Neural correlates of viewing paintings: evidence from a quantitative meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging data

Altered small-world and disrupted topological properties of functional connectivity networks in patients with nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy

BACKGROUND

Nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION) is a disease of the optic nerve, but its effect on brain network topology is still unclear.This study aimed to investigate brain network alterations in NAION patients and to explore their relationship with functional impairment.

METHODS

Resting-state functional MRI data were collected from 23 NAION patients and 23 matched healthy control subjects.We used graph theory analysis to investigate the global and nodal network topological properties,and network-based statistical (NBS) methods were used to explore intergroup differences in functional connectivity (FC) strength.

RESULTS

Compared to the control group, NAION patients had lower global efficiency, normalized clustering coefficient and small-world values and higher characteristic path length (P < 0.05). In the hub distributions of functional networks, the NAION group had one hub region disappearing and four hub regions appearing in nodal degree centrality (Dc), and two hubs disappearing and one hub region appearing in nodal betweenness centrality (Bc). The NAION group also had enhanced brain FC primarily associated with the frontal, prefrontal, parietal lobes and cerebellum. Furthermore, the right temporal pole, superior temporal gyrus (r = -0.424), the right inferior temporal gyrus (r = -0.414), the right cerebellar lobule Ⅵ (r = 0.450), and the left cerebellar lobule crus Ⅰ (r = 0.584) were significantly correlated with clinical severity.

CONCLUSION

NAION patients show disruption and redistribution of FC in specific regions of the brain network, which may be associated with visual impairment.

The role of the body in the experience of installation art: a case study of visitors' bodily, emotional, and transformative experiences in Tomás Saraceno's "in orbit"

Installation art, with its immersive and participatory character, has been argued to require the use and awareness of the body, which potentially constitute key parts of the artwork's experience and appreciation. Heightened body awareness is even argued to be a key to particularly profound emotional or even transformative states, which have been frequently ascribed to this genre. However, the body in the experience of installation art has rarely been empirically considered. To address this gap, we investigated the body's role in the experience of Tomás Saraceno's in orbit installation. Based on a list of self-report items created from a review of the theoretical literature, we-for the first time-captured (quantitatively and qualitatively): what kind of subjective bodily experiences visitors (N = 230) reported, how these items grouped into clusters (using network science), and how these relate to emotion, art appraisal, and transformative outcomes. Network analysis of the items determined four communities related to "interoception," "presence," "disturbance," and "proprioception." Proprioception (e.g., awareness of balance/movement/weight) turned out to be a significant determinant of art appreciation in our study, and, together with "disturbing" body experiences (feeling awkward/watched/chills), coincided with transformation. We also assessed individual differences in body awareness yet did not find that these moderate those relationships. We suggest future research on installation art based on a more unified assessment of the role of the body in embodied-enactive aesthetics and its relation to the intensity and impact of art experience in general.

Channeling of Brain Towards Engaging Sensorimotor Tasks for Inducing Hedonic Pleasure to Alleviate Blood Pressure in Hypertension

Background

Hypertension is a modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease and is responsible for major deaths due to stroke and coronary heart disease. Several pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions for reducing blood pressure have been tried earlier. Modulating brain regions such as prefrontal cortex (PFC) to channelize activities is an effective tool to target blood pressure.

Purpose

Prefrontal cortex (PFC) exerts inhibitory control over sympathoexcitatory circuits, which was explored using a novel reaction time paradigm.

Methods

Thirty participants of both genders in the age group 40-70 years with established hypertension were included. A structured reaction time paradigm was designed to include psychomotor and visuomotor elements with integrated sensory attention and motor performance tasks. Blood pressure, Lead II ECG, and EEG from F3 and F4 were recorded. A paired t-test was used to examine the variations in these parameters across tasks.

Results

A significant reduction in mean arterial pressure by 4.04 mmHg (p = .0232) during the visuomotor task and a reduction of 3.38 mmHg during the auditory cue task (p = .0446) were observed. Analysis of the difference in heart rate has shown a profound decrease after passive listening tasks by 3.7 beats (p < .0001*). Spectral analysis from F3 and F4 shows high power in low-frequency zone of EEG indicating a relaxed state during auditory cues and passive listening.

Conclusion

The reaction time paradigm, when applied to hypertensives, helped decrease blood pressure and heart rate and improved the high frequency (HF) component of heart rate variability, indicating parasympathetic dominance. Such reward-oriented paradigms may act as biofeedback modules that cause hyperactivity of the PFC to suppress the sympathoexcitatory circuit with increased parasympathetic activity beneficial to hypertensive individuals.

The art of film: Perspective on neural clues to repeated attraction to movie watching

This article about possible neural underpinning of repeated attraction to watching movies is dedicated to the memory of Prof. Eran Zaidel, who made outstanding contributions to neuroscience (and loved watching movies). The film is an art form crafted by multiple artists from diverse fields, contributing specialized skills, talents, and creativity to the final product. Attention-attraction to all artworks has deep biological roots. Movies have been attracting audiences repeatedly ever since they were introduced over 100 years ago. Although countless studies analyzed the nature of the art, the neural underpinning of repeated attraction to viewing movies has been understudied. Here, clues gleaned from non-film findings are proposed. The perspective suggests that functions of the mesolimbic "reward pathway" associated with pleasure and joy, the brain regions responding to facial beauty, to pictorial art aesthetics, and to music listening with increased dopamine levels are all recruited in the repeated attraction.

