The Artist's Brain

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

The Inner Studio, Tenth Street 1882 William Merritt Chase

A study by Rebecca Chamberlain from KU Leuven, Belgium has found that artists have structurally different brains, compared with non-artists. Well, that explains a lot! I’m sure many of us have suspected as much, but now science is beginning to look into the matter and this small study has revealed some surprising details that distinguish the creative brain. Using a brain scanning method called voxel-based morphometry, researchers peered into the brains of 21 art students and 23 non-artists. What they found was that the artist group had significantly more gray matter in a region of the brain involved in visual imagery.

Dr. Chamberlain also asked the participants to complete drawing tasks. Those better at drawing had increased gray and white matter in the cerebellum and in the supplementary motor area, involved in fine motor control. Related studies performed with creative persons in other fields (such as music) al…