“Does a Rembrandt portrait or a van Gogh still life press some special buttons in every human being’s brain? Will a red painting speak to us in ways a blue one never could? Are we wired in ways that make every one of us enjoy a smiling bust and shiver at a frowning one?

And if our brains determine how art works on us, what does that tell us about art, or us — could studying the way we’re wired determine crisply that the ‘Mona Lisa’ is truly great, or do we need some history to tell us how a complex painting speaks, or not, to all its different viewers?

The Third International Conference on Neuroesthetics, subtitled ‘Emotions in Art and the Brain,’ was held earlier this month at the Berkeley Art Museum and tried to get a start at least on answering such questions. It was a showcase for the progress that’s been made in figuring out what goes on in the brain when art is seen or made.” —Washington Post

More on the neurology of creativity, with the complementary (and at least as interesting) question of that is happening when one has an aesthetic experience. However, the article ends with the same question I have — why assume there is just one sort of aesthetic experience and any uniformity to the neurology behind it?