Drawing on the brain: An ALE meta-analysis of functional brain activation during drawing

Art therapy researchers and practitioners are increasingly interested in the brain mechanisms underlying art therapy, an investigation area associated with almost no neuroimaging research. Lusebrink (2010) hypothesized that expression at different levels of the Expressive Therapies Continuum (ETC) would be supported by different patterns of functional brain activation. In the current study, we tested Lusebrink's (2010) hypotheses through an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis of past neuroimaging research as participants engaged in different drawing tasks. Results supported our predictions that cognitive drawing, operationalized by internally-cued drawing stimuli or objective drawing content, would be associated with activation of the prefrontal and cingulate cortices. However, results failed to support our predictions that perceptual drawing, operationalized by externally-cued drawing stimuli and nonobjective drawing content, would be associated with activation of the ventral visual pathway in the temporal lobe. Perceptual drawing was associated with cerebellum, frontal, and parietal lobe activation (including the motor and somatosensory cortices). The dorsal visual pathway, largely in the parietal lobe, was engaged during cognitive and perceptual drawing. Our findings on patterns of brain activation can inform broader neuroscientific conceptualizations of the ETC framework and future directions for art therapy research and practice.