title: The artist emerges: visual art learning alters neural structure and function.
abstract: How does the brain mediate visual artistic creativity? Here we studied behavioral and neural changes in drawing and painting students compared to students who did not study art. We investigated three aspects of cognition vital to many visual artists: creative cognition, perception, and perception-to-action. We found that the art students became more creative via the reorganization of prefrontal white matter but did not find any significant changes in perceptual ability or related neural activity in the art students relative to the control group. Moreover, the art students improved in their ability to sketch human figures from observation, and multivariate patterns of cortical and cerebellar activity evoked by this drawing task became increasingly separable between art and non-art students. Our findings suggest that the emergence of visual artistic skills is supported by plasticity in neural pathways that enable creative cognition and mediate perceptuomotor integration.
authors.affiliation: Dartmouth College, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Hanover, NH 03755, USA. Electronic address: schlegel@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Schlegel
authors.affiliation: Dartmouth College, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
authors.forename: Prescott
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Alexander
authors.affiliation: Dartmouth College, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
authors.forename: Sergey V
authors.initials: SV
authors.lastname: Fogelson
authors.affiliation: Dartmouth College, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Hanover, NH 03755, USA; Beijing Normal University, National Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Xueting
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Dartmouth College, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
authors.forename: Zhengang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: Dartmouth College, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
authors.forename: Peter J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Kohler
authors.affiliation: Dartmouth College, Studio Art Department, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
authors.forename: Enrico
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Riley
authors.affiliation: Dartmouth College, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
authors.forename: Peter U
authors.initials: PU
authors.lastname: Tse
authors.affiliation: Dartmouth College, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
authors.forename: Ming
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Meng
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002531:Cerebellum / Q000502:physiology*; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D009473:Neuronal Plasticity / Q000502:physiology*; D010151:Paintings / Q000523:psychology*; D066127:White Matter / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Art; Cerebellum; Creative cognition; DTI; MVPA; Motor cortex; Perception; Perception-to-action; Plasticity; White matter; fMRI