Alva Noë. Museo Nacional del Prado and Fundación Tatiana join forces to explore artistic experience through neuroscience and philosophy

Museo Nacional del Prado and Fundación Tatiana, through its International Center for Neuroscience and Ethics, have launched the International Residency Program on Neuroscience and Art—an innovative initiative that opens new pathways for investigating how viewers perceive and experience pictorial art.

The project takes an interdisciplinary approach based on collaboration between tandems formed by a neuroscientist and a philosopher of mind, working together to analyze what happens in both our brain and our subjective experience when contemplating a work of art.

The first two experts leading this research will be neuroscientist Javier de Felipe from Centro de Neurociencias Cajal-CSIC, and philosopher of mind Alva Noë from University of California, Berkeley.

What makes this proposal unique is both its approach and its setting: Museo Nacional del Prado, one of the world’s greatest art museums, with a collection of more than 7,600 paintings, including masterpieces by Velázquez, Goya, El Greco, Rubens, and Titian. Spanning ten centuries, the Prado’s collections were viewed by more than 3.5 million visitors in 2024—witnesses to the power of art to provoke emotion, reflection, and wonder.

The Experience of Art

What does this artistic experience actually consist of? What happens in our brain and mind when we look at a painting?

To answer these questions, the project brings together neuroscience, which studies brain processes, and philosophy of mind, which analyzes how we make sense of what we perceive. The goal is to understand not only how we see and feel art, but also how we interpret it and integrate it into our personal experience.

Far from being a simple process, artistic appreciation dynamically activates different areas of the brain. Visual regions process colours, shapes, and textures; emotional regions allow us to connect with the work and experience beauty and emotion. Even motor areas can be triggered if a painting suggests movement.

But artistic perception depends on more than sensory information. Knowledge, memory, and context play a crucial role. What we know, what we’ve experienced, and the meaning we assign to a work profoundly shape how we interpret it. Viewing art becomes a unique experience where perception, emotion, and thought converge.

This initiative will also address key questions: What is a aesthetic experience? What mechanisms make something move us? Why do some works leave a lasting impression on our memory?

A Project Linking Neuroscience and Philosophy

Contemporary neuroscience proposes that aesthetic experience arises from the interaction of three major brain systems:

• the sensory system, which processes what we perceive;
• the emotional system, which generates responses like pleasure, awe, or aversion;
• and the cognitive system, which interprets the work and links it to our memories and knowledge.

This model explains why the same artwork can provoke different reactions in each person: artistic experience is, in essence, a dialogue between the work, the context, and the viewer.

As Alva Noë argues in Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, art goes beyond observation. It is a tool to investigate reality, question our social structures, and explore who we are. Art and philosophy share the task of transforming how we think and express ourselves.

Complementing this, Javier de Felipe, in El jardín de la neurología, shows how the brain—with its intricate network of neurons and infinite connections—not only provides the biological foundation of creativity but also becomes an artistic motif in itself: both workshop and canvas, a stage where science and art converse to reveal the beauty of the mind and the depth of human experience.

From both philosophical and neuroscientific perspectives, Noë and De Felipe agree that aesthetic experience is not a passive act of observation but a profound process where perception, emotion, knowledge, and consciousness intertwine. For them, art is not only contemplated—it is lived, interpreted, and becomes a privileged way to explore the human mind.

This exceptional collaboration between Museo Nacional del Prado and Fundación Tatiana—bringing together art and science through leading experts—will make possible to observe in an integrated way not only what happens in the brain, but also how aesthetic experience is lived internally.

This joint project marks a step forward in the study of artistic perception and in the dialogue between the sciences and the humanities, opening new paths to understand the profound meaning of art in our culture and in each person’s life.