The role of prefrontal and parietal cortices in esthetic appreciation of representational and abstract art: A TMS study

Complementarity As Generative Principle: A Thought Pattern for Aesthetic Appreciations and Cognitive Appraisals in General

“…Cattaneo et al (2014) used transcranial magnetic stimulation and were able to show that the left prefrontal cortex and the right posterior parietal cortex was differently engaged during viewing abstract and representational artworks and their activation depended on individual preferences. In another study, Cattaneo et al (2015) used the same method to investigate the effects of brain stimulation during viewing abstract and representational painting, this time focusing on the role of the lateral occipital area which is involved in object recognition.…”

“…Transcranial magnetic stimulation is an interesting new technique (e.g., Cattaneo et al, 2014, 2015), and it is argued that it allows causal analyses of central information processing, but such conclusions have to be treated with caution. It might perhaps be concluded that the short-term interruption of neural activity in certain areas of the cortical mantle indicates a participation for a specific subjective experience, but because of the wide-spread blocking of neural activities which are not focussed on neural modules, it is difficult to argue that specific neural modules with their spatial characteristics are involved.…”

The Role of the Orbitofrontal and Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortices in Aesthetic Preference for Art

“…A separate area appears equally prominent in mediating visual aesthetics for artwork, namely the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The validity of this claim, originally based on electrophysiological investigations [9], was strengthened by two recent experiments in which the stimulation or the inhibition of this portion of the cortex increased [10] or decreased [11] preference ratings, respectively. In detail, the first work [10] showed that increasing the DLPFC’s excitability by means of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) resulted in a very modest (3%) but significant increase of the preference ratings for representational paintings and photographs, but not for abstract art (for other findings on the left frontal activation in representational artwork, see [12,13]).…”

“…In detail, the first work [10] showed that increasing the DLPFC’s excitability by means of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) resulted in a very modest (3%) but significant increase of the preference ratings for representational paintings and photographs, but not for abstract art (for other findings on the left frontal activation in representational artwork, see [12,13]). The second investigation [11] showed that disruptive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) selectively reduced how much participants liked visual art. Interestingly, in the latter experiment, representational and abstract paintings were selectively less liked in the group of participants that generally preferred figurative and abstract stimuli, respectively.…”

“…These findings are so interesting that I thought to critically investigate the assumption that the left DLPFC is a neurobiological correlate of the aesthetic experience. In this essay, I will outline the anatomical connections and functional properties of the DLPFC and will come to the conclusion that, rather than playing “a fundamental role in mediating esthetic appreciation” [11], its involvement has been overestimated.…”