Collectors of art buy art directly from artists, an intermediary representing an artist, or on the secondary market. Often, within this process, collectors become interested in the artist who created the art they buy and what makes that artist tick.

To put it differently, some collectors aspire to understand why artists do what they do, and conversely, some artists desire to understand collectors and why they buy what they buy. This can create a richer experience for both. Here, we explore one facet of this puzzle: artists’ involuntary thoughts related to specific visual tasks.

Kaimal et al. (2017) studied how three creative self-expression tasks—coloring, doodling, and free drawing—activate the brain's medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and reward pathways. Using fNIRS (Functional near-infrared Spectroscopy), both portable and non-invasive, brain activity can be........

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