The visual arts can speak for themselves, yet we are often directed to analyze the artwork to extract the artist’s hidden thought process. But can we go beyond the artwork itself to understand how those thought processes might have risen out from the neural networks in the artist’s brain? Neuroscience and cognitive psychology aim to do just that by modeling human cognition. These models piece together the functions of distinct interrelated areas within the brain to better understand the neural processes that support creativity.
Scientific explanations of the artistic process are a delicate matter; many regard the latter as a curiosity that we should not want to explain. Nevertheless, localizing creative processes within the human brain has been of interest in the scientific community for many decades. A common misconception is that cognitive functions involve sequences of discrete, isolated operations that are carried out in localized brain regions. But the...