Dr. Miller spoke about how different forms of dementia affected creativity and art. Evidence shows that patients with dementia that results in deficits in the left frontal lobe tend to become more artistic, at least visually. While symbolic, linguistic, and conceptual aspects may be lost with the loss of the left brain, the right brain's abilities to visually reproduce images remains intact. Therefore as patients' brain are rerouted when certain areas fail, they may develop keener abilities in the areas that remain.
In one form of dementia that impacts artistic ability the right anterior temporal lobe is impaired. Along with it, patients lose their ability to perceive faces, and especially facial expressions showing emotions. I find the result in art fascinating. These patients still draw people and couples, but even when positioned together, the characters seem isolated and emotionless. This reflects the patients' own deficits in forming relationships due to their lack of ability to understand emotions.
I would be very curious to see how other cognitive conditions affect artistic ability and creativity. I have seen the work of schizophrenics that becomes increasingly confused and frightening as the disorder takes over the patient's mind. "The man who mistook his wife for a hat" even changed his style of painting as his visual abilities failed. While these conditions change and negatively affect those who suffer from them, might they also bring about new abilities and talents?
While reading Bruce Miller's article that talks about the
relationships between art and dementia, I found it interesting that there are
patients who are able to grow artistically even though they are suffering from
dementia. The article makes me whether
or not my great grandfather, who is currently suffering from Alzheimer's ,
would do if he tried to focus on some form of art. His case is very severe, most times
forgetting the names of his children even though they see him often. Usually, he is frustrated by his inability to
remember certain details or dates. The
fact that it is possible for him to try to use art as a way to connect with the
people around him is a thought that never crossed my mind. Another interesting thing that I read was that
damage to the nondominant hemisphere is more difficult to deal with because it is
dominant for visual art, meaning that damage to it can cause major defects to a
someone's creativity.
Bruce Miller's talk on Visual Creativity in Dementia gave insights into the neural underpinnings of artistic ability. Miller describes how Frontal Temporal Dementia (FTD) patients often experience enhanced creative abilities as a result of their illness. Research provides evidence that this is due to the gradual death of circuits in the left anterior brain regions, necessary for planning, inhibition, and conceptual thinking. Amazingly, this switching off of left anterior regions of the brain seems to encourage right hemisphere regions, the seat of visual perception, to compensate - thus leading to increased artistic ability.
He also covered how patients with Alzheimer's experience a decline in their ability to process the visual environment as the disease progresses and ultimately they loose their ability all together. Though these patients don't experience any awakening of hidden talents, as often occurs with FTD patients, their art becomes less realistic and more surrealistic.
I was not particularly surprised by the information in Dr. Miller's talk as we have learned so much about visual processing in 382 but also because I am an artist myself. To produce good art, one need to first learn techniques. To use painting as an example, an artist begins by engaging their left anterior brain to analyze their visual scene and learn how to mix paints, control brush strokes, and plan out a composition. Eventually many of these skills become more or less automatic, allowing creative juices to flow onto the canvas without the artist having to constantly stop and think about what they are doing. This would obviously stunt the artistic process.
For good art to be born, the artist first has to have excellent technique (derived via left hemisphere) but then they have to "forget" it by allowing it to reside in non-declarative memory, where it is engaged in creating the art, but on autopilot. This allows the right brain to come in at full throttle and guide emotions and energies onto the canvas. In my own experience, I have often struggled to allow the right brain to do its thing . . . it's easy to get caught up in being analytical and in so doing, stop the flow of energy and emotion. It is my hope that I will improve at letting my art inform my science and my science inform my art because, in my view, neither is complete without the other; Just like our brain hemispheres need one another in order to create a rich and fulfilling human experience.
