Hello. This is six minute English from BBC Learning English.
I'm Neil, and I'm Sam. Would you say your artistic?
Sam? Can you draw or paint?
Do you dance or play music?
I play the piano a bit.
Yes, I'd say I'm quite artistic.
How about union? Well, if you count playing football as artistic, then yes, but basically no, I can't paint.
Weve been wondering why artistic ability comes more naturally to some people than others.
So in this program, will be asking our artist brains different will hear two expert opinions, and, as usual, will learn some useful new vocabulary as well.
So what do you think, neil, our artist brains different from other peoples?
I'm not sure, sam, but it's true that many artists behave differently, often in very strange ways.
E.G. Did you know that Michelangelo worked so hard he never took a bath?
Or that guitar legend Jimmy Hendrix, once set fire to his guitar on stage.
We'll hear more about the artist's brain soon.
But 1st, I have a question for you.
As you said, artistic ability comes naturally to some people, including the famous composer Wolfgang amadayas Mozart.
Mozart was considered a child prodigy, a young child with very great musical talent.
So how old was Mozart when he composed his 1st piece of music?
Was he a five years old?
Be ten years old, or see, 15 years old?
I guess he was a five years old.
OK, sam, I'll reveal the answer later in the program.
If artist brains are different, it could mean they see the world in unusual ways.
Doctor Rebecca Chamberlain is a researcher in the neuroscience of art.
She investigates how artists see the objects they are drawing by measuring se cards, the rapid movements our eyes make as they jump from one thing to another.
Here, she shares her findings with BBC World Service program Crowd Science.
Artists seem to be processing the visual world in a different way to non artists, particularly when they're drawing.
The artists actually take a more global approach to looking.
So they make bigger cigars, bigger eye movements and shorter fixations on the image.
So it's almost like they're getting much more of a kind of gist level view of the thing that they're looking at.
Rebecca's experiments seem to confirm that artist brains work differently because of their processing of the visual world, the way their brains make sense of information.
Interestingly, processing also means the act of developing pictures from photographic film.
When they draw, artists make bigger, quicker eye movement so they're able to see the whole picture.
Something also known as the gist, the overall general impression of something, without focusing on the details.
If you get the gist of what someone is saying, you understand the overall meaning of what they say, but not the details.
The 2nd expert to answer our question about the artistic brain is Mike, a BBC World Service listener from Malawi.
Mike is a self taught painter who creates large, colorful pictures in his studio.
According to him, artistic ability isn't something you're born with.
It can be learned. As he explained to BBC World Services Crowd Science.
I had this other student. He was like, really at zero, like he could not grow at all.
So I gave him some tips, and in a month, he was like, really good.
He was like, really surprised, blown away.
He never expected. So there are some things that are trainable.
It's like a bike. In my case, I'll learn how to do those things without anyone telling me.
You know, like, if you are growing the face a human face, the distance between your eyes is the same as one of your eyes.
Mike gives tips to his students, helpful pieces of advice about how to do something, in this case, to paint.
After getting mike's tips, one of his students really improved and started painting much better.
Mike was blown away. An informal way to say, very impressed or surprised, like learning to ride a bike.
Mike thinks that painting is trainable, word from American English, meaning that it can be taught or trained.
For him, this is proof that artist brains are not so different after all.
So there we have it. Two different opinions, but no final answer to our question.
Still, some scientists think there may be a 3rd possibility.
Everyone's brain works by focusing on some areas and ignoring others, making a kind of jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces.
Maybe all of us, you me, mozart and Jimmy Hendricks, are just filling in the missing pieces our own way.
Speaking of Mozart, neal, it's time to reveal the answer to your question.
Right? I asked how old child prodigy Mozart was when he 1st composed music, and I said he was five years old.
So was I right? Your answer was correct.
Mozart was five when he 1st wrote music, and by the age of six, he had performed in front of the Emperor of Austria twice. Now, there's an artistic brain, yeah, OK, neil, let's recapt the vacabaloo from this program, starting with child prodigy, a young child like Mozart, with a great talent in something.
Processing describes how your brain makes sense of the information it receives.
The gist of something is a general understanding of it.
Without the details. Tips are useful pieces of advice about how to do something better.
If you are blown away, you are very impressed or surprised by something.
And finally, trainable, means able to be trained or taught in American English.
Once again, our 6 min are up.
It's good bye for now. Goodbye.
