Just another moody woman? Is the Mona Lisa smiling or is she being sardonic? New science has some insights
Anyone who has trudged up to the Louvre in Paris has two reactions on seeing the Mona Lisa.
1) “It (the painting) is soo much smaller than I imagined” and
2) ” I couldn’t really make out if she was smiling or not!”
For people who thought the latter, science may have an answer for you.
The Mona Lisa is one of the world’s most enigmatic paintings. Leonard DaVinci’s masterpiece looks like she is smiling one moment, and is sardonic the next. So what gives?
The reason, say scientists, is because the painting is sending mixed signals to our brain!
They believe Mona Lisa’s smile depends on what cells in the retina pick up the image and what channel the image is transmitted through in the brain.
Sometimes one channel wins over the other, and you see the smile, sometimes others take over and you do not see the smile.
There are different cells in our eyes that are designed to pick up different colours, contrasts, backgrounds and foregrounds.
Some cells deal with peripheral vision and others with central vision.
And what the cell picks up from any image depends on what channel it is sending to the brain for interpreting.
These channels encode data about an object’s size, clarity, brightness and location in the visual field.
“Sometimes one channel wins over the other, and you see the smile, sometimes others take over and you don’t see the smile,” said Dr Luis Martinez Otero, a neuroscientist at Institute of Neuroscience in Alicante, Spain, who conducted the study, told New Scientist.
Dr.Otero’s research was originally presented at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting in Chicago.
Read more about Mona Lisa’s deconstructed smile and Dr.Otero’s research here.