Dr. Miller's talk on Visual Creativity with Brain Disease opened a new way to think about neurological damage. Oliver Sacks mentions that not all brain diseases result in deficit, but some result in excess. Frontal Temporal Dementia (FTD) patients have various deficits they must face. Some have progressive fluent language disorder and others have semantic dementia, but according to Dr. Miller some of these patients experience an excess as well: creativity. It seems that as the world language escapes from some of the FTD patients the begin to preoccupy themselves with the visual world. It is not only people that were artistically gifted before their dementia that display this extra burst of creativity, but people who had never painted a picture in their life before display their emotion through art as well. In fact the progression of their disease can be seen in their art work. If the patients produce art that is concrete at the beginning of their onset it tends to become more abstract as their disease progresses. William Utermohlen was an artist before the onset of his left side parietal degeneration, but when he was diagnosed he began painting portraits of himself. As the degeneration progressed the portraits become less and less face-like, and the depression portrayed in each portrait increased. Utermohlen documented his feelings about his disease through his portraits. In other patients it was noticed that when drawing animals, the further along someone was in their disease the animals became more prototypical because the patients begin to loose recognition of specific anatomy that belongs to each animal. Another patient became obsessed with couples and would paint them on various object; however, his deficit was in recognizing emotions. This deficit caused the couples in the paintings to look eery because the faces did not portray emotions, but the patient continued to paint them until his disease progressed so far that he resulted to abstract art. The obsessions of these patients vary greatly, but in many cases it seems that they replace their language deficit with visual compulsiveness. Even though not all FTD patients show this excess in creativity, it would be very interesting to see the different types of FTD documented through art work for those that do show this burst.
“Art in the
context of dementia provides a unique window into the cognitive processes of
various brain regions and an opportunity for rehabilitation”, this statement
ends the opening paragraph to Portraits
of Artists an article by Bruce Miller, MD.
The article discusses artist that experience dementia or Alzheimer’s
disease are still able to retain the ability to create art. I found it interesting that in some of the cases
with patients that had frontotemporal dementia (FTD) they found that artistic
creativity appeared once again even as the disease developed. When diagnosing a patient with dementia they
examine not only their weakness but their strengths as well, in this case we
see one of those strengths being an artistic ability. It was found that
patients with FTD developed an interest in painting. This was evidence that
despite the disease artistic productivity can somehow still increase. One very amazing case study was with patients
that had right parietal strokes were asked to look at a familiar cathedral. The
patients were able to identify many things on their right side but completely
disregarded their left side, which meant that the parietal lobes frames
attention in a selfish manner and that damage to the right parietal lobe
affects the ability to identify images on the left side. This case brings about
the Visual Hemi-Neglect, or neglect syndrome in which there is a deficit of
spatial attention creating problems with telling “where” objects are in space.
The distinct topics of neurodegenerative disease and art are usually not brought up together, which made Dr. Miller's talk relating the two all the more interesting. Dr. Miller studies the relationship between frontotemporal dementia patients and creativity, as areas correlated with producing art are similar to the brain areas affected by this type of dementia. Miller provided an array of cases of patients using this handicap to their advantage. Throughout the talk, there were many examples of these patients having an expanded ability in the visual arts; however, I wondered, would this be applicable to distant forms of art as well? It was clear that the affected areas of visuospatial processing, which inherently affects how we process artwork visually, but are there analogous deficits that would improve musical or lyrical composition abilities, or affect cinematic creativity? Although this talk covered a lot, especially information that is relevant to this class, it left me curious for more. Not only was this lecture enjoyable to attend, it holds great value for the future of science. The ability to create and interpret art is a uniquely human capability; understanding the processes behind this could pave the way to a better understanding on what neurological features make us distinctly human.
Artists are often perceived as containing more of whatever it is that makes us human. They, themselves, are expressions of the human condition. Throughout history, they have been tasked with expressing the inexpressible: music, nature, emotion, and more. But, Dr. Bruce Miller states that patients with less - that is, patients with neurodegenerative diseases - are still capable of creating fantastic pieces of art. While this is a rarity, and most Alzheimer's Disease and neurodegenerative patients are in capable of producing coherent artwork, some patients excel. In addition, a patient's road to recover can be tracked through their artwork as they become more and more capable of expressing themselves.
