Neuroesthetics, Neuroscientific Theory, and Illustration from the Arts, by Suzanne Nalbantian

More serious scholars share such an outlook on artistic creation, claiming, for example, that when Virginia Woolf, in To the Lighthouse (1927), connects the lighthouse to the mother figure and thereby evokes “the longterm memory of her mother,” she “was unwittingly acknowledging the limbic underpinnings of her art” (Nalbantian 2008, 363).

Vidal, Fernando and Ortega, Francisco. Being Brains: Making the Cerebral Subject (Forms of Living)....

Abstract

Neuroaesthetics received its formal definition in 2002 as the scientific study of the neural bases for the contemplation and creation of a work of art. The neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux has been engaged in this area of study since l988, notably in his book Raison et Plaisir of 1994. Currently, this field at large is in search of a neuronal interpretation of creativity. To this end, Changeux's neuronal workspace model (1998), as presented again in his 2002 book The Physiology of Truth, offers a comprehensive scheme for understanding the epigenetic dynamism of the artistic process and its network architecture. From her perspective in the humanities, the literary scholar Suzanne Nalbantian conjoins a few selected literary and artistic works of the twentieth-century to illustrate in concrete terms aspects of Changeux's workspace model. This interdisciplinary collaboration helps to focus on the memory component in the creative process of higher-level synthetic brain functioning.

Nalbantian, Suzanne. 2008. “Neuroesthetics, Neuroscientific Theory, and Illustration from the Arts”...

The Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow eye, that opened suddenly, and softly in the evening. Now—

James looked at the Lighthouse. He could see the white-washed rocks; the tower, stark and straight; he could see that it was barred with black and white; he could see windows in it; he could even see washing spread on the rocks to dry. So that was the Lighthouse, was it? 

No, the other was also the Lighthouse. For nothing was simply one thing. The other Lighthouse was true too.

The Day Virginia Woolf Brought Her Mom Back to Life