One hundred years of neurosciences in the arts and humanities, a bibliometric review

BACKGROUND

Neuroscientific approaches have historically triggered changes in the conception of creativity and artistic experience, which can be revealed by noting the intersection of these fields of study in terms of variables such as global trends, methodologies, objects of study, or application of new technologies; however, these neuroscientific approaches are still often considered as disciplines detached from the arts and humanities. In this light, the question arises as to what evidence the history of neurotechnologies provides at the intersection of creativity and aesthetic experience.

METHODS

We conducted a century-long bibliometric analysis of key parameters in multidisciplinary studies published in the Scopus database. Screening techniques based on the PRISMA method and advanced data analysis techniques were applied to 3612 documents metadata from the years 1922 to 2022. We made graphical representations of the results applying algorithmic and clusterization processes to keywords and authors relationships.

RESULTS

From the analyses, we found a) a shift from a personality-focus quantitative analysis to a field-focus qualitative approach, considering topics such as art, perception, aesthetics and beauty; b) The locus of interest in fMRI-supported neuroanatomy has been shifting toward EEG technologies and models based on machine learning and deep learning in recent years; c) four main clusters were identified in the study approaches: humanistic, creative, neuroaesthetic and medical; d) the neuroaesthetics cluster is the most central and relevant, mediating between creativity and neuroscience; e) neuroaesthetics and neuroethics are two of the neologism that better characterizes the challenges that this convergence of studies will have in the next years.

CONCLUSIONS

Through a longitudinal analysis, we evidenced the great influence that neuroscience is having on the thematic direction of the arts and humanities. The perspective presented shows how this field is being consolidated and helps to define it as a new opportunity of great potential for future researchers.

Aesthetic and physiological effects of naturalistic multimodal music listening

Compared to audio only (AO) conditions, audiovisual (AV) information can enhance the aesthetic experience of a music performance. However, such beneficial multimodal effects have yet to be studied in naturalistic music performance settings. Further, peripheral physiological correlates of aesthetic experiences are not well-understood. Here, participants were invited to a concert hall for piano performances of Bach, Messiaen, and Beethoven, which were presented in two conditions: AV and AO. They rated their aesthetic experience (AE) after each piece (Experiment 1 and 2), while peripheral signals (cardiorespiratory measures, skin conductance, and facial muscle activity) were continuously measured (Experiment 2). Factor scores of AE were significantly higher in the AV condition in both experiments. LF/HF ratio, a heart rhythm that represents activation of the sympathetic nervous system, was higher in the AO condition, suggesting increased arousal, likely caused by less predictable sound onsets in the AO condition. We present partial evidence that breathing was faster and facial muscle activity was higher in the AV condition, suggesting that observing a performer's movements likely enhances motor mimicry in these more voluntary peripheral measures. Further, zygomaticus ('smiling') muscle activity was a significant predictor of AE. Thus, we suggest physiological measures are related to AE, but at different levels: the more involuntary measures (i.e., heart rhythms) may reflect more sensory aspects, while the more voluntary measures (i.e., muscular control of breathing and facial responses) may reflect the liking aspect of an AE. In summary, we replicate and extend previous findings that AV information enhances AE in a naturalistic music performance setting. We further show that a combination of self-report and peripheral measures benefit a meaningful assessment of AE in naturalistic music performance settings.

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.

Preferred music listening is associated with perceptual learning enhancement at the expense of self-focused attention

Can preferred music listening improve following attentional and learning performances? Here we suggest that this may be the case. In Experiment 1, following preferred and non-preferred musical-piece listening, we recorded electrophysiological responses to an auditory roving-paradigm. We computed the mismatch negativity (MMN - the difference between responses to novel and repeated stimulation), as an index of perceptual learning, and we measured the correlation between trial-by-trial EEG responses and the fluctuations in Bayesian Surprise, as a quantification of the neural attunement with stimulus informational value. Furthermore, during music listening, we recorded oscillatory cortical activity. MMN and trial-by-trial correlation with Bayesian surprise were significantly larger after subjectively preferred versus non-preferred music, indicating the enhancement of perceptual learning. The analysis on oscillatory activity during music listening showed a selective alpha power increased in response to preferred music, an effect often related to cognitive enhancements. In Experiment 2, we explored whether this learning improvement was realized at the expense of self-focused attention. Therefore, after preferred versus non-preferred music listening, we collected Heart-Beat Detection (HBD) accuracy, as a measure of the attentional focus toward the self. HBD was significantly lowered following preferred music listening. Overall, our results suggest the presence of a specific neural mechanism that, in response to aesthetically pleasing stimuli, and through the modulation of alpha oscillatory activity, redirects neural resources away from the self and toward the environment. This attentional up-weighting of external stimuli might be fruitfully exploited in a wide area of human learning activities, including education, neurorehabilitation and therapy.