How universal is preference for visual curvature? A systematic review and meta-analysis

Evidence dating back a century shows that humans are sensitive to and exhibit a preference for visual curvature. This effect has been observed in different age groups, human cultures, and primate species, suggesting that a preference for curvature could be universal. At the same time, several studies have found that preference for curvature is modulated by contextual and individual factors, casting doubt on this hypothesis. To resolve these conflicting findings, we conducted a systematic meta-analysis of studies that have investigated the preference for visual curvature. Our meta-analysis included 61 studies which provided 106 independent samples and 309 effect sizes. The results of a three-level random effects model revealed a Hedges' g of 0.39-consistent with a medium effect size. Further analyses revealed that preference for curvature is moderated by four factors: presentation time, stimulus type, expertise, and task. Together, our results suggest that preference for visual curvature is a reliable but not universal phenomenon and is influenced by factors other than perceptual information.

Modeling visual aesthetic perception: bridges between computed texture features and perceived beauty qualities in semantic experiments

The exploration of the potential relationship between computable low-level texture, such as features extracted from color and texture, and the perceived high-level aesthetic properties, such as warm or cold, soft or hard, has been a hot research topic of neuroaesthetics. First, the selection and clustering of aesthetic antonyms used to represent the aesthetic properties of visual texture are completed through two semantic differential experiments. Subsequently, 151 visual textures are rated according to the selected aesthetic antonyms by participants in a third semantic differential experiment. Third, 106 textural features are extracted using four different image analysis algorithms to describe the low-level characteristics of visual textures. Finally, the construction and evaluation of the visual aesthetic perception model based on multiple linear and nonlinear regression algorithms are discussed. We analyzed the frequency of each aesthetic antonym selected from 20 pairs of semantic antonyms, and the most frequently mentioned 8 pairs of semantic antonyms were selected as the core set for model building. The extracted low-level features are highly correlative. Of the correlation coefficients based on absolute values, 3383 are less than 0.75, accounting for 14.84% of the total. The correlation coefficients were larger than 0.5 accounts for 27.29% of the total. Through neighborhood component analysis, the top 10 low-level features are selected with lower correlation. The gap between low-level calculated features and high-level perceived aesthetic emotions can be bridged by a brain-inspired model of visual aesthetic perception.

A generalised semantic cognition account of aesthetic experience

Given that aesthetic experiences typically involve extracting meaning from environment, we believe that semantic cognition research has much to offer the field of neuroaesthetics. In the current paper, we propose a generalised framework that is inspired by the semantic cognition literature and that treats aesthetic experience as just one example of how meaning accumulates. According to our framework, aesthetic experiences are underpinned by the same cognitive and brain systems that are involved in deriving meaning from the environment in general, such as modality-specific conceptual representations and controlled processes for retrieving the appropriate type of information. Our generalised semantic cognition view of aesthetic experience has substantial implications for theory development: it leads to novel, falsifiable predictions and it reconfigures foundational assumptions regarding the structure of the cognitive and brain systems that may be involved in aesthetic experiences.

Does Amount of Information Support Aesthetic Values?

Obtaining information from the world is important for survival. The brain, therefore, has special mechanisms to extract as much information as possible from sensory stimuli. Hence, given its importance, the amount of available information may underlie aesthetic values. Such information-based aesthetic values would be significant because they would compete with others to drive decision-making. In this article, we ask, "What is the evidence that amount of information support aesthetic values?" An important concept in the measurement of informational volume is entropy. Research on aesthetic values has thus used Shannon entropy to evaluate the contribution of quantity of information. We review here the concepts of information and aesthetic values, and research on the visual and auditory systems to probe whether the brain uses entropy or other relevant measures, specially, Fisher information, in aesthetic decisions. We conclude that information measures contribute to these decisions in two ways: first, the absolute quantity of information can modulate aesthetic preferences for certain sensory patterns. However, the preference for volume of information is highly individualized, with information-measures competing with organizing principles, such as rhythm and symmetry. In addition, people tend to be resistant to too much entropy, but not necessarily, high amounts of Fisher information. We show that this resistance may stem in part from the distribution of amount of information in natural sensory stimuli. Second, the measurement of entropic-like quantities over time reveal that they can modulate aesthetic decisions by varying degrees of surprise given temporally integrated expectations. We propose that amount of information underpins complex aesthetic values, possibly informing the brain on the allocation of resources or the situational appropriateness of some cognitive models.

More Than Meets the Eye: Art Engages the Social Brain

Here we present the viewpoint that art essentially engages the social brain, by demonstrating how art processing maps onto the social brain connectome-the most comprehensive diagram of the neural dynamics that regulate human social cognition to date. We start with a brief history of the rise of neuroaesthetics as the scientific study of art perception and appreciation, in relation to developments in contemporary art practice and theory during the same period. Building further on a growing awareness of the importance of social context in art production and appreciation, we then set out how art engages the social brain and outline candidate components of the "artistic brain connectome." We explain how our functional model for art as a social brain phenomenon may operate when engaging with artworks. We call for closer collaborations between the burgeoning field of neuroaesthetics and arts professionals, cultural institutions and diverse audiences in order to fully delineate and contextualize this model. Complementary to the unquestionable value of art for art's sake, we argue that its neural grounding in the social brain raises important practical implications for mental health, and the care of people living with dementia and other neurological conditions.

The Implicit Aesthetic Preference for Mobile Marketing Interface Layout-An ERP Study

Businesses and scholars have been trying to improve marketing effect by optimizing mobile marketing interfaces aesthetically as users browse freely and aimlessly through mobile marketing interfaces. Although the layout is an important design factor that affects interface aesthetics, whether it can trigger customer's aesthetic preferences in mobile marketing remains unexplored. To address this issue, we employ an empirical methodology of event-related potentials (EPR) in this study from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience and psychology. Subjects are presented with a series of mobile marketing interface images of different layouts with identical marketing content. Their EEG waves were recorded as they were required to distinguish a target stimulus from the others. After the experiment, each of the subjects chose five stimuli interfaces they like and five they dislike. By analyzing the ERP data derived from the EEG data and the behavioral data, we find significant differences between the disliked interfaces and the other interfaces in the ERP component of P2 from the frontal-central area in the 200–400 ms post-stimulus onset time window and LPP from both the frontal-central and parietal-occipital area in the 400–600 ms time window. The results support the hypothesis that humans do make rapid implicit aesthetic preferences for interface layouts and suggest that even under a free browsing context like the mobile marketing context, interface layouts that raise high emotional arousal can still attract more user attention and induce users' implicit aesthetic preference.

