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Based on an article by Anjan Chatterjee and Oshin Vartanian
Neuroaesthetics is an emerging discipline within cognitive neuroscience that is concerned with understanding
the biological bases of aesthetic experiences.
term coined by Semir Zeki in 1999
received its formal definition in 2002
Researchers from a broad range of fields became
interested in the topic
British neurobiologist who has specialized in studying the primate visual brain and more recently the neural correlates of affective states, such as the experience of love, desire and beauty that are generated by sensory inputs within the field of neuroesthetics.
Gazing at Van Gogh’s dynamic paintings evokes a subjective sense of movement and activates visual motion areas V5/MT+
The middle temporal visual area (MT or V5) is a region of extrastriate visual cortex. In several species of both New World monkeys and Old World monkeys the MT area contains a high concentration of direction-selective neurons. The MT in primates is thought to play a major role in the perception of motion, the integration of local motion signals into global percepts, and the guidance of some eye movements.
Portraits activate the face area in the fusiform gyrus (FFA) and landscape paintings activate the place area in the parahippocampal gyrus (PPA)
Looking at paintings that depict actions also engages parts of people’s motor systems. This engagement taps into the extended mirror neuron system. Mirror neurons, first discovered in monkeys, are neurons that respond to both the execution and perception of actions. A similar system exists in humans. This system resonates when people infer the intent of artistic gestures or observe the consequences of actions such as in Lucio Fontana’s cut canvases.
The pleasure that people derive from looking at beautiful objects automatically engages general reward circuitry. For example, attractive faces activate the (fusiform Face Area) FFA and parts of the ventral striatum even when people are not thinking explicitly about the attractiveness of these faces. The orbito- and medial-frontal cortex, ventral striatum, anterior cingulate, and insula respond to
beautiful visual images and the medial orbitofrontal cortex and adjacent cingulate cortex respond to different sources of pleasures including music and even
architectural spaces.
The brain's reward pathways
Thinking an image
was a museum piece also produced activity in the entorhinal cortex, suggesting that people’s expectations draw on memories that enhance (or probably also diminish) visual
pleasure.
Similarly, Lacey and colleagues found that the
ventral striatum and parts of the orbitofrontal cortex were
more responsive to ‘art status’ than to the actual content of
visual images.
In addition, knowing the title of an
artwork can facilitate greater engagement with and deepening of aesthetic experiences
Aesthetic experiences are emergent states, arising from interactions
between sensory–motor, emotion–valuation, and meaning–knowledge neural
systems.
Of the three systems, we know least about the contribution of the meaning–
knowledge system to aesthetic experiences, partly because its manifestations are
widely distributed throughout the brain and it varies substantially across individuals,
cultures, and historic epochs
Questions?