Artwork is considered a "flow" activity. The act of creation is addicting and encompasses multiple areas of the brain. While "predominantly a visual process," researchers anticipate that artists access their OMPFCs when planning and organizing a work, their cingulate cortexes when in need of drive and motivation, and their premotor and motor cortexes when executing their artistic acts. Since creating art utilizes so many different areas of the brain, medical professionals have ability the assess the severity of cortical damage after a stroke and the ability to track the recover of stroke patients. As patients improve, often their unilateral neglect subsides (never fully) and their ability to execute cognitive functions (depending on the location of the lesion) improves.
Miller focused in particular on one patient, named AA. AA, due to an severe degeneration of her inferior frontal-insular, temporal, and striatal regions, became adept at reproducing visual representations (at the end, almost photographically) in her art, while simultaneously being mute as a result of her disease. French composer Maurice Ravel also suffered from a similar progressive aphasia. Ravel is famous for his piece, Boléro, which he produced late into his illness.
Miller argues that as a result of the complete lateral degradation of their left inferior frontal and temporal hemispheres, the right OMPFC, responsible for many aspects of visuospatial and aural functions, went into overdrive," allowing the artists to create such magnificent works of art.
Regardless of its potential to give artists the ability to create art, this neurodegeneration and creative bursts as a result of the illness allow medical professionals to track the recover and asses the damage to cortical areas of patients with said diseases.
Art to me means being creative and seeing beauty in different ways. According to Dr. Miller art is uniquely human. He gives us a story on how he started to get involve with art. It is interesting that he mention something that happen to him as a child. As a child his mom would drag him to the Art Institute of Chicago literally. He describe that his mom was fascinated with art. He then describes two types of patients one with Alzheimer's disease and the other Frontal Temporal Dementia. According to one of his heroes Mesulam there are two regions of the brain: the prefrontal cortex which is located where FTD patients and parietal lobe. In frontal temporal dementia their parietal lobe drastically changes their artwork. That is why we see many different changes. Alzheimers patients have visuospatial deficit but can see colors really well.What really fascinated me that Dr. Miller mention some way to draw. He mention he was taught by an instructor and it help him. It could especially help those who lack the left hemisphere the instructors idea was to draw a picture upside down. That way you are able to use that part of the brain and I believe you are more focused. He showed a video on emotional deficits. It was a mother speaking to her son named Victor and he could not tell when the kid was in pain. Especially when he approach the kid with a squeeze iI believe. Victor didn't know that the kid felt pain. The other thing about Victor is that his paintings were of couples. He was obsess with drawing odd looking couples his way of perceiving them. An interesting fact about him was that his relationships were short and never worked out so he no longer were in a relationship. To be honest this seminar was very interesting to me. I enjoy art especially when it is so bizarre looking.
For me, engaging in art
projects such as painting and drawing has always been a source of catharsis. It
is a time where I can turn off the stresses of everyday life and express
thoughts and feelings through my creative outlet. What I did not realize is
that artistic creativity may be using entirely different brain regions than one
might use in their everyday, non-artistic lives. This finding is best expressed
through Dr. Miller’s patient case AA. AA suffered from left fronto-insular
degeneration which led to severe deficits in language. However, throughout her
disease course and particularly around the beginnings of the disease she experienced
great artistic creativity, particularly in her ability to create abstract and
conceptual pieces as seen in her Bolero art (later she would cease to paint
abstractly, focusing on replications). AA’s neuroimaging revealed that the
non-dominant side of her brain, the right parietal cortex was normal to above
normal during the peak of her creativity when all of the rest of her brain
showed signs of atrophy. The researchers were able to identify four areas of
the brain with increased grey matter including right intraparietal
sulcus/superior parietal lobule (IPS/SPL), right superior temporal sulcus
(STS),right parietal operculum; and the right lateral occipital cortex. These
results are similar to another study in which they found musicians to have more
cortex volume in their right superior parietal areas (Gaser
&Schlaug, 2003, cited in Seeley article). Miller’s work on creativity in
the brain, in particular his work with cases like AA suggests that creativity
may be associated with specific areas of the brain. So the next time I take
time out of my schedule to do something creative I can think of it as exercise for
my non-dominant brain region.
