The Perception of Depth and Form in Fine Arts, Video Games and Medicine.

Medical imaging technology has greatly improved over the last 40 years. A good example of this is the improved 3D reconstruction capabilities of CTs, which enable photorealistic reconstructions. This technological advancement has also taken place in the computer industry, and the development of modern graphics cards has fueled progress in video games. In art, many of the techniques used to improve three-dimensionality have been known for centuries. At first sight, these fields seem unrelated, but there is actually considerable confluence. This paper focuses on three areas: fine arts, video games and radiology. The art section illustrates different drawing techniques used to create three-dimensionality. The section on video games shows the development of video games from the 1980s to the present day. Finally, the medical imaging section focuses on the first 3D radiography reconstructions in the 1980s and the improvements to the present day. Contemporary video games and 3D reconstructions of CTs enable photorealistic impressions of 3D anatomical structures. An important factor is shadow casting and light, which has been known in fine arts for centuries. The effect on the observer of photorealistic 3D reconstructions in video games and in medical imaging can be largely explained by the knowledge of 3D techniques in drawings and paintings.

Effectiveness of the ability to form mental images in Müller-Lyer optical illusions.

The purpose of this study was to establish whether wing length and the ability to form spatial mental images and vivid images affected optical illusions obtained in the Müller-Lyer figures, both real and imagined. The study involved a group of 137 fine arts college students who were shown two forms of the Müller-Lyer figures with different wing length (15 and 45 mm). In the imagined situation, a plain horizontal line was presented, and participants were expected to imagine the arrowheads aligned in the same way as in the real situation. Discrepancies in the perception of the horizontal lines in the Müller-Lyer illusion ("Point of Subjective Equality") were measured both in the real and imagined situation. Participants were then asked to complete the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire and the Measure of the Ability to Form Spatial Mental Imagery. It emerged that, in the condition of 45 mm wing length, participants were significantly more susceptible to the illusion than those in the condition of 15 mm wing length. Additionally, in the real situation, participants scoring high in spatial image were significantly more resistant to the illusion than those scoring low.

The art of film: Perspective on neural clues to repeated attraction to movie watching.

This article about possible neural underpinning of repeated attraction to watching movies is dedicated to the memory of Prof. Eran Zaidel, who made outstanding contributions to neuroscience (and loved watching movies). The film is an art form crafted by multiple artists from diverse fields, contributing specialized skills, talents, and creativity to the final product. Attention-attraction to all artworks has deep biological roots. Movies have been attracting audiences repeatedly ever since they were introduced over 100 years ago. Although countless studies analyzed the nature of the art, the neural underpinning of repeated attraction to viewing movies has been understudied. Here, clues gleaned from non-film findings are proposed. The perspective suggests that functions of the mesolimbic "reward pathway" associated with pleasure and joy, the brain regions responding to facial beauty, to pictorial art aesthetics, and to music listening with increased dopamine levels are all recruited in the repeated attraction.

Effects of multimedia integrated fine arts education on students' learning attitude and learning satisfaction.

The educational reform of the twenty-first century was a successful attempt in which high technology, media, and multimedia computer information work together. The use of instructional media doubled the effect with half the effort in promoting learners' motivation to learn. This was achieved by providing specific and authentic information, changing attitudes, and even being independent of instruction. The rapid development of technology also brings innovations in teaching media. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of multimedia integrated fine arts education on students. A quasi-experimental design was adopted in this study. College students from Shanxi Province were selected as the participants of a one-semester experimental study. The research results show significantly positive effects of (1) multimedia integrated fine arts education on learning attitude, (2) multimedia integrated fine arts education on learning satisfaction, and (3). mobile learning on learning satisfaction. The experimental observation revealed that, when fine arts works are exhibited through multimedia, students have closer contact with them. Students gradually feel more involved in art and show interest in art, as well as a desire to explore. Such a process of change will enable students to change their learning attitude into active absorption of professional knowledge of fine arts. As a result, their competence in fine arts can be improved significantly. It is expected that the results will contribute to the fine arts and humanities with practically tested theories as a reference for teachers and future studies in the field.

A study of practical drawing skills and knowledge transferable skills of children based on STEAM education.

