ABSTRACT
Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, with the establishment of an association between language and brain regions within the left cerebral hemisphere, there has been a trend in neuropsychology to link specifi c behaviors with discrete regions of the brain. This has largely been accomplished through studies of fractionated cognition following acquired brain injury in neurological patients. The neuroanatomical location of the damage, together with the consequent behavioral breakdown, opened windows on mind-brain associations, particularly those involving language, perception, knowledge, concepts, problem-solving, memory, motor skills, personality, and what are generally considered to be higher cognitive functions. The linking with the brain assumes that the components of the behavior in question are defi ned. By contrast, the association between art production and brain has proven diffi cult because art’s components are elusive. What abilities of Michelangelo’s mind went into painting the Sistine Chapel or sculpting Moses or the Pietà ? What in Monet’s mind controlled his water lily paintings, or in Gauguin’s his Ancestors of Tehamana painting, or in ancient artists’ paintings on the cave walls at Lascaux and Altamira? Similarly, what were the components of Verdi’s mind when he composed Aida ? And what brain mechanisms were at work in the great plays, poems, novels, and ballets that continually remain sources of attraction and fascination? The answers to some of these challenging questions can be explored with the perspectives of neuropsychology.