Dr. Bruce Miller, in his lecture at the neuroscience seminar last Tuesday, spoke about the relationship between change in production of art abilities and progression of dementia. According to his research, Alzheimer's Disease (AD) patients typically begin to produce more abstract, less realistic artwork, while frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients produce more realistic, less abstract pieces. In addition, FTD patients show a marked preservation in ability to copy and reproduce artwork with normal accuracy, while AD patients exhibit the opposite response. The AD patients' response to progression of the disease stems from a decrease in "precision and attention to spatial relationships." Dr. Miler also argued that encouraging patients with specific types AD or FTD to produce artwork may provide a new outlet for rehabilitation or, at the least, slow the progression of the disease through increase use of the neural networks.
Having volunteered at a daycare home for the elderly with dementia for quite some time, and there observing and assisting with the art programs, Dr. Miller's presentation has caused me to make a few connections. The daycare center houses patients with a huge spectrum of disease progressions, from early onset to late stages, and of almost every specific subtype of dementia. Though I am never told the personal information or specific dementia type of any of the patients, I am now starting to see the differences among them. The seniors are given the freedom to engage in almost any kind of artwork desired, from painting to creating 3D with paper mache. For a long time I've noticed that some really are exceptionally good artists, though when asking about their histories they claim to have no artistic background. I now also can clearly see a pattern of realism in most of their pieces. For example, one ongoing project had the patients create paper mache figures of humans, which were then painted. While some of the finished works held zero resemblance to a human, with green splashes of paint where the eyes should be and perhaps a figure of a mouth on the neck, others were near perfect and even beautiful, far better than anything I could accomplish. Further, about the paintings they made on a day to day basis, many were extremely abstract and often resembled finger paintings of a preschool student. Others represented relatively nice scenes of parks with people playing or homes with all the typical components and yard figures, such as a tree house or garden.
Using Dr. Miller's lecture to guide "my diagnosis" of the elderly, I now can pretty clearly label many of the patients as having either FTD or AD according to the type of artwork they produce. That being said, many are quite difficult to label because they generate such a broad spectrum of art or perhaps just art that lies somewhere between realistic and abstract. One interesting quality that I might now look to note among patients is the decrease in "attention to spatial relationships" that Miller spoke of. Having been at the home for quite some time and getting to know many personally, I will now be able to watch as their artwork progresses with time. Perhaps some will show a decrease in the spatial relationships between objects in their artwork, while others might show a marked increase in skill. Whatever the case may be, being with the patients firsthand now holds even more interest for me because I can apply more knowledge about dementia to what I observe in reality.
Sources
Dr. Bruce Miller's Loyola Neuroscience Seminar Lecture
Miller, Bruce and Hou, Craig. "Portraits of Artists: Emergence of Visual Creativity in Dementia." 2004.
Art comes in many forms. Abstract and realism are just two examples that are special in their own way - abstract art may be great choice to show a color scheme to express happiness, realism may be a better choice if one wants a breathtaking landscape. Many people use art as a way to express themselves, including patients with dimentia. Different forms of dimentia can be the cause of different kinds of art. Patients with frontotemporal dimentia (FTD) are quite good at copying what was already created. Those with Alzheimer's disease (AD) can create beautiful abstract works with interesting color schemes. The article "Portraits of Artists" includes an example of such abstract art with a purple and blue gradient. Because patients with AD lose their visuospatial skills over time, affected patients tend to get more and more abstract, which would be expected since painting realistically would require outstanding visuospatial skills.
A tidbit of information I found particularly interesting was the mention of a woman who experienced a stroke affecting her dorsal stream. Because this affects the "where" when thinking visually, she was unable to focus on an entire scene, though she was able to focus on just one object. In this case, I do not think the stroke (though it most likely affected her way of living) affected her art in a bad way. It switched from being able to take in a whole scene, to being able to focus completely on one object. Though she may not have meant it, her stroke did not hurt her art, it merely just altered it. Art is something a patient can improve on after an event like a stroke, creating a great outlet and therapy at the same time.
