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Art inspires strong feelings 鈥� and feelings work on the brain in very specific ways. So in theory, art should make a good tool for anyone who wants to explore not just art but also emotions and neurology. Absolutely, reckon British artist Helen Storey and American psychologist and neuroscientist Jim Coan. Earlier this year, they worked with a British secondary school for the pilot of an art-science experiment called Eye and I that they hoped would add fresh insights into the relationship between facial expressions and emotions.

Storey and Coan hope to bring something unique to the area by involving everyone from the people looking at the art to the researchers themselves in an open-ended experiment. That way, they feel, everyone wins. Individuals are enriched by discovering new things about themselves; artists and scientists gain insights they couldn鈥檛 get any other way.

And there鈥檚 a big picture, too: if we can learn more about our minds and emotions, we may be less vulnerable to manipulation by others.

The pair are well placed to pull it off. Storey has been involved with art-science collaborations for nearly a decade, but for a scientist like Coan, this is more of a challenge. Fortunately he鈥檚 no stranger to controversy, with a career that brought him celebrity even in his undergraduate years. Liz Else asked Coan to explain what they are up to.

What was Eye and I?

It was a darkened room with slots about the size of letter boxes randomly arranged on the walls. Behind the slots were actors making facial expressions reflecting anger, sadness, happiness and so on. People who went into the room could only see the actors鈥� eyes. Kids and teachers came in groups or alone, and we invited some local people too.

What were the reactions like?

It was fascinating. We had an audience that ranged between 3 and 80 years old. Some people said they felt uncomfortable, like they were being watched by the actors rather than doing the watching. Others felt unhappy 鈥� when they looked at the slot with sad eyes, for example. They found it claustrophobic, intense, intimate or exhilarating. One autistic child was far more verbal than usual: he was clearly stimulated by it and could respond to expressions delivered that way. Overall, the boys seemed a bit more intimidated than the girls.

Why eyes?

Our brain activity and our reports of our experiences change in response to the emotional expression on our faces. So if you鈥檙e making a joyful face and the left frontal area of the brain is very active, you鈥檙e more likely to report that you鈥檙e feeling happiness. Now, the expression of the eyes is very important for triggering this. We plan to redo some of the early studies into expression to see what we can remove from pictures of facial expressions and still get the same emotional and neurophysiological effects when we look at brains using the latest functional MRI scanners.

How did the actors find the experience?

Making facial expressions and holding them for a long time generated quite intense emotional experiences. Before every performance, Helen had the extraordinary good sense to provide pens and put up 鈥済raffiti walls鈥� backstage to help the actors express themselves. They would make an anger expression for five minutes, for example, then come back and curse on paper. Or they鈥檇 make a sad expression and write how profound the experience was of weeping in front of people.

So because no one said 鈥渃ut鈥�, the actors were left with real feelings?

Yes. They were having such profound experiences that they cornered me on my last day in London and ordered me to record one of my training sessions so they could use all they had learned from Eye and I in their acting afterwards. They had been trained mainly as method actors, where they had to think themselves into character. They weren鈥檛 aware of the simple but powerful effects on your emotional state of just being told to move your face into a certain expression. They were quite shocked by the intensity.

Are you going to do more Eye and I installations?

Yes. But in future we want to keep better track of the emotional expressions of the visitors and what鈥檚 going on inside the installation at the time. We are currently looking for other venues and partners.

What inspired Eye and I?

Helen was very taken by work done at the University of California, Berkeley, where researchers assessed the happiness of women in their 50s compared with the apparent happiness of their facial expressions in photos from their college yearbooks. They found that the ones who had smiled a genuine smile in the early photo, rather than a staged smile, were the ones who ended up with happier lives. The muscles around the eye involved in the smile gave the game away 鈥� there鈥檚 a special set involved in authentic smiling. Helen wondered whether expressions could be a major factor in affecting what happened to you in life. I was studying other things to do with facial expression and outcome, so when we met we found we had a lot in common.

Would you like to use art to look at other big ideas in neurobiology?

I鈥檇 like to generate art exhibits that offer an intense emotional stimulus of some sort, such as people staring at you, or watching ghastly or wonderful films. One of the things that we talked about was getting people to pay attention to their own experiences as they interact with these art stimuli, so it is more active, dynamic and interactive 鈥� in a way, they would become part of the art. And we could offer people ideas about how to experiment.

Such as?

I鈥檝e got some new research that strongly implies that hand-holding influences how you experience images. So we could get people to visit in groups and pairs, and experiment with how they feel while they are dealing with a particular stimulus. I expect that who they are with 鈥� a partner, a friend, a family member or an acquaintance 鈥� will create real differences in how they experience the art and I couldn鈥檛 get at that information any other way.

People think science is entirely about strictly controlled experiments, and although experimentation may be the best way to isolate important causal relationships, reliance on experimentation alone reflects a very limited view of science. Projects such as Eye and I offer the potential for casting a wider net in generating testable hypotheses that we may not previously have thought of.

Any other ideas?

One of the amazing things is that when people are told to make expressions, you essentially have a context-free emotional stimulus. Our brains are not designed to have an emotional experience without context, so people go to work creating an imaginary one 鈥� it鈥檚 called confabulation. We could experiment with it.

鈥淏rains are not designed to have a context-free emotional experience鈥�

What about using false memory?

We could 鈥� but I rather feel I鈥檝e been there already! I started my career with Elizabeth Loftus, one of the leading lights in false memory research. I did a study called 鈥淟ost in a Shopping Mall鈥� in 1992 鈥� it was my undergraduate thesis. I designed a method for getting people to 鈥渞emember鈥� complex autobiographical memories for things that never happened. My first subject was my brother Chris: I asked him to write, over the course of six days, about four different events that had happened to us about 10 years previously. Except that one was completely made up 鈥� the 鈥渓ost in the shopping mall鈥� scenario. In the first few days, he recalled nothing, but then on the fourth or fifth day, he had an 鈥渁ha!鈥� experience in which he 鈥渞emembered鈥� the things I suggested. By the end of the experiment, he was filling out the details from that 鈥渆xperience鈥�. When I told him later that one of the memories was false, and asked him to guess which one it was, he guessed wrongly.

So people can be easily manipulated. You don鈥檛 need the CIA, just someone with a bit of knowledge鈥�

That鈥檚 right.

Didn鈥檛 you also get involved in some other controversial research into expressions?

Yes. I did some work with one of my first mentors, John Gottman, on couples, some of whom were facing divorce. Among other things, we found that couples who were not going to make it did a particular kind of eye roll when they were talking to each other 鈥� it was very dismissive and lethal to the relationship.

Would you design a public art experiment to alert people to the implications of all this?

Absolutely. Helen and I have talked a lot about it. Her major goal is to give the information away so the public can use it to enrich their lives and their understanding.