed how neural circuits in mammalian spinal cords generate motor commands for rhythmic movements such as locomotion. His lamprey model is seen as the first and so far only vertebrate neuronal system controlling an integrated function that is understood at a molecular and cellular level.

Kavli's company Kavlico, which developed sensors for military and civilian aircraft, the space shuttle and automobiles, was sold in 2000 for $345 million and currently his real estate holdings have an estimated value of about $300 million.

[via LA Times]

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Tags: astrophysics, big givers, fred kavli, FredKavli, nanoscience, neuroscience, science