Effects of Setting on Psychedelic Experiences, Therapies, and Outcomes: A Rapid Scoping Review of the Literature

The health and well-being impacts of art and aesthetic experiences have been rigorously studied by a range of disciplines, including cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, public health, and translational clinical research. These experiences, encompassed in the concepts of set and setting, have long been claimed to be pivotal in determining the acute and enduring effects of psychedelic experiences. Responding to the field's longstanding emphasis on the role and value of setting, a rapid scoping review was undertaken to identify the extent to which effects of setting and aesthetics on psychedelic experiences and therapies have been explicitly studied. It offers an analysis of the strengths and limitations of the extant literature and discusses evidentiary gaps as well as evidentiary opportunities for the field. The 43 included studies indicate apparent consensus regarding the importance of setting in psychedelic therapies, as well as consistent interest in theorizing about these effects. However, this consensus has yet to generate consistent, prospective, rigorous tests of setting and its complexities. As a result, the field continues to lack understanding or agreement regarding the effects of various specific elements of setting, the mechanisms by which they affect outcomes, for whom these effects occur, under what circumstances, given what conditions, and other critical factors. Further studies of setting and aesthetics in the context of psychedelic therapies are likely to not only improve these therapies and their delivery, but also inform considerations of setting and aesthetics for non-psychedelic interventions.

The neuroaesthetics of architectural spaces

People in developed countries spend over 90% of their time in built environments. Yet, we know little about its pervasive and often hidden effects on our mental state and our brain. Despite growing interest in the neuroscience of architecture, much of this scholarship has been descriptive. The typical approach is to map knowledge of the brain onto constructs important to architecture. For a programmatic line of research, how might descriptive neuroarchitecture be transformed into an experimental science? We review the literature outlining how one might consider experimental architecture first by examining the role of natural features in architectural settings. We then turn to the human experience of occupants, and hypothesized that aesthetic responses to architectural interiors reduce to key psychological dimensions. Conducting Psychometric Network Analysis (PNA) and Principal Components Analysis (PCA) on responses to curated images, we identified three components: coherence (ease of organizing and comprehending a scene), fascination (informational richness and generated interest), and hominess (personal ease and comfort). Coherence and fascination are well-established dimensions for natural scenes. Hominess was a new dimension related to architectural interiors. Central to all three communities in the PNA was emotional valence. We also reanalyzed data from an earlier fMRI study in which participants made beauty and approach-avoidance decisions while viewing the same images. Regardless of task, the degree of fascination covaried with neural activity in the right lingual gyrus. In contrast, coherence covaried with neural activity in the left inferior occipital gyrus only when participants judged beauty, and hominess covaried with neural activity in the left cuneus only when they made approach-avoidance decisions. The visual brain harbours hidden sensitivities to architectural interiors that are captured by the dimensions of coherence, fascination, and hominess. These findings represent first steps towards an experimental neuroarchitecture.

Memorisation and implicit perceptual learning are enhanced for preferred musical intervals and chords

Is it true that we learn better what we like? Current neuroaesthetic and neurocomputational models of aesthetic appreciation postulate the existence of a correlation between aesthetic appreciation and learning. However, even though aesthetic appreciation has been associated with attentional enhancements, systematic evidence demonstrating its influence on learning processes is still lacking. Here, in two experiments, we investigated the relationship between aesthetic preferences for consonance versus dissonance and the memorisation of musical intervals and chords. In Experiment 1, 60 participants were first asked to memorise and evaluate arpeggiated triad chords (memorisation phase), then, following a distraction task, chords’ memorisation accuracy was measured (recognition phase). Memorisation resulted to be significantly enhanced for subjectively preferred as compared with non-preferred chords. To explore the possible neural mechanisms underlying these results, we performed an EEG study, directed to investigate implicit perceptual learning dynamics (Experiment 2). Through an auditory mismatch detection paradigm, electrophysiological responses to standard/deviant intervals were recorded, while participants were asked to evaluate the beauty of the intervals. We found a significant trial-by-trial correlation between subjective aesthetic judgements and single trial amplitude fluctuations of the ERP attention-related N1 component. Moreover, implicit perceptual learning, expressed by larger mismatch detection responses, was enhanced for more appreciated intervals. Altogether, our results showed the existence of a relationship between aesthetic appreciation and implicit learning dynamics as well as higher-order learning processes, such as memorisation. This finding might suggest possible future applications in different research domains such as teaching and rehabilitation of memory and attentional deficits.