How Neuroimaging Can Aid the Interpretation of Art

Cognitive neuroscience of art continues to be criticized for failing to provide interesting results about art itself. In particular, results of brain imaging experiments have not yet been utilized in interpretation of particular works of art. Here we revisit a recent study in which we explored the neuronal and behavioral response to painted portraits with a direct versus an averted gaze. We then demonstrate how fMRI results can be related to the art historical interpretation of a specific painting. The evidentiary status of neuroimaging data is not different from any other extra-pictorial facts that art historians uncover in their research and relate to their account of the significance of a work of art. They are not explanatory in a strong sense, yet they provide supportive evidence for the art writer’s inference about the intended meaning of a given work. We thus argue that brain imaging can assume an important role in the interpretation of particular art works.

Differences in regional gray matter volume predict the extent to which openness influences judgments of beauty and pleasantness of interior architectural spaces

Hedonic evaluation of sensory objects varies from person to person. While this variability has been linked to differences in experience, little is known about why stimuli lead to different evaluations in different people. We used linear mixed-effects models to determine the extent to which the openness, contour, and ceiling height of interior spaces influenced the beauty and pleasantness ratings of 18 participants. Then, by analyzing structural brain images acquired for the same group of participants, we asked if any regional gray matter volume (rGMV) covaried with these differences in the extent to which the three features influence beauty and pleasantness ratings. Voxel-based morphometry analysis revealed that the influence of openness on pleasantness ratings correlated with rGMV in the anterior prefrontal cortex (Brodmann area (BA)-10), and the influence of openness on beauty ratings correlated with rGMV in the temporal pole (BA38) and cluster, including the posterior cingulate cortex (BA31) and paracentral lobule (BA5/6). There were no significant correlations involving contour or ceiling height. Our results suggest that regional variance in gray matter volume may play a role in the computation of hedonic valuation and account for differences in the way people weigh certain attributes of interior architectural spaces.

The Impact of Motor Imageries on Aesthetic Judgment of Chinese Calligraphy: An fMRI Study

Previous behavioral studies on aesthetics demonstrated that there was a close association between perceived action and aesthetic appreciation. However, few studies explored whether motor imagery would influence aesthetic experience and its neural substrates. In the current study, Chinese calligraphy was used as the stimuli to explore the relationship between the motor imagery and the aesthetic judgments of a participant using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The imaging results showed that, compared with the baseline, the activation of the brain regions [e.g., anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), putamen, and insula] involved in perceptual processing, cognitive judgments, aesthetic emotional, and reward processing was observed after the participants performed motor imagery tasks. The contrast analyses within aesthetic judgments showed that the kinesthetic imagery significantly activated the middle frontal gyrus, postcentral gyrus, ACC, and thalamus. Generally, these areas were considered to be closely related to positive aesthetic experience and suggested that motor imagery, especially kinesthetic imagery, might be specifically associated with the aesthetic appreciation of Chinese calligraphy.

The painter who changed her brain at the flick of a switch

The study of artists with acquired brain damage is an empirical way to investigate the multiplicity of cerebral changes that occur with artistic training. We describe a talented painter with a left progressive cerebral lesion. In spite of losing function of her right hand, she regained dexterity of the left one in ten days for painting and drawing but not for writing. We discuss two potential explanations for her rapid recovery: (a) her extensive artistic training and/or (b) the slow-growing nature of her cerebral lesion.

The effect of action observation on aesthetic preference of Chinese calligraphy: An fMRI study

INTRODUCTION

There is some evidence suggesting that movement perception has an effect on aesthetic experience. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the observation of creators' creative action (the process that calligraphers create calligraphy) remain unclear.

METHODS

In this study, participants were scanned with fMRI while performing aesthetic judgments on Chinese calligraphy images with/without action observation.

RESULTS

Behavioral results showed that both the work by the expert and novice with action observation were rated significantly higher on aesthetic preference than those without action observation. Imaging results showed that brain regions associated with perceptual, cognitive, and emotional processing were commonly activated by calligraphy images with/without action observation. However, compared with no action observation, aesthetic judgments of calligraphy images with action observation elicited stronger activation in the anterior cingulate cortex and the bilateral insula. Meanwhile, the superior parietal lobe which is associated with relevant inner action imitation, was also activated when observing the creator's action.

CONCLUSIONS

Brain activation in the superior parietal lobe, anterior cingulate cortex, and the bilateral insula indicated that observing the creative action of the creators contributed to the aesthetic experience of the observer.

