Difference in brain activations during appreciating paintings and photographic analogs

Abstract

Several studies have investigated neural correlates of aesthetic appreciation for paintings but to date the findings have been heterogeneous. This heterogeneity may be attributed to previous studies’ measurement of aesthetic appreciation of not only the beauty of paintings but also the beauty of motifs of the paintings. In order to better elucidate the beauty of paintings, it seems necessary to compare aesthetic appreciation of paintings and photographic analogs which included corresponding real images. We prepared for famous painters’ pictures and their photographic analogs which were set up to resemble each painting in order to investigate the hypothesis that there exist specific neural correlates associated with the aesthetic appreciation for paintings. Forty-four subjects participated in functional magnetic resonance study which required comparisons of aesthetic appreciation of paintings of still life and landscape versus photographic analogs including corresponding real images of still life and landscape. Bilateral cuneus and the left lingual gyrus were activated in the comparison of aesthetic appreciation of paintings versus photographic analogs. In conclusion, the present findings suggest a possibility of the existence of specific neural correlates associated with the aesthetic appreciation for paintings and that bilateral cuneus and the left lingual gyrus may be involved.

Neural correlates of appreciating natural landscape and landscape garden: Evidence from an fMRI study

“…It has been established that the MTG and the STG are involved in perceiving motion in an open space (Vartanian et al, ), and that the MTG also signals individual differences during the perception and appreciation of visual objects (Vartanian, Goel, Lam, Fisher, & Granic, ). Again, the precuneus has been found to be involved in art appreciation and the expectation of reward (Doñamayor, Schoenfeld, & Münte, ; Mizokami et al, ). The mOFC has been strongly implicated in rewarding emotional experience of visual and musical stimuli (Ishizu & Zeki, , , ; O'Doherty et al, ; Zeki, Romaya, Benincasa, & Atiyah, ).…”

Berlyne Revisited: Evidence for the Multifaceted Nature of Hedonic Tone in the Appreciation of Paintings and Music

“…Several neuroimaging studies have recently followed a comparative approach and investigated brain regions active during the perception of art and non-art images matched for semantic contents (Di Dio et al, 2011; Lacey et al, 2011; Lutz et al, 2013; Mizokami et al, 2014). Di Dio et al (2011) investigated neural responses to masterpieces of classical masters and matched photographs of young athletes.…”

“…This suggests that activation of the ventral striatum may be related to the status of images as art and not to the esthetic experience itself as measured by subjective ratings. Mizokami et al (2014) created visual scenes that very closely representing the semantic content of the landscapes and still life’s and reported no correlation between beauty ratings and brain activations. Contrasting activations for paintings and photographs showed activations of the bilateral cuneus and the left lingual gyrus.…”

Cultural Connotation and Integration of Painting and Media in Contemporary Art

“…It occupies an irreplaceable position of the subject. The combination of painting and image has more possibilities for the cross and integration of various disciplines in the past [1]. Photographic painting is an important collectivistic genre in contemporary Chinese painting art.…”