NEW YORK: People with a certain type of brain damage are known to develop new artistic skills during their illness. A “before and after” look at one such patient’s artwork offers some clues as to what is going on when this occurs.

The condition known as frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) occurs when sections of the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain deteriorate, leading to dementia. There have been reports of previously inartistic people becoming talented visual artists after developing FTLD. But it is not clear whether the brain atrophy is releasing dormant talent, or the disease itself has somehow triggered the artistic expression.

To investigate, Dr. Valeria Drago of the University of Florida at Gainesville and others studied the art of a woman who had been an artist before developing FTLD. As the woman’s condition worsened, they found, her artistic technique improved, but the emotional power of her work decreased. “We can really follow how the paintings have been changed following the disease,” Drago told Reuters Health in an interview.

Drago and her team gathered 40 paintings by the woman, including several from the period before she developed symptoms, some from when her symptoms were beginning, and some from when the woman was “fully symptomatic.” The researchers then gave 18 men and women training on how to evaluate six different artistic qualities, and asked them to rate all the paintings based on these qualities.

Ratings for the paintings’ artistic skill rose as the woman’s disease progressed, but ratings on the paintings’ “evocative impact” and “closure” fell. Evocative impact is the ability of a work of art to elicit an emotional reaction, while closure is the sense that a painting is finished and complete.

Drago and her team note that FTLD leaves the parts of the brain at work in drawing, painting and other skills relatively intact. The part of the brain the disease does affect may typically inhibit this region of the brain, so when it is damaged artistic talents have freer rein, they suggest. The researchers also point out that FTLD patients may have damage to the limbic system, a network within the brain essential for mediating emotions. This damage could in turn impair an artist’s ability to paint emotionally affecting paintings, or to portray emotion visually.

Drago said she and her team are continuing to study creativity and the brain, and are currently looking at how normal aging may change creativity.—-Reuters