Stochasticity, Nonlinear Value Functions, and Update Rules in Learning Aesthetic Biases

A theoretical framework for the reinforcement learning of aesthetic biases was recently proposed based on brain circuitries revealed by neuroimaging. A model grounded on that framework accounted for interesting features of human aesthetic biases. These features included individuality, cultural predispositions, stochastic dynamics of learning and aesthetic biases, and the peak-shift effect. However, despite the success in explaining these features, a potential weakness was the linearity of the value function used to predict reward. This linearity meant that the learning process employed a value function that assumed a linear relationship between reward and sensory stimuli. Linearity is common in reinforcement learning in neuroscience. However, linearity can be problematic because neural mechanisms and the dependence of reward on sensory stimuli were typically nonlinear. Here, we analyze the learning performance with models including optimal nonlinear value functions. We also compare updating the free parameters of the value functions with the delta rule, which neuroscience models use frequently, vs. updating with a new Phi rule that considers the structure of the nonlinearities. Our computer simulations showed that optimal nonlinear value functions resulted in improvements of learning errors when the reward models were nonlinear. Similarly, the new Phi rule led to improvements in these errors. These improvements were accompanied by the straightening of the trajectories of the vector of free parameters in its phase space. This straightening meant that the process became more efficient in learning the prediction of reward. Surprisingly, however, this improved efficiency had a complex relationship with the rate of learning. Finally, the stochasticity arising from the probabilistic sampling of sensory stimuli, rewards, and motivations helped the learning process narrow the range of free parameters to nearly optimal outcomes. Therefore, we suggest that value functions and update rules optimized for social and ecological constraints are ideal for learning aesthetic biases.

Covid-19 and Mental Health: Could Visual Art Exposure Help?

A worldwidemental health crisis is expected, as millions worldwide fear death and disease while being forced into repeated isolation. Thus, there is a need for new proactive approaches to improve mental resilience and prevent mental health conditions. Since the 1990s, art has emerged as an alternative mental health therapy in the United States and Europe, becoming part of the social care agenda. This article focuses on how visual esthetic experiences can create similar patterns of neuronal activity as those observed when the reward system is activated. The activation of the reward structures could have a stress buffering effect, given the interdependence observed between the reward and stress systems. Therefore, could visual esthetic experiences stimulate mental resilience? And if this were the case, could art-based interventions be offered for mental health in the context of COVID-19 and beyond?

Aristotle's dream: Evolutionary and neural aspects of aesthetic communication in the arts

Art in general perception is something that transcends our notion of reality. In view of the earliest findings in Paleolithic sites, their abstract appearance and sometimes ceremonial context increased their status of a secret language. Even the first figurative cave paintings remained in a context of an encoded semantic whole. The highly symbolic value of art seemed invulnerable. It was just the claim for "mimesis" in Greek antiquity (Plato) that urged artists to "realistically" depict what can be seen-as to stay in track of eternal messages behind. This devaluated the artistic oeuvre to a purely imitating craft and had to overcome at once several inherent obstacles. First, that reality (the phenomenal world) is in general only a pale reflection of what lays behind (Platonic ideas) and second, that the human eye, unlike the human mind, cannot penetrate to more than ephemeral impressions. Moreover, it mixed up reality with what we are able to see (i.e. visual perception), thus supposing a pinpoint representation of the world by our senses. Aristotle was the first to qualify art as picturing more than we usually are meant to see, filling the gap between the sensual and the spiritual world. Aristotelian aesthetics includes concepts of reduction and selection of composition and emotion, thus a summarized view within any performance of poetics or painting. And it took centuries to close the gap between natural and aesthetic perception or art. Life sciences in the 20th century discovered the evolutionary basis of sensory perception as being highly biased and organized, concept as emotion-driven and thus, mentally equipped as well. This sets a new approach in our understanding of perception, art, and aesthetics as an ongoing communication in process on common bases. Art may cooperate or disagree, but never can cut the nexus with its perceptual prejudices and substrate.

art.pics Database: An Open Access Database for Art Stimuli for Experimental Research

While art is omnipresent in human history, the neural mechanisms of how we perceive, value and differentiate art has only begun to be explored. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies suggested that art acts as secondary reward, involving brain activity in the ventral striatum and prefrontal cortices similar to primary rewards such as food. However, potential similarities or unique characteristics of art-related neuroscience (or neuroesthetics) remain elusive, also because of a lack of adequate experimental tools: the available collections of art stimuli often lack standard image definitions and normative ratings. Therefore, we here provide a large set of well-characterized, novel art images for use as visual stimuli in psychological and neuroimaging research. The stimuli were created using a deep learning algorithm that applied different styles of popular paintings (based on artists such as Klimt or Hundertwasser) on ordinary animal, plant and object images which were drawn from established visual stimuli databases. The novel stimuli represent mundane items with artistic properties with proposed reduced dimensionality and complexity compared to paintings. In total, 2,332 novel stimuli are available open access as “art.pics” database at https://osf.io/BTWNQ/ with standard image characteristics that are comparable to other common visual stimuli material in terms of size, variable color distribution, complexity, intensity and valence, measured by image software analysis and by ratings derived from a human experimental validation study [n = 1,296 (684f), age 30.2 ± 8.8 y.o.]. The experimental validation study further showed that the art.pics elicit a broad and significantly different variation in subjective value ratings (i.e., liking and wanting) as well as in recognizability, arousal and valence across different art styles and categories. Researchers are encouraged to study the perception, processing and valuation of art images based on the art.pics database which also enables real reward remuneration of the rated stimuli (as art prints) and a direct comparison to other rewards from e.g., food or money.

Key Messages: We provide an open access, validated and large set of novel stimuli (n = 2,332) of standardized art images including normative rating data to be used for experimental research. Reward remuneration in experimental settings can be easily implemented for the art.pics by e.g., handing out the stimuli to the participants (as print on premium paper or in a digital format), as done in the presented validation task. Experimental validation showed that the art.pics’ images elicit a broad and significantly different variation in subjective value ratings (i.e., liking, wanting) across different art styles and categories, while size, color and complexity characteristics remained comparable to other visual stimuli databases.

