[Neuropsychology of aesthetic judgment and creativity: implications for development]

Neuroscience work on our aesthetic judgment skills shows that the neurocognitive mechanisms involved are far from being as basic and automatic as one might think. Aesthetic pleasure can thus be broken down into three complementary layers: sensory, memory and analytical pleasure. In multivariate models of creativity, several components are also considered: cognitive, conative, emotional, and environmental or social. Neuroimaging studies show that there are common brain networks mobilized for aesthetic judgment and creativity tasks, which helps explain why, if we ask people to perform creativity tasks, we notice that this then stimulates their aesthetic sensitivity, and vice versa.