麻豆约拍

In this week鈥檚 show Adam joins a cognitive neuroscientist working with a dancer. The neuroscientist is Dr. Emily Cross from the University鈥檚 School of Psychology and the dancer is Riley Watts from the Forsythe Dance Company. Together, they鈥檙e exploring what鈥檚 happening in our brains when we watch a dancer in action.

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In February 2012, Emily employed video and motion capture techniques to record Riley dancing. She then used functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) to scan his brain while he watched these videos. This gave her a picture of which areas of a dancer鈥檚 brain respond most strongly to watching dance and she鈥檚 comparing this with the pattern in a non-dancer鈥檚 brain as they watch the same video.

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This work sheds light on a new area of psychology called neuroaesthetics which aims to understand why our brains find something beautiful, whether it鈥檚 a piece of art, a piece of music, a poem or a dance performance.听 Adam asks whether we鈥檙e hard-wired to appreciate a piece of art. Is a template for beauty and good art buried deep in everybody鈥檚 subconscious? Or is beauty simply in the eye of the beholder?

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Adam also talks to Emily鈥檚 colleagues at the School of Psychology, Prof. Steven Tipper and Prof. Guillaume Thierry who explain how our perception of movement and our ability to learn are closely connected to the parts of our brain dealing with emotion.

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