Rankin Katherine P, Liu Anli A, Howard Sara, Slama Hilary, Hou Craig E, Shuster Karen, Miller Bruce L
University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA.
Cogn Behav Neurol. 2007 Mar;20(1):48-61. doi: 10.1097/WNN.0b013e31803141dd.
To characterize dementia-induced changes in visual art production.
Although case studies show altered visual artistic production in some patients with neurodegenerative disease, no case-controlled studies have quantified this phenomenon across groups of patients.
Forty-nine subjects [18 Alzheimer disease, 9 frontotemporal dementia (FTD), 9 semantic dementia (SD), 15 healthy older controls (NC)] underwent formal neuropsychologic testing of visuospatial, perceptual, and creative functioning, and produced 4 drawings. Subjective elements of drawings were rated by an expert panel that was blind to diagnosis.
Despite equal performance on standard visuospatial tests, dementia groups produced distinct patterns of artistic features that were significantly different from NCs. FTDs used more disordered composition and less active mark-making (P<0.05). Both FTDs and SDs drawings were rated as more bizarre and demonstrated more facial distortion than NCs (P<0.05). Also, SDs drastically failed a standardized test of divergent creativity. Alzheimer disease artwork was more similar to controls than to FTDs or SDs, but showed a more muted color palette (P<0.05) and trends toward including fewer details, less ordered compositions, and occasional facial distortion.
These group differences in artistic style likely resulted from disease-specific focal neurodegeneration, and elucidate the contributions of particular brain regions to the production of visual art.
描述痴呆症引起的视觉艺术创作变化。
尽管案例研究表明一些神经退行性疾病患者的视觉艺术创作发生了改变，但尚无病例对照研究对各组患者的这一现象进行量化。
49名受试者[18例阿尔茨海默病患者、9例额颞叶痴呆（FTD）患者、9例语义性痴呆（SD）患者、15名健康老年对照者（NC）]接受了视觉空间、感知和创造性功能的正式神经心理学测试，并创作了4幅画作。由对诊断不知情的专家小组对画作的主观元素进行评分。
尽管在标准视觉空间测试中表现相当，但痴呆症组呈现出与健康老年对照者明显不同的艺术特征模式。额颞叶痴呆患者使用的构图更无序，笔触更不活跃（P<0.05）。额颞叶痴呆患者和语义性痴呆患者的画作均被评为比健康老年对照者的画作更怪异，面部扭曲更明显（P<0.05）。此外，语义性痴呆患者在一项发散性创造力标准化测试中表现极差。阿尔茨海默病患者的艺术作品与健康老年对照者的作品比与额颞叶痴呆患者或语义性痴呆患者的作品更相似，但色调更柔和（P<0.05），且有包含细节更少、构图更无序和偶尔面部扭曲的趋势。
这些艺术风格上的组间差异可能是由疾病特异性局灶性神经变性导致的，并阐明了特定脑区对视觉艺术创作的作用。
