The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex mediates the interaction between moral and aesthetic valuation: a TMS study on the<i>beauty-is-good</i>stereotype

Ferrari, Chiara; Nadal, Marcos; Schiavi, Susanna; Vecchi, Tomaso; Cela‐Conde, Camilo J.; Cattaneo, Zaira

doi:10.1093/scan/nsx002

Cited by 52 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 121 publications

(194 reference statements)

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“…Admittedly, at this stage available brain stimulation results on the role of the DLPFC in aesthetic appreciation are still quite fragmentary, and are difficult to reconcile with a unique interpretation. In addition, the role of the medial PFC in aesthetic appreciation has only been little investigated (Chib et al 2013;Nakamura and Kawabata 2015; see also Ferrari et al 2017). Future studies should further investigate the functional significance of the contribution of the DLPFC and also of the mPFC to aesthetic experiences (note that the orbitofrontal cortex for its ventral position cannot be directly stimulated).…”

Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural correlates of visual aesthetic appreciation: insights from non-invasive brain stimulation

Cattaneo

2019

Exp Brain Res

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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.

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Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural correlates of visual aesthetic appreciation: insights from non-invasive brain stimulation

Cattaneo

2019

Exp Brain Res

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“…46 Orbital frontal 44 and medial prefrontal cortices 47 seem to process both aesthetic and moral values and may represent the biological link between these two kinds of evaluation. 47 Left and right amygdala seem to be sensitive to both attractive 38 and unattractive faces. 48,49 These non-linear effects for extremes at either end of the attractiveness spectrum suggest that amygdala activation reflects sensitivity to valence intensity rather than positive or negative valence per se.…”

Section: Mainmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…29,31 Neuroimaging studies show that seeing attractive faces evokes brain responses in reward, emotion, and visual areas compared to seeing faces of average attractiveness. 34,35,[44][45][46][47][48][49][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43] . Attractive faces produce activations in areas associated with reward, like the nucleus accumbens, [34][35][36] and orbitofrontal cortex.…”

Section: Mainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioural and Neural Responses to Facial Disfigurement

Hartung¹

2018

Preprint

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Attractive faces are associated with positive character traits and social skills. Moreover, attractive faces automatically evoke larger neural responses than faces of average attractiveness in ventral occipito-temporal cortical areas (such as the fusiform face area), suggesting that ventral visual stream, in addition to identifying objects, evaluates them. It is unclear whether this increased neural response arises from the reward value or the salience of attractive faces. Disfigured faces, by contrast, are linked to negative attributes. We asked participants (N=79) to report their degree of negative attitudes toward people with facial disfigurements and used the Implicit Association Test to assess their negative bias. We then tested competing hypotheses that larger neural responses in visual areas in response to attractive faces represent a reward or a saliency response by testing corresponding responses to faces with disfigurement. While undergoing functional MRI, participants (N=31) viewed photographs of people taken before and after surgical treatment of facial disfigurement and completed an unrelated task (indicating if each photograph depicted a male or female face). While there was no evidence for a self-reported bias, the Implicit Association Test provides behavioural support for a ‘disfigured is bad’ bias. The functional MRI results show that images of facial disfigurement compared to images of the same faces after surgical treatment, evoked greater neural responses within ventral occipito-temporal cortex, consistent with the hypothesis that ventral visual areas respond automatically to the salience of faces, rather than to their rewarding properties. Disfigured faces also produced diminished neural activity within the medial prefrontal cortex, an area associated with empathy and social cognition. This response may reflect suppressed mentalizing and an inhibition of empathy, a mechanism linked to dehumanization.

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“…Taking clothing design as an example, when people look at the aesthetics, their top priority is color, followed by style. The asymmetric and the hollow of the design are both personalized designs, presenting visual impact for people (Cheung, Law, & Yip, 2014;Ferrari, Nadal, Schiavi et al, 2017).…”

Section: Application Of Symmetrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Aesthetic Difference of Artistic Design: An Analysis Based on Brain Neuroscience

2020

RACP

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The various types of art design, such as graphic design, decoration design and costume design, have much to do with aesthetics. Difference in aesthetics may arise from the symmetry, structure lines and contour lines of the art design. In this paper, the aesthetic behavior is explored from the perspective of brain neuroscience, aiming to disclose how the aesthetics of viewers is affected by the interaction between symmetry, structure lines and contour lines of costume design. A total of 100 undergraduate students were selected for an experiment, using costume designs with different symmetries, structure lines and contour lines as the stimuli. Their event related potential (ERP) signals were measured and analyzed in details. The results show that, during aesthetic evaluation, each brain region of the subjects shows obvious hemispherical laterality; the aesthetic score increases with the symmetry of the structure lines and the asymmetry of the contour lines; there is no significant interaction between the structure lines and the contour lines; the peak of P2 components induced by the symmetric structure is significantly larger than that induced by the asymmetry structure; there are significant differences between the left hemisphere, the middle zone, and the right hemisphere, yet an unobvious difference between the frontal area, the top area and the temporal area; there is a significant interaction between the hemispheres and the electrodes. The research results shed important new light on the aesthetic evaluation of artistic design.

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The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex mediates the interaction between moral and aesthetic valuation: a TMS study on thebeauty-is-goodstereotype

Cited by 52 publications

References 121 publications

Neural correlates of visual aesthetic appreciation: insights from non-invasive brain stimulation

Neural correlates of visual aesthetic appreciation: insights from non-invasive brain stimulation

Behavioural and Neural Responses to Facial Disfigurement

Aesthetic Difference of Artistic Design: An Analysis Based on Brain Neuroscience

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