Here we report the results of an experiment carried out with magnetoencephalography which shows that the prefrontal area is selectively activated in humans during the perception of objects qualified as ''beautiful'' by the participants. Therefore, aesthetics can be hypothetically considered as an attribute perceived by means of a particular brain processing system, in which the prefrontal cortex seems to play a key role.
The capacity to appreciate beauty is one of our species' most remarkable traits. Although knowledge about its neural correlates is growing, little is known about any gender-related differences. We have explored possible differences between men and women's neural correlates of aesthetic preference. We have used magnetoencephalography to record the brain activity of 10 male and 10 female participants while they decided whether or not they considered examples of artistic and natural visual stimuli to be beautiful. Our results reveal significantly different activity between the sexes in parietal regions when participants judged the stimuli as beautiful. Activity in this region was bilateral in women, whereas it was lateralized to the right hemisphere in men. It is known that the dorsal visual processing stream, which encompasses the superior parietal areas, has been significantly modified throughout human evolution. We posit that the observed gender-related differences are the result of evolutionary processes that occurred after the splitting of the human and chimpanzee lineages. In view of previous results on gender differences with respect to the neural correlates of coordinate and categorical spatial strategies, we infer that the different strategies used by men and women in assessing aesthetic preference may reflect differences in the strategies associated with the division of labor between our male and female hunter-gatherer hominin ancestors.aesthetic preference ͉ brain lateralization ͉ gender differences ͉ human evolution ͉ magnetoencefalography N euroimaging studies have elucidated a basic picture of the neural correlates of the appreciation of beauty. Activity has been reported during aesthetic preference tasks in a network of brain regions, including the frontal pole, orbitofrontal cortex, left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, caudate nucleus, temporal poles, anterior cingulate cortex, and occipital cortex (1-4). Behavioral experiments have shown that men and women rate the beauty of visual artistic and decorative stimuli in different ways (5, 6), but the extent to which the neural correlates of decisions about aesthetic beauty are influenced by the gender of the participants, is currently unknown.Gender differences in brain activity related with cognitive (7-9) and affective (10, 11) processes have been reported in many instances, showing in many cases differences in lateralization pattern. Such tasks as word generation, spatial attention, and working memory, are lateralized differently in women and men, although not all studies are consistent (12).The present study seeks to identify differences and similarities in brain activity between male and female participants while rating the beauty of artistic and non-artistic visual stimuli, by means of magnetoencephalography (MEG)-a technique that detects changes in the magnetic fields generated by the postsynaptic activity of neurons, with a temporal resolution of milliseconds. We also seek to ascertain whether any possible differences between the sexes are due ...
Cognitive processes require a functional interaction between specialized multiple, local and remote brain regions. Although these interactions can be strongly altered by an acquired brain injury, brain plasticity allows network reorganization to be principally responsible for recovery. The present work evaluates the impact of brain injury on functional connectivity patterns. Networks were calculated from resting-state magnetoencephalographic recordings from 15 brain injured patients and 14 healthy controls by means of wavelet coherence in standard frequency bands. We compared the parameters defining the network, such as number and strength of interactions as well as their topology, in controls and patients for two conditions: following a traumatic brain injury and after a rehabilitation treatment. A loss of delta- and theta-based connectivity and conversely an increase in alpha- and beta-band-based connectivity were found. Furthermore, connectivity parameters approached controls in all frequency bands, especially in slow-wave bands. A correlation between network reorganization and cognitive recovery was found: the reduction of delta-band-based connections and the increment of those based on alpha band correlated with Verbal Fluency scores, as well as Perceptual Organization and Working Memory Indexes, respectively. Additionally, changes in connectivity values based on theta and beta bands correlated with the Patient Competency Rating Scale. The current study provides new evidence of the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying neuronal plasticity processes after brain injury, and suggests that these changes are related with observed changes at the behavioural level.
There is increasing evidence that early event-related potentials are a result of phase alignment of ongoing background oscillations of the electroencephalogram rather than additive amplitude modulation. Steady state visual-evoked potentials (ssVEPs) can be recorded using an intensity modulated stimulus, resulting in an evoked brain response at a known frequency, i.e. the stimulation frequency. Given this property, the ssVEP is ideally suited for examining the relationship between single-trial fluctuations in phase/amplitude and the evoked brain potential resulting from averaging across trials. To address this issue, the current study investigated the contribution of single trial power and intertrial phase locking to ssVEP generation by presenting a peripheral flicker. Further, transient stimuli were presented during flicker and at three increasing latency lags following flicker offset to examine (1) to what extent a stimulus can disturb the ssVEP oscillation and (2) how phase alignment during P1-N1-P2 time windows is affected during presence of evoked oscillations. The former assessment evaluates the stability of ssVEPs and the latter the phase alignment processes to transient stimuli under experimentally induced background oscillations. We observed that ssVEPs are a result of phase alignment rather than single trial amplitude modulation. In addition, ssVEP oscillations were not disturbed by transient stimuli. Finally, phase alignment in P1-N1-P2 time windows was distorted during and shortly after steady state stimulation. We conclude that ssVEPs represent strongly phase locked oscillations sharing the same generation mechanisms as early evoked potentials.
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