An emerging discipline called neuroaesthetics is seeking to bring scientific objectivity to the study of art, and has already given us a better understanding of many masterpieces. 一门被称作神经美学的新兴学科正在探求将科学的公正性带到艺术之中，并且已经给我们带来对很多杰作的更佳的了解。 The blurred imagery of Impressionist paintings seems to stimulate the brain's amygdala, for instance. 例如，印象派画家那模糊的画像看上去是刺激到了大脑的扁桃体。 Since the amygdala plays a crucial role in our feelings, that finding might explain why many people find these pieces so moving. 因为扁桃体对于我们的感觉起到了非常大的作用，这一发现也许能够解释为什么很多人觉得这些杰作如此打动人心。

Could the same approach also shed light on abstract twentieth-century pieces, from Mondrian's geometrical blocks of colour, to Pollock's seemingly haphazard arrangements of splashed paint on canvas? 相同的方法是否适用于20世纪的抽象派作品呢？从Mondrian的彩色几何图案，到Pollock在油画布上看似随意的泼洒？ Sceptics believe that people claim to like such works simply because they are famous. 怀疑者们相信人们说自己喜欢这些作品，仅仅是因为这些画家很出名。 We certainly do have an inclination to follow the crowd. 我们确实有从众的倾向。 When asked to make simple perceptual decisions such as matching a shape to its rotated image, for example, people often choose a definitively wrong answer if they see others doing the same. 例如，当被要求做出一些简单的感知的选择，如匹配一个图形和它旋转过的图案，如果看到其他人选择了这个答案，人们经常就会选择明显错误的答案。 It is easy to imagine that this mentality would have even more impact on a fuzzy concept like art appreciation, where there is no right or wrong answer. 很容易想象这种心态会产生更大的影响，对于一个模糊的概念，比如艺术欣赏，这本来就不存在对或错的答案。

Angelina Hawley-Dolan, of Boston College, Massachusetts, responded to this debate by asking volunteers to view pairs of paintings - either the creations of famous abstract artists or the doodles of infants, chimps and elephants. 马萨诸塞州波士顿大学的Angelina Hawley-Dolan回应了这一争论。他邀请志愿者来看几幅图画——或是著名抽象派画家的画作，或是婴儿、猩猩和大象的随意涂鸦 They then had to judge which they preferred. 。然后他们必须要选出他们更喜欢哪幅。 A third of the paintings were given no captions, while many were labelled incorrectly - volunteers might think they were viewing a chimp's messy brushstrokes when they were actually seeing an acclaimed masterpiece. 三分之一的画作没有给出任何的说明文字，同时还有一些被贴上了错误的标签——志愿者们可能会认为他们正在看一只猩猩的胡乱的涂画，而实际上正在看的却是一幅享有盛誉的名画。 In each set of trials, volunteers generally preferred the work of renowned artists, even when they believed it was by an animal or a child. 在每一组试验中，志愿者们通常都会选择著名画家的作品，即使当他们相信作者是一只动物或一个小孩子。 It seems that the viewer can sense the artist's vision in paintings, even if they can't explain why. 看起来欣赏者们可以从画中感受到作者的视野，即使他们不能解释这是为什么。

Robert Pepperell, an artist based at Cardiff University, creates ambiguous works that are neither entirely abstract nor clearly representational. 卡迪夫大学的艺术家Roberet Pepperell，创作出了一些模棱两可的作品，既不完全是抽象派，也不是明显的具象派。 In one study, Pepperell and his collaborators asked volunteers to decide how 'powerful' they considered an artwork to be, and whether they saw anything familiar in the piece. 在一个实验中，Pepperell与他的合作者们要求志愿者们回答他们认为一幅艺术作品怎样才能是“有力的”，并且是否在作品中看到了任何熟悉的内容。 The longer they took to answer these questions, the more highly they rated the piece under scrutiny, and the greater their neural activity. 他们回答这些问题所花费的时间越长，他们在仔细观察下给作品的评分就越高，并且他们的神经活动就越丰富。 It would seem that the brain sees these images as puzzles, and the harder it is to decipher the meaning, the more rewarding is the moment of recognition. 看上去大脑视这些图像为拼图，并且越难解读其含义，识别出来时的满意度就越高。

