Seeing is life. Seeing is transfonning luminous col We wish to extend our academic and theoretical ored stimulations and shapes into amental represen knowledge and also to complete and exchange our tation, structured in space and in time. But seeing is technical and professional experience to prepare also opening onto the world that surrounds us: it is corrective means for the future. thus a means for communicating and learning. Numerous questions have yet to be answered, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a philosopher worth such as: quoting during the bicentennial of the French Revo lution of which he was an instigator, stated, "of all * Will it one day be possible to defer or stop the the senses, vision is that wh ich can be the least aging of the accommodative apparatus? readily separated from judgments of the mind. " * Is further improvement of the current corrective Sight is increasingly called on in our modern means possible, whether spectacles or contact world. Maturity is affected at about 40-45 years by lenses? the on set of presbyopia. Atthat age, which demands * How are behavioral and psychological presbyope all our intellectual and physical means, our sight typologies to be integrated in the course of exam should be irreproachable. Our efficiency must not be ination, prescription, and fitting with corrective diminished.

What is painting, but a communication channel for the MESSAGE between artist and viewer? Artists first imagine a painting, using their "mind's eye" image of a segment of their world. Next, using their genius, techniques, and skill, they transfer their mental representations onto the canvas. What is then the function of the externalised painting? It is to communicate a message to a viewer. Our book is about a "neurological theory of art," inasmuch it relates the particular perspective of cybernetics viewing art as "communication channel" with neuroscientific experimental findings, experiences and opinions of the human art world i. e. artists, critics, art historians, aesthetic philosophers and of course the viewers: this is the red line of our book. With our new knowledge of the modular brain, many aspects of humanistic approaches to vision and art, can be clarified. This book approaches the worlds of art criticism, art history, and the philosophy of art, from the point-of-view of recent studies on the nature of brain control of human vision, and of the role that active eye movements play. Its main topics are: . Art as a form of communication . What is top down (TD) and bottom up (BU) ? . How do they affect our viewing of artful pictures ? . Why did most artists, art historians, and art critics favour the BU approach ? . How does the Scanpath Theory and its relation to TD work ? . Neuroimaging and eye movement studies show how TD works in Visual Cognition when we look at art