Review of computational neuroaesthetics: bridging the gap between neuroaesthetics and computer science

The mystery of aesthetics attracts scientists from various research fields. The topic of aesthetics, in combination with other disciplines such as neuroscience and computer science, has brought out the burgeoning fields of neuroaesthetics and computational aesthetics within less than two decades. Despite profound findings are carried out by experimental approaches in neuroaesthetics and by machine learning algorithms in computational neuroaesthetics, these two fields cannot be easily combined to benefit from each other and findings from each field are isolated. Computational neuroaesthetics, which inherits computational approaches from computational aesthetics and experimental approaches from neuroaesthetics, seems to be promising to bridge the gap between neuroaesthetics and computational aesthetics. Here, we review theoretical models and neuroimaging findings about brain activity in neuroaesthetics. Then machine learning algorithms and computational models in computational aesthetics are enumerated. Finally, we introduce studies in computational neuroaesthetics which combine computational models with neuroimaging data to analyze brain connectivity during aesthetic appreciation or give a prediction on aesthetic preference. This paper outlines the rich potential for computational neuroaesthetics to take advantages from both neuroaesthetics and computational aesthetics. We conclude by discussing some of the challenges and potential prospects in computational neuroaesthetics, and highlight issues for future consideration.

"Stopping for knowledge": The sense of beauty in the perception-action cycle

According to a millennial-old philosophical debate, aesthetic emotions have been connected to knowledge acquisition. Recent scientific evidence, collected across different disciplinary domains, confirms this link, but also reveals that motor inhibition plays a crucial role in the process. In this review, we discuss multidisciplinary results and propose an original account of aesthetic appreciation (the stopping for knowledge hypothesis) framed within the predictive coding theory. We discuss evidence showing that aesthetic emotions emerge in correspondence with an inhibition of motor behavior (i.e., minimizing action), promoting a simultaneous perceptual processing enhancement, at the level of sensory cortices (i.e., optimizing learning). Accordingly, we suggest that aesthetic appreciation may represent a hedonic feedback over learning progresses, motivating the individual to inhibit motor routines to seek further knowledge acquisition. Furthermore, the neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies we review reveal the presence of a strong association between aesthetic appreciation and the activation of the dopaminergic reward-related circuits. Finally, we propose a number of possible applications of the stopping for knowledge hypothesis in the clinical and education domains.

Neuroaesthetical Changes in Sculpture: The Case of Yannoulis Halepas (1851-1938)

The theoretical conceptualization of artistic ingenuity and creativity, as reflections of the highest-level cognitive functions in the human brain, has recently evolved from a purely philosophical pursuit to a compelling neuroscientific undertaking. Changes in artistic style have been extensively studied in association with brain dysfunction in the presence of neurological and psychiatric diseases in famous artists. This paper presents the case of Yannoulis Halepas (1851-1938), who is widely regarded as the most influential sculptor of modern Greek art. At the age of 27, already at the peak of his fame, Halepas abruptly abandoned the sculpture world after developing schizoaffective disorder, only to resurge onto the art scene after an almost 40-year-long hiatus with a fundamentally reformed artistic style. Two distinct periods have preoccupied art critics: Halepas's early premorbid years (1870-1878), which were imbued with the principles of neoclassicism, and the later postmorbid years (1918-1938), which mark the artist's transcendence to expressionism and contemporary art. From a neuroaesthetical perspective, the extensive and multifaceted oeuvre that Halepas produced in his lifetime allows a close study of his artistic development throughout and beyond mental disease. In addition, his lifework is a unique account in the history of art of the struggle of artistic genius with the limits of the rational mind and its conscious reality.

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.

