Each artist stimulates the brain in different ways (Image: Mark Dadswell/Getty)
PATTERNS in brain activity can be used to determine whether someone is looking at a surrealist landscape by Salvador Dali or the cubist lines of Pablo Picasso.
of ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, and colleagues showed 12 students dozens of Picassos and Dalis while scanning their brains using functional MRI. A program then identified patterns in activity that were unique to each artist.
When fed brain scans produced by students looking at fresh paintings by the same artists, the program correctly identified the painter better…
