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

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

“…Taken together, the involvement of these brain regions supported our hypothesis that the perception and appreciation of landscape gardens may rely on the common neural areas that are active in the perception and appreciation of other visual stimuli, including the combined participation of visual perceptual processing, cognitive processing, and rewarding emotional experience (Berlyne, ; Cupchik, ; Wang, Mo, Mo, et al, ; Zhang et al, ; Zhang, Lai, He, Zhao, & Lai, ); this finding may support the framework of experiencing art to the neuroscience underlying our perception and appreciation of architecture (Shimamura, ), suggesting that the perception and appreciation of architecture engage the sensorimotor, knowledge‐meaning, and emotion‐valuation systems (Chatterjee, ; Coburn et al, ).…”

“…It is noteworthy that the perception and appreciation of landscape gardens also engaged the right cuneus and hippocampus; past studies have shown that the cuneus is responsive to the appreciation of representational materials (Mizokami et al, ), and the activity of the hippocampus correlates with the consolidation of a tendency toward a preference into a firm decision (Ito et al, ). These cortical regions imply that the specific activations for appreciating landscape gardens may be linked to multiple layers of processing, including the perception of the global configuration and layout of architecture, the recognition of the architectural style and motif, the rewarding emotional experience, and the embodied motivation to approach the structure (Vartanian et al, ; Zhang et al, , ).…”

Neural substrates of embodied natural beauty and social endowed beauty: An fMRI study

“…Although there has been progress in the neuroimaging of aesthetic appraisal, very little is known regarding the mental and neural mechanisms underlying these seemingly contradictory theories. Previous studies have found that ancient Chinese characters can arouse a sense of beauty due to their obvious two-dimensional graphical features 20 , 21 , supporting the use of ancient Chinese characters as materials for studies of aesthetic appraisal and judgments. More importantly, ancient Chinese characters were produced using two separate systems, one in which characters referring to concrete objects were generated by outlining the shape of the object (pictographs), and another in which characters referring to abstract social meaning were developed to convey corresponding social concepts (ideographic symbol of oracle bone scripts) 22 , 23 .…”

“…Following the logic of the studies examining aesthetic perception and appraisal of pictographs 20 , 21 , we asked the question of whether oracle bone scripts would elicit aesthetic appraisal dependent on their abstract social meanings. That is, would oracle bone scripts that refer to positive social meanings be more likely to be judged as beautiful, and those that refer to negative social meanings be more likely to be judged as ugly?…”

“…We hypothesized that this high visualization for pictographs would activate perceptual representations, and produce relevant image schemas and visual mental images which could serve to elicit strong recurring bodily experiences 27 . These bodily experiences might result in an embodied contribution towards beauty, which can be regarded as bodily resonance for the intention of making action toward beauty 21 , 28 , 29 , and which should be revealed by stronger activations in motor-related regions 21 , 28 .…”