And what about artists such as Mondrian, whose paintings consist exclusively of horizontal and vertical lines encasing blocks of colour? 那么像Mondrian这样的艺术家呢？他们的作品只包含一些横向或纵向的线，围绕着一些色块。 Mondrian's works are deceptively simple, but eye-tracking studies confirm that they are meticulously composed, and that simply rotating a piece radically changes the way we view it. Mondrian的作品是很虚伪的简单，但是视线追踪研究证实它们是极其细致的构成的，并且简单地旋转一部分，将完全地改变我们看它的方法。 With the originals, volunteers' eyes tended to stay longer on certain places in the image, but with the altered versions they would flit across a piece more rapidly. 看原作时，志愿者的视线常常在图画中的某些位置停留得更久一些，但是看这些改变了的图像时他们会掠过一部分更快一些。 As a result, the volunteers considered the altered versions less pleasurable when they later rated the work. 因此，当他们之后给作品打分时，志愿者们认为旋转过的图像没有原作那么令人愉悦。

In a similar study, Oshin Vartanian of Toronto University asked volunteers to compare original paintings with ones which he had altered by moving objects around within the frame. 在一项相似的研究中，多伦多大学的Oshin Vartanian让志愿者们比较原画和另一些已经在画框内移动了物体位置的作品。 He found that almost everyone preferred the original, whether it was a Van Gogh still life or an abstract by Miró. 他发现几乎所有人都更喜欢原作，不管是梵高的静物还是弥洛松的抽象画。 Vartanian also found that changing the composition of the paintings reduced activation in those brain areas linked with meaning and interpretation. Vartanian还发现改变画作的结构减少了大脑中与意思和理解相关区域的活动。

In another experiment, Alex Forsythe of the University of Liverpool analysed the visual intricacy of different pieces of art, and her results suggest that many artists use a key level of detail to please the brain. 在另一项试验中，利物浦大学的Alex Forsythe 分析了不同艺术作品的视觉复杂性，其结果表明很多艺术家使用了关键程度的细节来取悦大脑。 Too little and the work is boring, but too much results in a kind of ' perceptual overload', according to Forsythe. 如Forsythe所言，太少的话作品会让人觉得枯燥，但是太多又会导致一种直觉的负荷过重。 What's more, appealing pieces both abstract and representational, show signs of 'fractals'- repeated motifs recurring in different scales. 不仅如此，这些吸引人的作品，不管是抽象派还是具象派，都表现出了“分形”的特点——重复的图案以不同尺寸重现。 Fractals are common throughout nature, for example in the shapes of mountain peaks or the branches of trees. 分形在整个自然界中都很常见，例如山顶或树枝的形状。 It is possible that our visual system, which evolved in the great outdoors, finds it easier to process such patterns. 我们的视觉系统，在户外进化而来，可能会发现去处理这些图案更为容易。

It is also intriguing that the brain appears to process movement when we see a handwritten letter, as if we are replaying the writer's moment of creation. 另一个有趣的发现是，当我们看到一封手写的信时，大脑似乎会处理运动，就好像我们重演作家创作的瞬间一样。 This has led some to wonder whether Pollock's works feel so dynamic because the brain reconstructs the energetic actions the artist used as he painted. 这一发现使得很多人好奇Pollock的作品让我们感觉如此有活力是否是由于大脑重现了艺术家作画时的充满力量的动作。 This may be down to our brain's 'mirror neurons', which are known to mimic others' actions. 这可能归因于大脑的“镜像神经元”，据人们所知它会模仿其他人的行为。 The hypothesis will need to be thoroughly tested, however. 但是，这一猜想仍需要被彻底地测试。 It might even be the case that we could use neuroaesthetic studies to understand the longevity of some pieces of artwork. 我们甚至有可能能够使用神经美学研究去理解一些艺术作品的长盛不衰。 While the fashions of the time might shape what is currently popular, works that are best adapted to our visual system may be the most likely to linger once the trends of previous generations have been forgotten. 虽然一个时期的风格，可能会影响当下的潮流，但是一旦之前一代的趋势被遗忘，那些最适合我们视觉系统的作品才是最有可能被留下来的。

It's still early days for the field of neuroaesthetics - and these studies are probably only a taste of what is to come. 神经美学这一领域仍处于起步阶段——并且这些研究可能只是将来可能会发生的事情的一种尝试。 It would, however, be foolish to reduce art appreciation to a set of scientific laws. 但是，减少艺术欣赏去建立一系列的科学法则，将会是愚蠢的。 We shouldn't underestimate the importance of the style of a particular artist, their place in history and the artistic environment of their time. 我们不应该低估艺术家风格的重要性，他们在历史中的价值以及他们那个年代的艺术环境。 Abstract art offers both a challenge and the freedom to play with different interpretations. 抽象艺术既带来了挑战，又提供了以不同的理解去作画的自由。 In some ways, it's not so different to science, where we are constantly looking for systems and decoding meaning so that we can view and appreciate the world in a new way. 在某些方面，它和科学并没有什么不同，都会不停地寻找体系，并且破解其中的含义，从而使我们能够以一个全新的方式来观察和欣赏世界。