ALICE SCHWARZ: In this sculpture, there's a sense of forward movement, of hurriedness, which actually is most apparent when you look at the piece from the back, and you can appreciate this lunging forward, the pushing off of the left foot at the edge of the base. She moves into the viewer's space. It's almost like you want to step back a little bit to let her keep going!

ERIC KANDEL: Sculptures, because they perform movements, often, reaching out to us, activate parts of the brain that are involved in social interactions, and that's really quite fascinating.

NARRATOR: Our brains respond to the sculpture's position in a specific way. Neuroscientist Eric Kandel explains:

ERIC KANDEL: There's a part of your brain that responds to movement, any kind of movement, a car coming by, a bicycle coming by, but there's another part of the brain that evolves to biological movement. There's a response to the movement of statues, particularly insofar as they move toward us, and we capture that as sort of a tension.

NARRATOR: Nydia also evokes an imagined soundscape.

ALICE SCHWARZ: I think the way that her eyes, just gently closed, the long fingers of her left hand that cup her ear, we get a sense immediately, the strength of her sense of hearing. The most important aspect to the story here is something she's listening to.

ERIC KANDEL: The auditory system obviously gets activated, listening to it very carefully. Even though we're looking at something that has no sound whatsoever, the empathy, this poor girl alone, isolated.