The creative drive is one of mankind's most distinguishing characteristics, leaving its mark on the cave walls of our earliest ancestors, the ceilings of our grandest cathedrals, and the alleyways of our most impoverished cities. The subject of creativity has long been the domain of art and philosophy, but as our scientific understanding has evolved so to has our approach to things like creativity. With the advances in imaging techniques and cognitive psychology, we have slowly been able to open the door to a realm that has traditionally been reserved for the consideration of our world's greatest literary and metaphysical minds. It is as an exciting time as ever to be involved in the study of the mind as we slowly unravel the mysteries behind one of our species most unique and exhilarating abilities.
Being devoid of most artistic abilities myself, I find it interesting that maybe I am just one degenerative disease away from connecting with my creative side. All inappropriate kidding aside, the work of Dr. Bruce Miller exemplifies how some of sciences most awe-inspiring and fascinating discoveries are made through a simple chance observation. Certainly, Dr. Miller would not have imagined that his detailed study of such devastating neurodegenerative diseases would lead to valuable insights into the neurological basis of creativity. Many of these insights come from frontotemporal patients, notably the late Anne Adams.With honors degrees in physics and chemistry, Adams did not seem the type to be absorbed in a world of visual art. But after leaving the academic world to care for her son, who had been injured in an accident, Adams became more and more preoccupied with her painting. Showing an aptitude at rendering realistic scenes, her art then evolved into a transmodal landscape, incorporating abstract concepts into visually stunning works of art. Her most impressive work, "Unraveling Bolero", is a masterpiece, transcribing the work of the French composer Maurice Ravel into captivating canvas, each section of music receiving a carefully articulated visual counterpart. As her disease progressed, in this case through the left inferior frontal, temporal and striatal regions, so too did her artwork, shifting again toward more realistic representations of her world. Imaging of Adams brain revealed both the disease progression through the aforementioned regions but it also revealed a striking increase in grey matter areas in her right parietal lobe. This observation lead Miller to a possible, two-fold explanation behind Adams and similar patients burst of creativity during the onset of disease. Firstly, Miller believed that the degeneration of the left frontal regions led to a sort of inhibition of the inhibition that the frontal lobes are famous for. The so-called "Release Theory" is popular among neuroscientists who seek to explain the myriad of behavioral effects of frontal lesions on the individual. The relaxation of the frontal lobes inhibitory mechanisms can be used to try to explain a surge of activity associated with other brain areas following the frontal damage. In Miller's case, the loss of inhibition in the left frontal lobe allows for a previously somewhat dormant right hemisphere to emerge as a major player in cognition. The second part of Miller's explanation involve the increase functionality of the right hemisphere seen by the increase in grey matter density and hyperperfusion. The areas observed to be now highly active correlate with areas traditionally associated with many of the tasks vital for visually rendering one's world, skills no doubt essential in visual artistry. The result of these two factors interacting is that we have a highly active "artistic" part of the brain no longer under the constraints of the dominant left hemisphere. A highly plausible and excruciatingly interesting hypothesis from one of the most exciting fields of research I have yet to come across.
As Dr. Miller and his colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco continue their research, they will hopefully be able to uncover more of the underlying neural mechanisms behind humanity's most scientifically intractable capacities. I know that I will be eagerly awaiting their future publications, especially to figure out just what it is I am missing when I fail miserably to sketch even the simplest of forms.