Discrepancies between explicit and implicit evaluation of aesthetic perception ability in individuals with autism: a potential way to improve social functioning

Background

The capacity to evaluate beauty plays a crucial role in social behaviour and social relationships. It is known that some characteristics of beauty are important social cues that can induce stereotypes or promote different behavioural expectations. Another crucial capacity for success in social interactions is empathy, i.e. the ability to understand and share others’ mental and emotional states. Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have an impairment of empathic ability. We showed in a previous study that empathy and aesthetic perception abilities closely related. Indeed, beauty can affect different aspects of empathic behaviour, and empathy can mediate the aesthetic perception in typically developing (TD) individuals. Thus, this study evaluates the ability of aesthetic perception in ASD individuals compared to TD individuals, using the Golden Beauty behavioural task adapted for eye-tracking in order to acquire both explicit and implicit evidences. In both groups, the relationship between empathic and aesthetic perception abilities was also evaluated.

Methods

Ten ASD individuals (age ± SD:20.7 ± 4.64) and ten TD individuals (age ± SD:20.17 ± 0.98) participated in the study. Participants underwent empathy tasks and then the Golden Beauty task. To assess differences in the participants’ performance, we carried out a repeated measures general linear model.

Results

At the explicit level, our behavioural results show an impairment in aesthetic perception ability in ASD individuals. This inability could have relevance for their ability to experience pleasure during social interactions. However, at the implicit level (eye-tracking results), ASD individuals conserved a good ability to feel aesthetic pleasure during the Golden Beauty task, thus indicating a discrepancy between the explicit and implicit evaluation of the beauty task. Finally, beauty perception appears to be linked to empathy when neither of these capacities is compromised, as demonstrated in the TD group. In contrast, this link is missed in ASD individuals.

Conclusion

Overall, our results clearly show that individuals with autism are not completely blind to aesthetic pleasure: in fact, they retain an implicit ability to experience beauty. These findings could pave the way for the development of new protocols to rehabilitate ASD social functioning, exploiting their conserved implicit aesthetic perception.

Seeking the "Beauty Center" in the Brain: A Meta-Analysis of fMRI Studies of Beautiful Human Faces and Visual Art

During the past two decades, cognitive neuroscientists have sought to elucidate the common neural basis of the experience of beauty. Still, empirical evidence for such common neural basis of different forms of beauty is not conclusive. To address this question, we performed an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis on the existing neuroimaging studies of beauty appreciation of faces and visual art by nonexpert adults (49 studies, 982 participants, meta-data are available at https://osf.io/s9xds/ ). We observed that perceiving these two forms of beauty activated distinct brain regions: While the beauty of faces convergently activated the left ventral striatum, the beauty of visual art convergently activated the anterior medial prefrontal cortex (aMPFC). However, a conjunction analysis failed to reveal any common brain regions for the beauty of visual art and faces. The implications of these results are discussed.

A Theoretical Framework for How We Learn Aesthetic Values

How do we come to like the things that we do? Each one of us starts from a relatively similar state at birth, yet we end up with vastly different sets of aesthetic preferences. These preferences go on to define us both as individuals and as members of our cultures. Therefore, it is important to understand how aesthetic preferences form over our lifetimes. This poses a challenging problem: to understand this process, one must account for the many factors at play in the formation of aesthetic values and how these factors influence each other over time. A general framework based on basic neuroscientific principles that can also account for this process is needed. Here, we present such a framework and illustrate it through a model that accounts for the trajectories of aesthetic values over time. Our framework is inspired by meta-analytic data of neuroimaging studies of aesthetic appraisal. This framework incorporates effects of sensory inputs, rewards, and motivational states. Crucially, each one of these effects is probabilistic. We model their interactions under a reinforcement-learning circuitry. Simulations of this model and mathematical analysis of the framework lead to three main findings. First, different people may develop distinct weighing of aesthetic variables because of individual variability in motivation. Second, individuals from different cultures and environments may develop different aesthetic values because of unique sensory inputs and social rewards. Third, because learning is stochastic, stemming from probabilistic sensory inputs, motivations, and rewards, aesthetic values vary in time. These three theoretical findings account for different lines of empirical research. Through our study, we hope to provide a general and unifying framework for understanding the various aspects involved in the formation of aesthetic values over time.

Sex differences in high-level appreciation of automobile design-evoked gamma broadband synchronization

The present study was conducted to provide neuroimaging correlates for neurodesign of automobile for marketing aesthetics, using event-related spectral perturbations (ERSPs) and participant reports. Thirty men and women aged 22–27 years were presented with various 3-dimensional automobile modelling shapes (rectangular, streamlined, and round), which were cross-matched with various interior colour tones (pure hue/vivid, light, and dark tones) in the experimental conditions, i.e., rectangular exterior with a vivid tone interior. The stimuli pairs were to be rated by participants to facilitate our understanding of the emotional dimensions of automotive design qualities. Significant differences were observed in the high gamma band of 80–100 Hz in the left temporal area between the two sexes. Men elicited a stronger high gamma band signals for dark colour tone interiors and rectangular or round automobile modelling designs because of the meaningful and comprehensible signals associated with the mechanisms of working memory. In contrast, women had fewer reactions than men, and elicited higher beta-band dynamics in the anterior cingulate cortex for rectangular automobile modelling design, and higher gamma-band dynamics for light colour tone interiors, which might relate to their higher self-awareness of positive emotional reward.