Beauty in mind: Aesthetic appreciation correlates with perceptual facilitation and attentional amplification

Neuroaesthetic research suggests that aesthetic appreciation results from the interaction between the object perceptual features and the perceiver's sensory processing dynamics. In the present study, we investigated the relationship between aesthetic appreciation and attentional modulation at a behavioural and psychophysiological level. In a first experiment, fifty-eight healthy participants performed a visual search task with abstract stimuli containing more or less natural spatial frequencies and subsequently were asked to give an aesthetic evaluation of the images. The results evidenced that response times were faster for more appreciated stimuli. In a second experiment, we recorded visual evoked potentials (VEPs) during exposure to the same stimuli. The results showed, only for more appreciated images, an enhancement in C1 and N1, P3 and N4 VEP components. Moreover, we found increased attention-related occipital alpha desynchronization for more appreciated images. We interpret these data as indicative of the existence of a correlation between aesthetic appreciation and perceptual processing enhancement, both at a behavioural and at a neurophysiological level.

Speed of person perception affects immediate and ongoing aesthetic evaluation

Recent studies have shed light on how aesthetic judgments are formed following presentations lasting less than a second. Meanwhile, dedicated neural mechanisms are understood to enable the rapid detection of human faces, bodies, and actions. On the basis of cognitive studies of: (i) the speed and acuity of person perception, and (ii) preferential attention given to human imagery (e.g., faces and bodies), we hypothesize that the visual detection of humans in portraits increases the magnitude and stability (i.e., similarity to later responses) of aesthetic ratings. Ease of person perception is also expected to elicit longer durations of preferential viewing time, a surplus measure of viewing behavior that should be positively related to subsequent ratings. To test these ideas, we use a set of cubist portraits previously established to be more or less categorizable in terms of the aggregate time required to perceive the depicted person. Using these images, we track aesthetic judgments made following short and unconstrained presentations; in an intervening task, we measure viewing behavior when subjects are able to selectively reveal regions of these images. We find that highly categorizable artworks (those that require less time to identify the figure as human) elicit higher and more predictive aesthetic ratings following 30 ms presentations while also eliciting longer viewing durations. Changes in ratings throughout the task are positively correlated with cumulative viewing time; critically, an image's categorizability level further moderates the strength of this relationship. These results demonstrate that a particular kind of visual object recognition - the recognition of human forms - modulates aesthetic preferences at a glance, subsequent viewing patterns, as well as rating changes over time.

Autism and Beauty: Neural Correlates of Aesthetic Experiences in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Objectives:

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the neural activity of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) patients is different from that of normal individuals when performing aesthetic judgments.

Methods:

We recruited typical ASD patients without savant skills (ASD group, n=17) and healthy controls (HC group, n=19) for an functional magnetic resonance imaging study. All subjects were scanned while performing aesthetic judgment tasks on two kinds of artwork (magnificent landscape images and fractal images). Differences in brain activation between the two groups were assessed by contrasting neural activity during the tasks.

Results:

The aesthetic judgment score for all images was significantly lower in the ASD group than in the HC group. During the aesthetic judgment tasks, the ASD group showed less activation than the HC group in the anterior region of the superior frontal gyrus, and more activation in the temporoparietal area and insula, regardless of the type of images being judged. In addition, during the aesthetic judgment task for the fractal images, the ASD group exhibited greater neural activity in the amygdala and the posterior region of the middle/inferior temporal gyrus (Brodmann area 37) than the HC group.

Conclusion:

The results of this study suggest that the brain activation patterns associated with aesthetic experiences in ASD patients may differ from those of normal individuals.

Two-Stage Processing of Aesthetic Information in the Human Brain Revealed by Neural Adaptation Paradigm

Some researchers in aesthetics assume visual features related to aesthetic perception (e.g. golden ratio and symmetry) commonly embedded in masterpieces. If this is true, an intriguing hypothesis is that the human brain has neural circuitry specialized for the processing of visual beauty. We presently tested this hypothesis by combining a neuroimaging technique with the repetition suppression (RS) paradigm. Subjects (non-experts in art) viewed two images of sculptures sequentially presented. Some sculptures obeyed the golden ratio (canonical images), while the golden proportion were impaired in other sculptures (deformed images). We found that the occipito-temporal cortex in the right hemisphere showed the RS when a canonical sculpture (e.g. Venus de Milo) was repeatedly presented, but not when its deformed version was repeated. Furthermore, the right parietal cortex showed the RS to the canonical proportion even when two sculptures had different identities (e.g. Venus de Milo as the first stimulus and David di Michelangelo as the second), indicating that this region encodes the golden ratio as an abstract rule shared by different sculptures. Those results suggest two separate stages of neural processing for aesthetic information (one in the occipito-temporal and another in the parietal regions) that are hierarchically arranged in the human brain.