One of the first things Dr. Miller mentioned during his talk was the fact that art is uniquely human, a notion which seemed to resonate with Gary Marcus's perspective on the role of music in society. According to Dr. Miller, art is essentially absent in non-human primates and occurs just before the evolution of civilization and appearance of language, probably representing a fundamental change in the brain. Dr. Miller's comprehensive presentation on the relationship between art and various degenerate diseases brought up a lot of salient points regarding specific deficits and networks in the brain. Dr. Miller highlighted the fact that the right brain is dominantly responsible for visual reproduction whereas the left brain is dominantly responsible for the conceptual aspects of art. I found Fellini's cartoons an interesting application of the material, for they demonstrated a significant loss in the ability for accurate visual reproduction. Another example of Dr. Miller's that I found very intriguing was of Utermohlen, who was a dyslexic Alzhiemer's patient with diminished language function and enhanced artistic ability. Although diminished drawing ability was visible as the Alzheimer's developed, the sadness that was portrayed served to emphasize the internal awareness of loss.
As a biochemistry major, I also found it interesting how Dr. Miller incorporated the fact that with degenerate diseases, misfolding of a protein starts out in one of the circuits and spreads, which reinforces how protein folding is essential to the presence of proper functioning. During the presentation, many neurodegenerative diseases were included which served to further emphasize how various networks can be affected while others remain intact, specifically looking at how artistic ability is impacted. For example, Alzheimer's affects the parietal lobes bilaterally which results in significant deficits in the ability to make precise reproductions, thus patients' art are often visual representations of what they see in terms of features such as color. In contrast, it was interesting to see the opposite in patients with FTD who can develop new artistic skills after the onset of the disease.
Nevertheless, in addition to artistic ability, Dr. Miller also touched on other networks that are affected by neurodegenerative diseases. For example, with semantic dementia, which is a subtype of frontotemporal dementia, symptoms often include marked anomia, where there is not only a loss of the meaning of words, but primarily the loss of nouns. He also discussed other temporal syndromes such as progressive fluent language disorder and progressive non-fluent aphasia.This served to emphasize the fact that various circuits, such as the temporal and posterior circuit are responsible for multiple facets of everyday life.
Portraits of Artists written by Miller and Hui is a very interesting article that goes into dementias and their affects on patients that experience these dementias. The article talks about how even though dementias devastate parts of the brain used for functioning, it leaves others untouched. These untouched parts open us the ability to be visually creative. While a dementia may ruin a function, it gives rise to a wonderful ability. By focusing on this ability patients can pursue the activity that they can impulse on with a positive outlook.The article talks then about what parts of the brain are triggered and the process the mind goes through as it experiences these visual abilities. I think it is very intersting how the nondominant hemisphere of the brain is in full affect because it proves the power of each part of the brain and how important each part of the brain really is. I also really enjoyed how language was tied into this article because I feel that art and language among other things are ways to communicate what someone is thinking.
This was great to read as I was very concerned for my grandfather who has Alzheimer's dementia. My family and I thought that he would lose his love for life as he would have a hard time remembering the things he loved doing. However, it is amazing to see him and his love for art. It brings so much light to him. it was interesting how the use of fMRIs can be used in this situation. By using the fMRI researchers can see what parts of the brain are activated during the artistic process. I find this article to be very interesting because it shows how complex the brain is and its ability to function even when most of it is damaged.
Dr. Miller’s talk on creativity associated with neurodegenerative diseases raised many interesting points. The fact that art is uniquely human and only arose for the first time about 40,000 years ago suggests that its neural correlates reside in those parts of the brain that evolved last and made us into the species we are today. Indeed, art does seem to come, at least in part, from the prefrontal cortex, which is substantially larger in humans than in any other animal. In class, we have talked about the role of the prefrontal cortex in decision making, task switching, monitoring performance, and other such executive functions. It is interesting then that art should also arise from this area. The anterior temporal lobes also play a large role in producing art. This area contains many of the language centers, so it is not so surprising that art, which can be described as a form of language, should be associated with this area. Dr. Miller has studied frontotemporal dementia patients in relation to creativity because their neurodegeneration can stimulate an obsession with the visual and bestow a previously undiscovered creativity and artistic talent. It’s fascinating that the areas that are correlated with producing art are the same areas affected in FTD. Dr. Miller suggested that degeneration in these parts of the brain in the left hemisphere is what causes this visual creativity. Since the left hemisphere is thought to be more logical and linguistic, as opposed to its conceptual and emotional counterpart, perhaps degeneration in the left can liberate the right to freely express its view of the world. I had always thought that neurodegenerative diseases were very diffuse and non-selective, but Dr. Miller talked about how the misfolded protein causes a kind of Hebbian degeneration in which very specific neural networks are affected. That fact makes the studying of these patients extremely valuable in their capacity to show us just how the brain works.