An insight-related neural reward signal

Moments of insight, a phenomenon of creative cognition in which an idea suddenly emerges into awareness as an "Aha!" are often reported to be affectively positive experiences. We tested the hypothesis that problem-solving by insight is accompanied by neural reward processing. We recorded high-density EEGs while participants solved a series of anagrams. For each solution, they reported whether the answer had occurred to them as a sudden insight or whether they had derived it deliberately and incrementally (i.e., "analytically'). Afterwards, they filled out a questionnaire that measures general dispositional reward sensitivity. We computed the time-frequency representations of the EEGs for trials with insight (I) solutions and trials with analytic (A) solutions and subtracted them to obtain an I-A time-frequency representation for each electrode. Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM) analyses tested for significant I-A and reward-sensitivity effects. SPM revealed the time, frequency, and scalp locations of several I ​> ​A effects. No A ​> ​I effect was observed. The primary neural correlate of insight was a burst of (I ​> ​A) gamma-band oscillatory activity over prefrontal cortex approximately 500 ​ms before participants pressed a button to indicate that they had solved the problem. We correlated the I-A time-frequency representation with reward sensitivity to discover insight-related effects that were modulated by reward sensitivity. This revealed a separate anterior prefrontal burst of gamma-band activity, approximately 100 ​ms after the primary I-A insight effect, which we interpreted to be an insight-related reward signal. This interpretation was supported by source reconstruction showing that this signal was generated in part by orbitofrontal cortex, a region associated with reward learning and hedonically pleasurable experiences such as food, positive social experiences, addictive drugs, and orgasm. These findings support the notion that for many people insight is rewarding. Additionally, these results may explain why many people choose to engage in insight-generating recreational and vocational activities such as solving puzzles, reading murder mysteries, creating inventions, or doing research. This insight-related reward signal may be a manifestation of an evolutionarily adaptive mechanism for the reinforcement of exploration, problem solving, and creative cognition.

A Farewell to Art: Aesthetics as a Topic in Psychology and Neuroscience

Empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics study two main issues: the valuation of sensory objects and art experience. These two issues are often treated as if they were intrinsically interrelated: Research on art experience focuses on how art elicits aesthetic pleasure, and research on valuation focuses on special categories of objects or emotional processes that determine the aesthetic experience. This entanglement hampers progress in empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics and limits their relevance to other domains of psychology and neuroscience. Substantial progress in these fields is possible only if research on aesthetics is disentangled from research on art. We define aesthetics as the study of how and why sensory stimuli acquire hedonic value. Under this definition, aesthetics becomes a fundamental topic for psychology and neuroscience because it links hedonics (the study of what hedonic valuation is in itself) and neuroeconomics (the study of how hedonic values are integrated into decision making and behavioral control). We also propose that this definition of aesthetics leads to concrete empirical questions, such as how perceptual information comes to engage value signals in the reward circuit or why different psychological and neurobiological factors elicit different appreciation events for identical sensory objects.

Neural correlates of visual aesthetic appreciation: insights from non-invasive brain stimulation

During the last decade, non-invasive brain stimulation techniques have been increasingly employed in the field of neuroaesthetics research to shed light on the possible causal role of different brain regions contributing to aesthetic appreciation. Here, I review studies that have employed transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to investigate neurocognitive mechanisms mediating visual aesthetic appreciation for different stimuli categories (faces, bodies, paintings). The review first considers studies that have assessed the possible causal contribution of cortical regions in mediating aesthetic appreciation along the visual ventral and dorsal pathways (i.e., the extrastriate body area, the motion-sensitive region V5/MT+ , the lateral occipital complex and the posterior parietal cortex). It then considers TMS and tDCS studies that have targeted premotor and motor regions, as well as other areas involved in body and facial expression processing (such as the superior temporal sulcus and the somatosensory cortex) to assess their role in aesthetic evaluation. Finally, it discusses studies that have targeted medial and dorsolateral prefrontal regions leading to significant changes in aesthetic appreciation for both biological stimuli (faces and bodies) and artworks. Possible mechanisms mediating stimulation effects on aesthetic judgments are discussed. A final section considers both methodological limitations of the reviewed studies (including levels of statistical power and the need for further replication) and the future potential for non-invasive brain stimulation to significantly contribute to the understanding of the neural bases of visual aesthetic experiences.

Continuous ratings of movie watching reveal idiosyncratic dynamics of aesthetic enjoyment

Visual aesthetic experiences unfold over time, yet most of our understanding of such experiences comes from experiments using static visual stimuli and measuring static responses. Here, we investigated the temporal dynamics of subjective aesthetic experience using temporally extended stimuli (movie clips) in combination with continuous behavioral ratings. Two groups of participants, a rate group (n = 25) and a view group (n = 25), watched 30-second video clips of landscapes and dance performances in test and retest blocks. The rate group reported continuous ratings while watching the videos, with an overall aesthetic judgment at the end of each video, in both test and retest blocks. The view group, however, passively watched the videos in the test block, reporting only an overall aesthetic judgment at the end of each clip. In the retest block, the view group reported both continuous and overall judgments. When comparing the two groups, we found that the task of making continuous ratings did not influence overall ratings or agreement across participants. In addition, the degree of temporal variation in continuous ratings over time differed substantially by observer (from slower “integrators” to “fast responders”), but less so by video. Reliability of continuous ratings across repeated exposures was in general high, but also showed notable variance across participants. Together, these results show that temporally extended stimuli produce aesthetic experiences that are not the same from person to person, and that continuous behavioral ratings provide a reliable window into the temporal dynamics of such aesthetic experiences while not materially altering the experiences themselves.

Kandinsky or Me? How Free Is the Eye of the Beholder in Abstract Art?

We investigated in "art-naïve" German and Chinese participants the perception of color and spatial balance in abstract art. For color perception, we asked participants (a) to adjust the color of a single element in 24 paintings according to their liking and (b) to indicate whether they preferred their version of the painting or the original. For spatial perception, we asked participants (a) to determine the "balance point" of an artwork and (b) to indicate their preferences for the original or left-right reversed orientation of previously seen and unfamiliar paintings. Results of the color experiments suggest that, even though the interactive task was of a rather open-ended nature, observers' color adjustments were not random but systematically influenced by each painting's color palette. Overall, participants liked their own color choices about as much as the original composition. Results of the spatial experiments reveal a remarkable consistency between participants in their balance point settings. The perceived lateral position of the balance point systematically affected the left-right orientation preference for a given painting. We conclude that "art-naïve" observers are sensitive to the composition of colors and spatial structures in abstract art and are influenced by their cultural backgrounds when experiencing abstract paintings.

