The MRI revealed that the control subject drew portraits using the right posterior parietal area, the brain’s facial-recognition module, with which we recognise people and judge their mood. Ocean was also drawing faces but, that part of his brain was quiet. Instead, the blood rushed to the right middle frontal area, associated with spatial awareness: the part of the brain whose usual purpose is to stop us from bumping into things as we walk. Ocean’s working mind, the scan revealed, didn’t consider the face as a face, but a collection of shapes. This let him create a recognisable likeness,
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The difference in the brain of a painter and a no-painter
