Department of Old Age Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, UK.
Int J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2014 Feb;29(2):111-26. doi: 10.1002/gps.3975. Epub 2013 Aug 8.
Art making encompasses a range of perceptual and cognitive functions involving widely distributed brain systems. The dementias impact on these systems in different ways, raising the possibility that each dementia has a unique artistic signature.
Here we use a review of the visual art of 14 artists with dementia (five Alzheimer's disease, seven fronto-temporal dementia and two dementia with Lewy bodies) to further our understanding of the neurobiological constituents of art production and higher artistic function.
Artists with Alzheimer's disease had prominent changes in spatial aspects of their art and attributes of colour and contrast. These qualities were preserved in the art of fronto-temporal dementia, which was characterised by perseverative themes and a shift towards realistic representation. The art of dementia with Lewy Bodies was characterised by simple, bizarre content.
The limitations of using visual aspects of individual artworks to infer the impact of dementia on art production are discussed with the need for a wider perspective encompassing changes in cognition, emotion, creativity and artistic personality. A novel classificatory scheme is presented to help characterise neural mechanisms of higher artistic functions in future studies.
艺术创作包括一系列涉及广泛分布的大脑系统的感知和认知功能。痴呆症以不同的方式影响这些系统，这使得每种痴呆症都有可能具有独特的艺术特征。
在这里，我们通过对 14 位患有痴呆症的艺术家（5 位阿尔茨海默病患者，7 位额颞叶痴呆患者和 2 位路易体痴呆患者）的视觉艺术作品进行回顾，进一步了解艺术创作和更高艺术功能的神经生物学组成部分。
阿尔茨海默病患者的艺术作品在空间方面、色彩和对比度方面发生了明显变化。额颞叶痴呆症患者的艺术作品则保留了这些特质，其特征是主题具有持续性，以及向现实主义表现的转变。路易体痴呆症患者的艺术作品则以简单、奇异的内容为特征。
本文讨论了仅使用单个艺术作品的视觉方面来推断痴呆症对艺术创作的影响的局限性，需要更广泛的视角，包括认知、情感、创造力和艺术个性的变化。本文提出了一种新的分类方案，以帮助在未来的研究中描述更高艺术功能的神经机制。