Aesthetic Experiences Across Cultures: Neural Correlates When Viewing Traditional Eastern or Western Landscape Paintings

Compared with traditional Western landscape paintings, Chinese traditional landscape paintings usually apply a reversed-geometric perspective and concentrate more on contextual information. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we discovered an intracultural bias in the aesthetic appreciation of Western and Eastern traditional landscape paintings in European and Chinese participants. When viewing Western and Eastern landscape paintings in an fMRI scanner, participants showed stronger brain activation to artistic expressions from their own culture. Europeans showed greater activation in visual and sensory-motor brain areas, regions in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and hippocampus when viewing Western compared to Eastern landscape paintings. Chinese participants exhibited greater neural activity in the medial and inferior occipital cortex and regions of the superior parietal lobule in response to Eastern compared to Western landscape paintings. On the behavioral level, the aesthetic judgments also differed between Western and Chinese participants when viewing landscape paintings from different cultures; Western participants showed for instance higher valence values when viewing Western landscapes, while Chinese participants did not show this effect when viewing Chinese landscapes. In general, our findings offer differentiated support for a cultural modulation at the behavioral level and in the neural architecture for high-level aesthetic appreciation.

A Neuroeconomic Framework for Creative Cognition

Neuroeconomics is the study of the neurobiological bases of subjective preferences and choices. We present a novel framework that synthesizes findings from the literatures on neuroeconomics and creativity to provide a neurobiological description of creative cognition. We propose that value-based decision-making processes and activity in the locus ceruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) neuromodulatory system underlie creative cognition, as well as the large-scale brain network dynamics shown to be associated with creativity. This reconceptualization leads to several falsifiable hypotheses that can further understanding of creativity, decision making, and brain network dynamics.

The Power of Visual Texture in Aesthetic Perception: An Exploration of the Predictability of Perceived Aesthetic Emotions

How to interpret the relationship between the low-level features, such as some statistical characteristics of color and texture, and the high-level aesthetic properties, such as warm or cold, soft or hard, has been a hot research topic of neuroaesthetics. Contrary to the black-box method widely used in the fields of machine learning and pattern recognition, we build a white-box model with the hierarchical feed-forward structure inspired by neurobiological mechanisms underlying the aesthetic perception of visual art. In the experiment, the aesthetic judgments for 8 pairs of aesthetic antonyms are carried out for a set of 151 visual textures. For each visual texture, 106 low-level features are extracted. Then, ten more useful and effective features are selected through neighborhood component analysis to reduce information redundancy and control the complexity of the model. Finally, model building of the beauty appreciation of visual textures using multiple linear or nonlinear regression methods is detailed. Compared with our previous work, a more robust feature selection algorithm, neighborhood component analysis, is used to reduce information redundancy and control computation complexity of the model. Some nonlinear models are also adopted and achieved higher prediction accuracy when compared with the previous linear models. Additionally, the selection strategy of aesthetic antonyms and the selection standards of the core set of them are also explained. This research also suggests that the aesthetic perception and appreciation of visual textures can be predictable based on the computed low-level features.

The Experience of Beauty of Chinese Poetry and Its Neural Substrates

Chinese poetry has a long history and high esthetic value. People who engage esthetically with Chinese poetry would feel the sense of beauty naturally. However, there is little information regarding what happens in the brain when an individual appreciates Chinese poetry, and how the brain processes the subject’s appreciation of beauty. Herein, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural substrates of experiencing beauty by appreciating Chinese poetry. The participants in our study were 28 college students and the stimuli consisted of 25 Chinese poetry and 25 prose selections. Based on an event-related paradigm, the findings of this study suggested that different areas scattered in both the left and right cerebral hemispheres are activated when an individual appreciates Chinese poetry. Compared to reading prose, appreciating Chinese poetry heightens the activation of the left inferior orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), the bilateral insula, the left fusiform, the left supplementary motor area (SMA), and the left precentral gyrus. In these areas, the left inferior OFC and the bilateral insula are considered closely related to experiencing beauty of Chinese poetry, which have been demonstrated that it is an important neural basis of esthetic beauty when using other types of materials. The findings of this study shed new light on the complex but ordinary processes of experiencing beauty when appreciating Chinese poetry and show that some key processes underlying the feeling of esthetic beauty are shared across different esthetic domains.

A domain-general brain network underlying emotional and cognitive interference processing: evidence from coordinate-based and functional connectivity meta-analyses

The inability to control or inhibit emotional distractors characterizes a range of psychiatric disorders. Despite the use of a variety of task paradigms to determine the mechanisms underlying the control of emotional interference, a precise characterization of the brain regions and networks that support emotional interference processing remains elusive. Here, we performed coordinate-based and functional connectivity meta-analyses to determine the brain networks underlying emotional interference. Paradigms addressing interference processing in the cognitive or emotional domain were included in the meta-analyses, particularly the Stroop, Flanker, and Simon tasks. Our results revealed a consistent involvement of the bilateral dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula, left inferior frontal gyrus, and superior parietal lobule during emotional interference. Follow-up conjunction analyses identified correspondence in these regions between emotional and cognitive interference processing. Finally, the patterns of functional connectivity of these regions were examined using resting-state functional connectivity and meta-analytic connectivity modeling. These regions were strongly connected as a distributed system, primarily mapping onto fronto-parietal control, ventral attention, and dorsal attention networks. Together, the present findings indicate that a domain-general neural system is engaged across multiple types of interference processing and that regulating emotional and cognitive interference depends on interactions between large-scale distributed brain networks.