Reading Bruce Millers article what I found to be quite interesting was that art was not only considered a visual process but also a form of language based process. I found it interesting that individuals who developed PPA symptoms could develop new musical or artistic abilities. I was stunned that as patients such as Anne Adams, whose language was degenerating, that she was still able to grow as a better artists. Usually when one thinks of brain deficits or anything involving brain abnormalities you expect to lose skill not gain a better artistic ability as in Anne Adams case. My best friend’s grandmother has Alzheimer’s and she tells me how it’s getting worse and worse and how her grandmother is starting to forget a lot. I never knew that art was used as a tool to help engage and connect with people who have dementia. Although recent memories and thinking ability may decline with Alzheimer’s, your long-term memories are still there, as are your emotions, and art and music for people with dementia can help remember them as well as express them. Art is also a great way to express joy and creativity among these patients. Slowly forgetting everything must make people very frustrated because Alzheimer’s is a serious illness, so by engaging the patients in these activities it can help relax them and express them self through their creativity. I view art to be a great rehabilitation technique for patients with dementia. Patients with dorsal stream dysfunction is damaging to painting because both the ventral in recognition and dorsal stream in localization, as well as the cortical and sub cortical brain regions are crucial in artistry. The nondominant hemisphere is the one that is dominant for visual art, so any damage to it can cause major defect to a person’s creativity.
The “Portraits of Artists”by Bruce Miller and Craig
Hou is in regards to patients who are suffering from dementia, and yet are able to expand artistically.
These are some remarkable findings because the topic of dementia hits home for me.
My grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s
disease about a year ago, and the disease causes her to not be able to remember. However, that is not
the worst part; the worst part is that she is frustrated because she is unable to recall important information, and this frustration leads to tantrums. She is in a rehabilitation center for her ankle,
and the center has been taking her to art time. They stated that everyone in the rehabilitation center does very well when they are engaging in art related activities. To our surprise art time has definitely had an impact on my grandmother as she is quite calm after art time.
My grandmother has been
producing some very abstract artwork, which seems bizarre and out of touch at
times, but still looks very beautiful. This is consistent with the findings
listed in the paper; it has shown that patients suffering from Alzheimer’s
have been able to create successful artistic pieces that are appealing even
though they are not consistent with reality.It is amazing to read a paper that speaks of the same concept that I
have been observing with my grandmother. At first, it was astonishing and
confusing that she was able to create such artistic pieces that were so profoundly
amazing, despite the fact that she is unable to remember my name. I am glad that the center started
to take her to art time because it definitely helps her channel her frustration
into an artistic medium. So, the article is consistent in stating that, “focusing
on the potential of patients with dementia could become a powerful tool for
rehabilitation. I think it is definitely proving to be a powerful tool for rehabilitation;
at least it is for my grandmother.
As for the patients suffering from Frontal Temporal Dementia,
I found the fact that the usage of certain colors such as “purple,
yellow, or blue” was more often than other colors very interesting. I wonder if
they use these colors more often than other because they are bright and perhaps
more “eye-catching”
than other colors. Another intriguing aspect of this paper was that art is not
only a visual process, but rather a language-based process as well. I have never
referred to art as a form of a language based process because I have always
associated it with a visual and motor process. Although, I can see the
relationship between art and it being a language process, as explained in the article with "symbolism and linguistic concepts" . Due to the fact that, symbolism was used within the art and the need for linguistic
concepts to explain the art and the different aspects of symbolism used to make the artistic piece relevant. Above all, I think it is great that art is prevalent as a rehabilitation tool.
