Third International Conference
Consciousness, Theatre, Literature and the Arts
May 16-18, 2009, Lincoln, UK
Keynote Lecture
Abstract
THE CREATIVE MIND BEYOND THE BRAIN SCAN: the role of the creative artist in the brain laboratory.
Advances in brain imaging technology have opened significant channels for neurological exploration. Brain science has already gone far beyond traditionally simple explanations of left- and right- brain functioning. Magnetic resonance imagery adaptations have even made it possible to isolate the parts of the brain that trigger when a jazz musician improvises. We’re at the threshold of new explorations that neurologists hope will successfully map the dimensions of the creative process. But what significance does this have upon the front lines of artistic creation?
Harry Youtt’s keynote lecture will survey the current state of brain creativity research. He will briefly outline, based on his contact with leading brain researchers, what they have already explored and discovered about brain function during creative activity, as well as what they expect to explore in the immediate future. Most importantly, he will outline what brain science needs to learn from artistic creatives, if it hopes to structure effective new exploration. Finally, he will discuss and outline, from the artist’s perspective, the current and perhaps inherent limits of brain function research.
Brain research is now actively beginning to explore the neurological pathways that the creative artistic mind utilizes when it engages in metaphor formation and pure abstraction. It needs the cooperation and participation of the creative artists if it hopes to further chart brain function during the artistic process. Researchers need to develop structures for exploring and charting the brain centers that are activated during empathic character origination – theory of mind process. And rhapsody, what centers are engaged when the creative mind meanders in exhilaration, so that output is created spontaneously, without conscious intention. What is it that enables one “to see heaven in a wildflower . . . eternity in an hour,” as Blake observed?
The lecture will explore additional areas of artistic creativity that perhaps need to be addressed in brain research.
Harry’s remarks will conclude with an evaluation of the farthest-out possibilities that perhaps even science hasn’t thought about. What part of creativity goes beyond the capability of its measuring devices? Is it possible that the real sources of artistic creative inspiration extend beyond the brain? In the end, are the scientists looking in the wrong places? And if so, does this really matter to the creation of art?