Exploring collective experience in watching dance through intersubject correlation and functional connectivity of fMRI brain activity

How the brain contends with naturalistic viewing conditions when it must cope with concurrent streams of diverse sensory inputs and internally generated thoughts is still largely an open question. In this study, we used fMRI to record brain activity while a group of 18 participants watched an edited dance duet accompanied by a soundtrack. After scanning, participants performed a short behavioral task to identify neural correlates of dance segments that could later be recalled. Intersubject correlation (ISC) analysis was used to identify the brain regions correlated among observers, and the results of this ISC map were used to define a set of regions for subsequent analysis of functional connectivity. The resulting network was found to be composed of eight subnetworks and the significance of these subnetworks is discussed. While most subnetworks could be explained by sensory and motor processes, two subnetworks appeared related more to complex cognition. These results inform our understanding of the neural basis of common experience in watching dance and open new directions for the study of complex cognition.

Empathy, engagement, entrainment: the interaction dynamics of aesthetic experience

A recent version of the view that aesthetic experience is based in empathy as inner imitation explains aesthetic experience as the automatic simulation of actions, emotions, and bodily sensations depicted in an artwork by motor neurons in the brain. Criticizing the simulation theory for committing to an erroneous concept of empathy and failing to distinguish regular from aesthetic experiences of art, I advance an alternative, dynamic approach and claim that aesthetic experience is enacted and skillful, based in the recognition of others' experiences as distinct from one's own. In combining insights from mainly psychology, phenomenology, and cognitive science, the dynamic approach aims to explain the emergence of aesthetic experience in terms of the reciprocal interaction between viewer and artwork. I argue that aesthetic experience emerges by participatory sense-making and revolves around movement as a means for creating meaning. While entrainment merely plays a preparatory part in this, aesthetic engagement constitutes the phenomenological side of coupling to an artwork and provides the context for exploration, and eventually for moving, seeing, and feeling with art. I submit that aesthetic experience emerges from bodily and emotional engagement with works of art via the complementary processes of the perception-action and motion-emotion loops. The former involves the embodied visual exploration of an artwork in physical space, and progressively structures and organizes visual experience by way of perceptual feedback from body movements made in response to the artwork. The latter concerns the movement qualities and shapes of implicit and explicit bodily responses to an artwork that cue emotion and thereby modulate over-all affect and attitude. The two processes cause the viewer to bodily and emotionally move with and be moved by individual works of art, and consequently to recognize another psychological orientation than her own, which explains how art can cause feelings of insight or awe and disclose aspects of life that are unfamiliar or novel to the viewer.

Art, energy, and the brain

Recent years have seen a growing interest among neuroscientists and vision scientists in art and aesthetics, exemplifying a more general trend toward interdisciplinary integration in the arts, humanities, and sciences. However, true art-science integration remains a distant prospect due to fundamental differences in outlook and approach between disciplines. I consider two great challenges for any project designed to explain the role of the brain in art appreciation. First, scientists and artists need to identify common ground, common questions, and a shared motivation for inquiry. Second, the neuroscience of art must transcend its current goal of correlating brain functions to behavior and begin to explain the connection between activity in the brain and the phenomenology of art appreciation. I propose that both challenges can be tackled using an energy-based approach. The concept of "energy" is clearly of central importance to the physical sciences, and to neuroscience in particular. Meanwhile, energy is a concept that artists and art historians have consistently referred to when trying to articulate how artworks are made and appreciated. I survey the role of energy in art, philosophical and psychological aesthetics, and neuroscience, and suggest how this approach could help to further integrate art and neuroscience, and explain how brain activity contributes to aesthetic experience.

Art and brain coevolution

The competence for appreciating beauty appears to be a human universal trait. This fact points out to a phylogenetically derived capacity that, somehow, evolved by means of natural selection. To detail how this evolutionary process took place is difficult to determine, because appreciating beauty is an elusive capacity, impossible to be detected in the fossil record. However, efforts have been made to understand the main characteristics of such competence, particularly by means of the advances of neuroaesthetics. Here, we examine some of the results obtained in experimental research to identify neural correlations of the appreciation of beauty, as well as archaeological and paleoanthropological proofs of the relationship existing between production of artistic objects and evolution of the human brain.

