Combining Neuroscience and Literature

 As I was writing my final paper on the psychological elements in T.S. Eliot's poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, I ran across an article talking about the cognitive neuroscience behind poetry. I based a lot of my final paper on this article by Christina Wu, but I think the science that goes into art is very interesting. There are specific things that an artist can do to trick the human mind and draw their attention. The psychology in T.S. Eliot's poem is enough to talk about for a whole blog post, but I want to focus more on the chemical reactions that happen in the brain when we look at art. 

Different kinds of art affect the brain in different ways. Painting have a different kind of effect on viewers than literature. Paintings allow the viewers to take in all of the painting at once, possibly drawing the eye to one thing that stands out in the beginning, but the whole picture still stands before us. Painters use colors and visual effects to guide the viewers eye through their painting. On the other hand, literature often takes more time to understand. Especially in novels, the reader is forced to take time to read carefully. In a murder mystery, the reader experiences highs and lows throughout the piece before discovering who committed the crime. Both of these mediums of art make the brain want to solve the puzzle. The reason we like looking at art or reading literature is because it is like solving a complex problem, trying to figure out the meaning of all the different pieces. 

I had never really thought about combining art and science the way Christina Wu explains it. She talks about a 'neurological theory of art' and if it is possible or not. There might be some aspects of art that everyone can agree on. The color red makes us think of love, passion, blood, etc. Or possibly that an author can make the reader think something bad is going to happen with dark imagery or foreshadowing. However, it would be really difficult to come up with a theory that expands over all the art forms and the different ways of viewing art. I think one's opinions of art comes from their personal experiences. People often see things in art that they can relate to, which causes a general disagreement because not everyone can relate to the same thing. But I wonder if there is a way to create a theory about art according to cognitive neuroscience...