Thursday, November 29, 2012

The Relationship Between Dopamine, Meaning and Art


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Every day we experience new and similar sets of stimuli in the things, people, and places that make up our routine lives. Each impression we receive from our environment is channeled through the pathway of our nerves and reaches our brain. Whether or not we are focused on these things, each object within the range of our ability to perceive it takes little bits of our attention away from our focus and reduces our total awareness ever so slightly.
 
Even though the influence is so small no matter what the perception produces an altered state of consciousness. Sometimes these inner states manifest as changes in the regulation of hormones, neurotransmitters, blood circulation, respiration, and awareness levels. Every change in one body system affects every other in a chain reaction to produce one overall effect on the body and mind.

The key to triggering neurological changes and altering psychological states is through the interpretive faculties in the mind or the way something carries importance for us by containing meaning. In each and every case, the meaning must be deeply personal and affect numerous layers within our psyche. Fear is a different kind of psychological and physical experience than joy and anger is different from boredom. These states can be both conscious and subconscious because sometimes the connection from the environment to the personal is known and at other times it's unknown or forgotten.

Meaning is always derived from the past, shaped and patterned on long forgotten people, objects, and situations we are no longer a part of and can't ever return to. An unexamined or thoroughly viewed past is only part of the building blocks we use to construct our mental framework. Every tiny electrical signal derived from one or more of our senses is sent inward and it is the job of the mind to determine whether or not such signals possess extremely personal meaning or no meaning at all. It is an all or nothing proposition in most cases, either a signal matters or it doesn't, there's no in-between.

The mind is a self-programming mechanism we can either put on automatic or use cautiously and with deliberation. Used automatically, we are nothing but puppets in life's comedy and pawns in the drama of others. But used cautiously and with deliberation, we have a chance at controlling how impulses from the environment and people affect us by choosing the meaning from each and every impulse we receive and how we deal with it.

Handled in this way we can align stimuli in the environment, the meaning we derive from them, the reaction our bodies have from the meaning we chose, the emotions that are generated as a result, with our goals in life and the purposes we select for obtaining those goals. This approach and the state of mind which is produced can be called harmony of mind or integrity of thought and action.
 
Art is a stimuli like everything else we can perceive with our senses. Since art is man-made, the equation explaining the manufacture of art essentially breaks down to people affecting changes in other people for the sake of pleasure or some other psychological experience. Whether we're talking about music, painting, film, or clothing, the mind must evaluate a work of art to determine the meaning the artist wanted to communicate or the meaning the artwork has to us, individually.

Depending on the meaning we assign to the artwork, dopamine or another brain chemical will release into our bloodstream to change our psychological and physical state to match the meaning we chose. This may produce pleasure, stress, relaxation, or a sense of understanding between audience and artist.
 
 
Click here to learn more about neurotransmitters or hormones.


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Related Music:
 
Slippery Globes

Baby Trains

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Related Articles:
 
Music and Trance States of Mind
 
Hooks and Earworms
 
The Brain, the Ear, and the Sense of Hearing
 
 
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Marc
http://stereothesis.com/





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