Neuropsychopharmacological aesthetics: A theoretical consideration of pharmacological approaches to causative brain study in aesthetics and art

Recent developments in neuroaesthetics have heightened the need for causative approaches to more deeply understand the mechanism underlying perception, emotion, and aesthetic experiences. This has recently been the topic for empirical work, employing several causative methods for changing brain activity, as well as comparative assessments of individuals with brain damage or disease. However, one area of study with high potential, and indeed a long history of often nonscientific use in the area of aesthetics and art, employing psychopharmacological chemicals as means of changing brain function, has not been systematically utilized. This chapter reviews the literature on this topic, analyzing neuroendocrinological (neurochemical) approaches and mechanisms that might be used to causatively study the aesthetic brain. We focus on four relevant neuromodulatory systems potentially related to aesthetic experience: the dopaminergic, serotonergic, cannabinoid, and the opioidergic system. We build a bridge to psychopharmacological methods and review drug-induced behavioral and neurobiological consequences. We conclude with a discussion of hypotheses and suggestions for future research.

The imaginative mind

The astounding capacity for the human imagination to be engaged across a wide range of contexts is limitless and fundamental to our day-to-day experiences. Although processes of imagination are central to human psychological function, they rarely occupy center stage in academic discourse or empirical study within psychological and neuroscientific realms. The aim of this paper is to tackle this imbalance by drawing together the multitudinous facets of imagination within a common framework. The processes fall into one of five categories depending on whether they are characterized as involving perceptual/motor related mental imagery, intentionality or recollective processing, novel combinatorial or generative processing, exceptional phenomenology in the aesthetic response, or altered psychological states which range from commonplace to dysfunctional. These proposed categories are defined on the basis of theoretical ideas from philosophy as well as empirical evidence from neuroscience. By synthesizing the findings across these domains of imagination, this novel five-part or quinquepartite classification of the human imagination aids in systematizing, and thereby abets, our understanding of the workings and neural foundations of the human imagination. It would serve as a blueprint to direct further advances in the field of imagination while also promoting crosstalk with reference to stimulus-oriented facets of information processing. A biologically and ecologically valid psychology is one that seeks to explain fundamental aspects of human nature. Given the ubiquitous nature of the imaginative operations in our daily lives, there can be little doubt that these quintessential aspects of the mind should be central to the discussion. Hum Brain Mapp 37:4197-4211, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Toward Model Building for Visual Aesthetic Perception

Several models of visual aesthetic perception have been proposed in recent years. Such models have drawn on investigations into the neural underpinnings of visual aesthetics, utilizing neurophysiological techniques and brain imaging techniques including functional magnetic resonance imaging, magnetoencephalography, and electroencephalography. The neural mechanisms underlying the aesthetic perception of the visual arts have been explained from the perspectives of neuropsychology, brain and cognitive science, informatics, and statistics. Although corresponding models have been constructed, the majority of these models contain elements that are difficult to be simulated or quantified using simple mathematical functions. In this review, we discuss the hypotheses, conceptions, and structures of six typical models for human aesthetic appreciation in the visual domain: the neuropsychological, information processing, mirror, quartet, and two hierarchical feed-forward layered models. Additionally, the neural foundation of aesthetic perception, appreciation, or judgement for each model is summarized. The development of a unified framework for the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the aesthetic perception of visual art and the validation of this framework via mathematical simulation is an interesting challenge in neuroaesthetics research. This review aims to provide information regarding the most promising proposals for bridging the gap between visual information processing and brain activity involved in aesthetic appreciation.

What Is Art Good For? The Socio-Epistemic Value of Art

Scientists, humanists, and art lovers alike value art not just for its beauty, but also for its social and epistemic importance; that is, for its communicative nature, its capacity to increase one's self-knowledge and encourage personal growth, and its ability to challenge our schemas and preconceptions. However, empirical research tends to discount the importance of such social and epistemic outcomes of art engagement, instead focusing on individuals' preferences, judgments of beauty, pleasure, or other emotional appraisals as the primary outcomes of art appreciation. Here, we argue that a systematic neuroscientific study of art appreciation must move beyond understanding aesthetics alone, and toward investigating the social importance of art appreciation. We make our argument for such a shift in focus first, by situating art appreciation as an active social practice. We follow by reviewing the available psychological and cognitive neuroscientific evidence that art appreciation cultivates socio-epistemic skills such as self- and other-understanding, and discuss philosophical frameworks which suggest a more comprehensive empirical investigation. Finally, we argue that focusing on the socio-epistemic values of art engagement highlights the important role art plays in our lives. Empirical research on art appreciation can thus be used to show that engagement with art has specific social and personal value, the cultivation of which is important to us as individuals, and as communities.

Braque and Kokoschka: Brain Tissue Injury and Preservation of Artistic Skill

The neural underpinning of art creation can be gleaned following brain injury in professional artists. Any alteration to their artistic productivity, creativity, skills, talent, and genre can help understand the neural underpinning of art expression. Here, two world-renown and influential artists who sustained brain injury in World War I are the focus, namely the French artist Georges Braque and the Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka. Braque is particularly associated with Cubism, and Kokoschka with Expressionism. Before enlisting, they were already well-known and highly regarded. Both were wounded in the battlefield where they lost consciousness and treated in European hospitals. Braque's injury was in the left hemisphere while Kokoschka's was in the right hemisphere. After the injury, Braque did not paint again for nearly a whole year while Kokoschka commenced his artistic works when still undergoing hospital treatment. Their post-injury art retained the same genre as their pre-injury period, and their artistic skills, talent, creativity, and productivity remained unchanged. The quality of their post-injury artworks remained highly regarded and influential. These neurological cases suggest widely distributed and diffuse neural control by the brain in the creation of art.