Abstract

How do we experience Art? What does it mean to have an “aesthetic” experience? Philosophers and psychologists have contemplated on such questions for centuries. Contemporary neuroscientists, from their part, have posed the question “What happens in the brain when we experience Art?” The use of functional neuroimaging techniques (fMRI) has revealed a number of significant results among which the most significant are: a) artworks are perceived through a sensorimotor neural mechanism in the brain, the Mirror Neuron System (MNs); b) art perception is an “embodied” experience; and c) primary survival neural circuits are involved in aesthetic appreciation. The field of neuroaesthetics was introduced in the early 1990s when neuroscientists began exploring the neural correlates of aesthetic experience. An international collaborative platform has since been created which analyzes and studies the emerging issues at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and the Arts. In this article, I will present the scientific research data with relation to art, as well as refer to contemporary evolutionary theories of art and archaeological evidence which indicates that art originated in the Pleistocene era. Based on these data, I will make a proposition on the origins of art. I will argue that the “aesthetic modality,” as I call it, is an exaptation of the biological function of the Mirror Neurons’ simulation of the world. Finally, I posit that performing art is a way of performing life.