The neurobiology of painting

Today's “higher” cerebral functions seem decided mid‐level when viewed from the perspective of our neurological forefathers. We study language, attention, memory, perception, planning—recently, even consciousness—all without shame. But few will stand up and declare a research interest in art, culture and aesthetics. It was not always so. At the dawn of brain science, such subjects were self‐evident as subjects of proper scientific study. Franz Joseph Gall included gift for music, talents for architecture and poetry, and various faces of love (for offspring, authority and glory) in the 27 independent brain functions of his system of organology. Gall reasoned that variations in these propensities across species, clinical groups and the normal population would be reflected in the size of the brain regions underlying them. However, his choice of the skull as an indirect measure of regional brain size dealt these functions a near‐fatal blow. The first tentative steps towards their rehabilitation have been taken in the last few years, championed by a handful of maverick neuroscientists and clinicians. Clifford Rose stands among them and this, his second edited volume on the arts, focuses specifically on painting, equal weight being given to contributions related to painting in neurological conditions as painting of neurological conditions—a neurological version of Patrick Trevor‐Roper's ophthalmological “World through blunted sight”. Those tempted to the volume by its title will be disappointed by the poor coverage of the act of painting itself, and a conspicuous absence of neurobiology, in the sense of non‐clinical brain science. Indeed, we get the impression that the title owes more to the work's provenance (volume 74 in the International Review of Neurobiology series) than its content. In such an embryonic field, an overlap between contributions is inevitable, here within the volume and with its predecessor. Yet, as a catalogue of painters and paintings with even the most tenuous of links to neurology, there is little to rival it. Neither for the coffee table nor for the academic bookshelf, the niche it falls into is as one of several vanguard works helping to reinstate neuroscientific respectability to the “highest” of our cerebral functions.