The STEAM education involves children's ability to integrate and apply their knowledge of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. The application and transfer of interdisciplinary knowledge in practical activities is the structure of STEAM education. This study assesses children's practical drawing skills and transferable skills based on the global features of their realistic figure drawing. The drawings incorporate the visual information and the multidisciplinary knowledge that children acquire. The assessment variables of the global features are observation perspectives, baseline, and comparison. The results showed that most children present their works through the front view. The children of different age groups show differences in express baseline and comparison features. Boys and girls show some variances in baseline features. Moreover, children are relatively unskilled at applying interdisciplinary knowledge in their drawings.

Impact of fine arts education on psychological wellbeing of higher education students through moderating role of creativity and self-efficacy.

The purpose of our research was to explore the impact of fine arts education on psychological wellbeing among undergraduate students through moderating role of creativity and self-efficacy. Art is the most effective medium for expressing human ideals, culture, identity, lifestyles, emotions, and societal experiences. Cross-sectional research was carried out on 376 undergraduates in the 2022-2023 academic year at the public and private Chinese universities, and those students who are currently enrolled in fine arts courses. A link to the Google Doc survey was sent through email and social media channels (i.e., WeChat). The time frame of the data collection was 3 months, from February 2022 to April 2022. While analyzing the obtained data, we used IBM SPSS version 25, which includes both descriptive and inferential statistics. The overall results of the study indicate that the fine arts education positively and significantly influences psychological wellbeing. Moreover, findings also indicate that the creativity and self-efficacy positively and significantly moderate the relationship between fine arts education and psychological wellbeing. The study highlighted the significance of fine arts education in Chinese students. Through this study, students studying in this field should be made more aware of the importance of fine arts education and its link with psychological wellbeing. Further, art courses should be added to the curriculum at different levels of education to boost the creativity and self-efficacy of higher education students in China. Implications for parents, students, and teachers are also discussed.

The Fascinating History of Wound Healing Through Fine Arts.

Visual art images narrate the evolution of humankind including different and specific wound managing strategies. Through the observation of some notable art works we explore the empiric historical progress in wound healing and the main reasons they may have been represented. We briefly examine the cultural, symbolic, magical or religious beliefs that have conditioned the approach to a fundamental vital need of humanity: to heal a wound.

A damned soul with goiter. "The life of Christ" (c. 1480) by Giovanni Martino Spanzotti.

The church of San Bernardino in Ivrea (Piedmont) houses a cycle of frescoes of "The Life of Christ" by the Italian painter Giovanni Martino Spanzotti. In the painting, a damned soul of the Hell with a large bi-lobar goiter is represented, confirming the interest of Renaissance artists towards thyroid diseases.

The sponge-bearer suffers from goiter: "The Passion of Christ" (c. 1530) by Fermo Stella.

In the partition of the church of San Bernardino in Caravaggio (Lombardy), Fermo Stella (c. 1490-1562) depicted a cycle of frescoes of "The Passion of Christ". In the central panel, "The Crucifixion" one of the tortures of Christ, the sponge-bearer, shows a large goiter and other signs of hypothyroidism (macroglossia, expressionless face, and puffiness around the eyes), confirming that the Renaissance artists often represented sinful and wicked individuals as affected by thyroid diseases.

Visual Mismatch Negativity: A Mini-Review of Non-pathological Studies With Special Populations and Stimuli.

In this mini-review, we summarized the results of 12 visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) studies that attempted to use this component as a tool for investigating differences between non-clinical samples of participants as well as the possibility of automatic discrimination in the case of specific categories of visual stimuli. These studies investigated the effects of gender, the effects of long-term differences between the groups of participants (fitness, experience in different sports, and Internet addiction), and the effects of short-term states (mental fatigue and hypoxia), as well as the vMMN effect elicited by artworks as a special stimulus category.

At the origin of "Endocrinology and Art": Woman's Head (third century BCE).

In 1911, the Danish physician Hans Christian Gram (1853-1938) sustained to have found signs of hyperthyroidism in a marble head of a Roman woman that he observed in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen. It could be one of the first examples of a clinical diagnosis of an endocrine disease in an ancient statue.

The Value in Science-Art Partnerships for Science Education and Science Communication.

Just a fraction of the scientific knowledge produced in laboratories reaches a lay audience. Most of our communication with the public gets lost in translation because of the difficulties that science communication poses to scientists. Among other obstacles, differential exposure to scientific and critical thinking, discrepancies with social narratives, and communication training based in the deficit model add on top of a practice established on avoiding emotionality. In this context, effective communication requires the use of emotions, which are crucial to establishing trust. This commentary provides a rationale for collaboration with graphic design and fine arts to use emotions in science communication and education. It starts by proposing the two-way engagement model as a replacement for the deficit model. Next, it offers a neuroscientific basis for the use of emotions in establishing trust. Finally, it finishes profiling the Convergence Initiative's efforts to establish bridges across disciplines and communicating science with the public through art.