Move me, astonish me… delight my eyes and brain: The Vienna Integrated Model of top-down and bottom-up processes in Art Perception (VIMAP) and corresponding affective, evaluative, and neurophysiological correlates

This paper has a rather audacious purpose: to present a comprehensive theory explaining, and further providing hypotheses for the empirical study of, the multiple ways by which people respond to art. Despite common agreement that interaction with art can be based on a compelling, and occasionally profound, psychological experience, the nature of these interactions is still under debate. We propose a model, The Vienna Integrated Model of Art Perception (VIMAP), with the goal of resolving the multifarious processes that can occur when we perceive and interact with visual art. Specifically, we focus on the need to integrate bottom-up, artwork-derived processes, which have formed the bulk of previous theoretical and empirical assessments, with top-down mechanisms which can describe how individuals adapt or change within their processing experience, and thus how individuals may come to particularly moving, disturbing, transformative, as well as mundane, results. This is achieved by combining several recent lines of theoretical research into a new integrated approach built around three processing checks, which we argue can be used to systematically delineate the possible outcomes in art experience. We also connect our model's processing stages to specific hypotheses for emotional, evaluative, and physiological factors, and address main topics in psychological aesthetics including provocative reactions-chills, awe, thrills, sublime-and difference between "aesthetic" and "everyday" emotional response. Finally, we take the needed step of connecting stages to functional regions in the brain, as well as broader core networks that may coincide with the proposed cognitive checks, and which taken together can serve as a basis for future empirical and theoretical art research.

Sensitivity of the human mirror neuron system for abstract traces of actions: An EEG-study

Theories of neuroaesthetics assume, that looking at traces of actions used in creating artwork (e.g. brush marks) is associated with a simulation of these actions in the observer's sensorimotor-cortex. The aim of the current study is to dissociate the activation of the sensorimotor-cortex by the observation of action traces from associated visual processes. Twenty-eight participants observed handmade graphics (acrylic paint on paper) of different complexity (line, triangle, shape of a house) and computer-generated counterparts. Central mu-activity, as an index of sensorimotor-cortex activity, and occipital alpha-activity, as an index of visual cortex activity were recorded in the 8-13Hz EEG-band. In line with the hypothesis, mu-activity at electrode C4 is sensitive for the complexity of handmade (p=0.001), but not computer-generated graphics (p>0.500). In contrast, occipital alpha-activity is sensitive for the complexity of both handmade and computer-generated graphics (p<0.001). Furthermore, the more empathic the participants rated themselves, the stronger mu-suppression was induced by handmade graphics compared to computer-generated graphics (electrode C4; r=-0.612, p=0.001). These results support the involvement of the sensorimotor-cortex in the recognition of action traces and strengthen evidence that individuals scoring high in emotional empathy feature a particularly responsive mirror neuron system.

Aesthetic appreciation of poetry correlates with ease of processing in event-related potentials

Rhetorical theory suggests that rhythmic and metrical features of language substantially contribute to persuading, moving, and pleasing an audience. A potential explanation of these effects is offered by "cognitive fluency theory," which stipulates that recurring patterns (e.g., meter) enhance perceptual fluency and can lead to greater aesthetic appreciation. In this article, we explore these two assertions by investigating the effects of meter and rhyme in the reception of poetry by means of event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Participants listened to four versions of lyrical stanzas that varied in terms of meter and rhyme, and rated the stanzas for rhythmicity and aesthetic liking. The behavioral and ERP results were in accord with enhanced liking and rhythmicity ratings for metered and rhyming stanzas. The metered and rhyming stanzas elicited smaller N400/P600 ERP responses than their nonmetered, nonrhyming, or nonmetered and nonrhyming counterparts. In addition, the N400 and P600 effects for the lyrical stanzas correlated with aesthetic liking effects (metered-nonmetered), implying that modulation of the N400 and P600 has a direct bearing on the aesthetic appreciation of lyrical stanzas. We suggest that these effects are indicative of perceptual-fluency-enhanced aesthetic liking, as postulated by cognitive fluency theory.

