Why would Parkinson's disease lead to sudden changes in creativity, motivation, or style with visual art? A review of case evidence and new neurobiological, contextual, and genetic hypotheses

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a devastating diagnosis with, however, potential for an extremely intriguing aesthetic component. Despite motor and cognitive deficits, an emerging collection of studies report a burst of visual artistic output and alterations in produced art in a subgroup of patients. This provides a unique window into the neurophysiological bases for why and how we might create and enjoy visual art, as well as into general brain function and the nature of PD or other neurodegenerative diseases. However, there has not been a comprehensive organization of literature on this topic. Nor has there been an attempt to connect case evidence and knowledge on PD with present understanding of visual art making in psychology and neuroaesthetics in order to propose hypotheses for documented artistic changes. Here, we collect the current research on this topic, tie this to PD symptoms and neurobiology, and provide new theories focusing on opaminergic neuron damage, over-stimulation from dopamine agonist therapy, and context or genetic factors revealing the neurobiological basis of the visual artistic brain.