The representation of a goiter by Renaissance painter Moretto da Brescia.

Alessandro Bonvicino (c. 1498-1554), commonly known as Il Moretto da Brescia, was an Italian Renaissance painter. In his "The Adoration of Shepherds" (1539-1540), a shepherd shows a bi-lobar goiter. The painter was active in a geographical area, where inhabitants often suffered from endemic goiter due to dietary iodine deficiency and could have influenced Moretto.

Interdisciplinary STEM education reform: dishing out art in a microbiology laboratory.

In the modern educational framework, life science and visual art are usually presented as mutually exclusive subjects. Despite this perceived disciplinary contrast, visual art has the ability to engage and provoke students in ways that can have important downstream effects on scientific discovery, especially when applied in a practical setting such as a laboratory course. This review broadly examines the benefit of interdisciplinary fusions of science and art as well as recent ways in which art strategies have been used in undergraduate biology classrooms. In a case study, we found that undergraduate students in an introductory microbiology laboratory course who participated in open-inquiry activities involving agar art had greater confidence in their personal efficacy as scientists compared to a control class. Collectively, these observations suggest that visual art can be a useful enhancement in the course-based undergraduate research setting, and science educators at all levels should consider incorporating artistic creativity in their own classroom strategies.

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), his friendships with the artists Max Claudet (1840-1893) and Paul Dubois (1829-1905), and his public image in the 1870s and 1880s.

Biographers have largely ignored Louis Pasteur's many and varied connections with art and artists. This article is the third in a series of the authors' studies of Pasteur's friendships with artists. This research project has uncovered data that enlarge the great medical chemist's biography, throwing new light on a variety of topics including his work habits, his social life, his artistic sensibilities, his efforts to lobby on behalf of his artist friends, his relationships to their patrons and to his own patrons, and his use of works of art to foster his reputation as a leader in French medical science. In their first article, the authors examined his unique working relationship with the Finnish painter Albert Edelfelt and the creation of the famous portrait of Pasteur in his laboratory in the mid-1880s. A second study documented his especially warm friendship with three French artists who came from Pasteur's home region, the Jura, or from neighbouring Alsace. The present study explores Pasteur's friendships with Max Claudet and Paul Dubois, both of whom created important representations of Pasteur. These friendships and others with patrons reveal an active pursuit of patronage and reputation building from 1876 into the late 1880s. Yet, although Pasteur actively used public art to raise his status, it becomes clear in these stories that for Pasteur beauty was an ideal and art a pleasure for its own sake.

Louis Pasteur's three artist compatriots-Henner, Pointelin, and Perraud: A story of friendship, science, and art in the 1870s and 1880s.

Biographers have largely ignored Louis Pasteur's many and varied connections with art and artists. This article is the second in a series of the authors' studies of Pasteur's friendships with artists. This research project has uncovered data that enlarge the great medical chemist's biography, throwing new light on a variety of topics including his work habits, his social life, his artistic sensibilities, his efforts to lobby on behalf of his artist friends, his relationships to their patrons and to his own patrons, and his use of works of art to foster his reputation as a leader in French medical science. In a prior article, the authors examined his unique working relationship with the Finnish painter Albert Edelfelt and the creation of the famous portrait of Pasteur in his laboratory in the mid-1880s. The present study documents his especially warm friendship with three French artists who came from Pasteur's home region, the Jura, or from neighboring Alsace. A forthcoming study gives an account of his friendships with Max Claudet and Paul Dubois, both of whom made important images of Pasteur, and it offers further illustrations of his devotion to the fine arts.