Different contributions of visual and motor brain areas during liking judgments of same- and different-gender bodies

Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that body aesthetic appreciation involves the activation of both visual and motor areas, supporting a role of sensorimotor embodiment in aesthetic processing. Causative evidence, however, that neural activity in these areas is crucial for reliable aesthetic body appreciation has so far provided only for extrastriate body area (EBA), while the functional role played by premotor regions remained less clear. Here, we applied short trains of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over bilateral dorsal premotor cortex (dPMC) and EBA during liking judgments of female and male bodies varying in weight and implied motion. We found that both dPMC and EBA are necessary for aesthetic body appreciation, but their relative contribution depends on the model's gender. While dPMC-rTMS decreased the liking judgments of same-, but not of different-gender models, EBA-rTMS increased the liking judgments of different-, but not of same-gender models. Relative contributions of motor and visual areas may reflect processing of diverse aesthetic properties, respectively implied motion vs. body form, and/or greater sensorimotor embodiment of same- vs. different-gender bodies. Results suggest that aesthetic body processing is subserved by a network of motor and visual areas, whose relative contribution may depend on the specific stimulus and task.

Neural correlates for aesthetic appraisal of pictograph and its referent: An fMRI study

As one kind of language symbols, pictograph has a graphical structure based on its referential object. Are the aesthetic qualities of these referential objects reflected in the cognitive and neural processing of the font structure of pictographs? In this present study, participants performed aesthetic judgments on both pictographs and their referential object images whilst acquiring fMRI data. Square luminance judgment was served as baseline to control for activity in motor brain regions associated with the key responses. Behavioral results showed both font structures of pictographs and their corresponding object images which refer to beautiful objects were rated significantly higher on beauty than those refer to ugly objects. Functional MRI revealed regions of occipital lobe, frontal lobe and inferior orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) that were commonly activated for pictographs and object images referring to beautiful objects in the direct contrasts between beautiful judgment and luminance judgment. Moreover, only the aesthetic judgments of beauty for the pictographs but not the object images elicited activation of motor areas, which implied relevant embodied experience was elicited during the aesthetic perception of novel pictographs. In contrast, activities associated with pictographs referring to ugly objects were limited to visual processing regions of the bilateral inferior occipital gyri, which could be due to the intentions of avoiding ugly or aversive stimulus. In addition, object images were associated with broader recruitment in cortical areas than pictographs, likely due to the increased visual processing demands for the more visually complex object images. These findings indicate that aesthetic perceptions for the font structures of pictographs were derived from their referential objects, which could arouse a similar sense of beauty supported by common neural mechanisms with other aesthetic objects.

A TMS study on the contribution of visual area V5 to the perception of implied motion in art and its appreciation

Over the last decade, researchers have sought to understand the brain mechanisms involved in the appreciation of art. Previous studies reported an increased activity in sensory processing regions for artworks that participants find more appealing. Here we investigated the intriguing possibility that activity in cortical area V5-a region in the occipital cortex mediating physical and implied motion detection-is related not only to the generation of a sense of motion from visual cues used in artworks, but also to the appreciation of those artworks. Art-naïve participants viewed a series of paintings and quickly judged whether or not the paintings conveyed a sense of motion, and whether or not they liked them. Triple-pulse TMS applied over V5 while viewing the paintings significantly decreased the perceived sense of motion, and also significantly reduced liking of abstract (but not representational) paintings. Our data demonstrate that V5 is involved in extracting motion information even when the objects whose motion is implied are pictorial representations (as opposed to photographs or film frames), and even in the absence of any figurative content. Moreover, our study suggests that, in the case of untrained people, V5 activity plays a causal role in the appreciation of abstract but not of representational art.

Effects of self-directed and other-directed introspection and emotional valence on activation of the rostral prefrontal cortex during aesthetic experience

The medial area of the rostral prefrontal cortex (rPFC) has been implicated in self-relevant processing, autobiographical memory and emotional processing, including the processing of pleasure during aesthetic experiences. The goal of this study was to investigate changes in rPFC activity using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in response to affective stimuli viewed in a self-relevant or other-relevant context. Positive and negative images were displayed to 20 participants under two viewing conditions where participants were asked to think of their own emotions (self) or think about the emotions of the artist who created the work (other). The results revealed an increase of HbO when participants viewed images during the other-condition compared to the self-condition. It was concluded that viewing stimuli from the perspective of another was associated with an increase of cognitive demand. The analysis of deoxygenated haemoglobin (HHb) at right hemispheric areas revealed that activation of the rPFC during the other-condition was specific to the negative images. When images were viewed from the perspective of the self, activation of the rPFC significantly increased at the right-medial area of the rPFC for positive images. Our findings indicate that the influence of valence on rPFC activation during aesthetic experience is contingent on the context of the viewing experience and there is a bias towards positive emotion when images are viewed from the context of the self.