Across races and cultures, we love music, appreciate visual art, and produce novel ideas by creative imagination. Music, visual art and cognition are deeply interrelated, acting like two convex mirrors each reflecting and amplifying the other. Yet, the simplest questions, such as, “How do we perceive natural music? Does everyone listen to music in the same way? Why someone prefers pop over classical? What are the neural correlates of perception of visual art? How does an artist mentally compose an artwork?” are yet to be completely understood. Brain imaging and lesion studies are successful in localizing the brain activities during higher cognitive performances. However it is becoming increasingly established that near and distant brain areas not only become co-active but also become functionally co-operative leading to a dense brain network with functionally connected multiple brain regions. To assess the underlying network connectivity, we recorded multichannel EEG signals during such higher cognitive tasks and analysed them by using new analytical measures. In this talk, I will present the results of functional connectivity analysis underlying human expertise in music, in visual art during the perception of music, visual art, and of creative imagery.

Dr. Bhattacharya received his PhD from Indian Institute of Technology. Later he was associated with Max-Planck-Institute for Physics of Complex Systems, Germany as a DAAD Fellow and with California Institute of Technology, USA as a Sloan Fellow. After working at Austrian Academy of Sciences as a tenured Senior Scientist for several years, he moved to Goldsmiths last October. He is fascinated by the ever present brain rhythms and synchronizations and tries to understand higher cognitive functioning of human brain.

Registration required:

No

Free:

Yes