Arte y Cerebro / Brain and Art

¿Cuál es la función del arte?. ¿Por qué necesitamos la belleza?. ¿Por qué el cerebro produce arte?. ¿El arte es una capacidad innata?. ¿Existe un cerebro del artista?. ¿Cuál es la relación entre el arte y la ciencia? Estas interrogantes y muchas otras se nos plantean cuando enfrentamos la relación entre arte y cerebro. La comunicación de las emociones sería la función fundamental del arte. El arte transmite emociones sutiles que son difíciles de comunicar con palabras. El estudio acerca de porqué y cómo las personas aprecian el arte y la música y qué es la belleza ha permitido desarrollar una nueva disciplina denominada neuroestética, cuyo fin es determinar la base neurológica de la producción y percepción del arte. Los dominios del arte y de la ciencia son complementarios. Toda realidad tiene un componente objetivo y otro subjetivo. En la descripción de la realidad objetiva, la ciencia intenta llegar al corazón de la materia, mientras que la realidad subjetiva existe sólo en base a sensaciones, memoria e imaginación. Estas dos realidades requieren un elemento común que es la creatividad. Un nuevo entendimiento de un problema y la búsqueda y expresión de relaciones en forma ordenada, es el sello de la conceptualización creativa. Estas características definen tanto el arte como la ciencia. Desde 2005, durante el congreso anual de SOPNIA, se realiza una exposición de arte, que refleja esta unión del arte, cerebro y la ciencia. A continuación de las reflexiones a las preguntas anteriormente mencionadas, se hace un recuento de lo expuesto en las 10 versiones de ExporArte de SOPNIA. Palabras claves: arte, cerebro, ciencia, bellas artes, belleza, artista.

What is the function of art? Why do we need beauty? Does the brain produce art? Is art an innate capacity? Is there an artist's brain? What is the relationship between art and science? These questions and many others are posed when we face the relationship between art and brain. The communication of emotions would be the main function of art. Art conveys subtle emotions that are difficult to communicate with words. The study about why and how people appreciate art and music and what beauty has allowed to develop a new discipline called neuroesthetics, which purpose is to determine the neurological basis of the production and perception of art. The domains of art and science are complementary. All reality is simultaneously subjective and objective. In the description of the objective reality, science tries to get to the heart of the matter, while subjective reality exists only based on sensations, memory and imagination. These two realities require a common element that is creativity. A new understanding of a problem and the search and expression of relationships in an ordered fashion, is the seal of the creative conceptualization. These features define both the art as the science. Since 2005, during the annual Congress of SOPNIA, there is an art exhibition that reflects this union of art, brain and science. Following the reflections to the questions previously mentioned, there is a recount of 10 versions of SOPNIA ExporArte. Keywords: art, brain, science, fine arts, beauty, artist

Franz Joseph Gall on greatness in the fine arts: A collaboration of multiple cortical faculties of mind.

Although Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) is well known for his organology, i.e., his theory of cortical localization of function largely derived from skull features, little has been written about his ideas pertaining to specific faculties other than speech, and even less attention has been drawn to how the individual faculties might work together in specific situations. Our focus shall be on how Franz Joseph Gall viewed the fine arts, with special emphasis on what one must possess to be outstanding in this field, which he associated with perceiving and understanding relationships, and several higher faculties of mind, including color, "constructiveness," locality, and recognizing people. How these faculties are utilized, he tells us, will vary with whether an artist does portraits, landscapes, historical scenes, still life compositions, etc., as well as with the selected medium (e.g., oil paints, sketching on paper, stones to be carved). To put Gall's thoughts about the fine arts in context, brief mention will be made of his scientific career, his guiding philosophy, the questions he most wanted to answer, what he construed as "evidence," how he eliminated the soul or "controller" from his system, and how he presented his work to the public. Some comparisons will be made to what he wrote about having a talent for music.

Art, anatomy, and medicine: Is there a place for art in medical education?

For many years art, anatomy and medicine have shared a close relationship, as demonstrated by Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical drawings and Andreas Vesalius' groundbreaking illustrated anatomical textbook from the 16th century. However, in the modern day, can art truly play an important role in medical education? Studies have suggested that art can be utilized to teach observational skills in medical students, a skill that is integral to patient examination but seldom taught directly within medical curricula. This article is a subjective survey that evaluates a student selected component (SSC) that explored the uses of art in medicine and investigates student perception on the relationship between the two. It also investigates whether these medical students believe that art can play a role in medical education, and more specifically whether analyzing art can play a role in developing observational skills in clinicians. An "Art in Medicine" 8-week course was delivered to first year medical students at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. The use of art to improve observational skills was a core theme throughout. Feedback from the students suggests that they believe a strong association between art and medicine exists. It also showed a strong perception that art could play a role in medical education, and more specifically through analyzing art to positively develop clinical observational skills. The results of this subjective study, together with those from research from elsewhere, suggest that an art-based approach to teaching observational skills may be worth serious consideration for inclusion in medical and other healthcare curricula.