Anjan Chatterjee, MD, will deliver the Volwiler Lecture at Lake Forest College on February 10. The lecture, titled “The Neuroscience and Ethics of Beauty and Human Appearance,” will focus on how the brain quickly forms judgments about faces and how these judgments can lead to biases.
Chatterjee is a Professor of Neurology, Psychology, and Architecture and is the founding director of the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics. His research addresses spatial cognition in relation to language as well as neuroaesthetics. He has written several books including The Aesthetic Brain and co-edited works such as Brain, Beauty, and Art. He has also contributed to journals in neuroscience, neurology, ethics, and aesthetics.
His work has been recognized with awards from organizations like the American Academy of Neurology and the American Psychological Association. According to DebBurman at Lake Forest College: “I am beyond thrilled that Dr. Chatterjee will be our Volwiler lecturer. We have tried to get him for years to give a major talk at the college. As a neurologist leader, he has brought together medicine, science, and humanities in a unique way with his scholarship and he is widely regarded as a thought leader and both advocate and critic in two emerging important interdisciplinary fields, neuroethics and neuroaesthetics.”
Chatterjee’s lecture will explore how automatic neural responses contribute to stereotypes such as “beauty-is-good” and the stigmatization of facial differences. It will also discuss how aesthetic judgments influence moral perception and offer suggestions for reducing negative effects caused by these biases.
DebBurman added: “His interdisciplinary talk that connects brain, beauty, and art should widely appeal to our college community and the broader public. He combines neuroimaging and studies with patients with neurological disease to probe cognitive systems. His research has provided insights into our actions, spatial and causal relations, and particularly how art is affected by brain damage. In fact, he coined the term ‘cosmetic neurology’ to define how the abilities of healthy people can be enhanced with insights from clinical neuroscience and the ethical issues that follow from this practice.”
The event is supported by the Ernest H. Volwiler Fund in partnership with the Krebs Center for the Humanities, The Ethics Center, and Synapse—Lake Forest College’s neuroscience student organization.
“[Dr. Chatterjee] has brought together medicine, science, and humanities in a unique way with his scholarship and is widely regarded as a thought leader.”
