The world can look better: enhancing beauty experience with brain stimulation

Cattaneo, Zaira; Lega, Carlotta; Flexas, Albert; Nadal, Marcos; Munar, Enric; Cela‐Conde, Camilo J.

doi:10.1093/scan/nst165

Cited by 48 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 43 publications

(56 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This can be done by examining how changes in neural activity in local areas modulate aesthetic experiences. For example, applying anodal (excitatory) transcranial direct current stimulation to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex made individuals like representational paintings and photographs more than they did under sham stimulation conditions . Extending earlier MEG findings, these new results show that activating a region correlated with aesthetic judgments (i.e., the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) can influence aesthetic experience.…”

Section: Art Productionsupporting

confidence: 71%

Neuroscience of aesthetics

Chatterjee

Vartanian

2016

Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci.

210

183

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Aesthetic evaluations are appraisals that influence choices in important domains of human activity, including mate selection, consumer behavior, art appreciation, and possibly even moral judgment. The nascent field of neuroaesthetics is advancing our understanding of the role of aesthetic evaluations by examining their biological bases. Here, we conduct a selective review of the literature on neuroaesthetics to demonstrate that aesthetic experiences likely emerge from the interaction between emotion-valuation, sensory-motor, and meaning-knowledge neural systems. This tripartite model can in turn be evoked to explain phenomena central to aesthetics, such as context effects on preferences. Indeed, context-dependent appraisals that focus on objects rather than on outcomes could be an important factor distinguishing aesthetic experiences from other kinds of evaluations.

show abstract

Section: Art Productionsupporting

confidence: 71%

Neuroscience of aesthetics

Chatterjee

Vartanian

2016

Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci.

210

183

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The former are generally considered as visual areas although the precuneus has also been related to social processes (14) and is related to the fantasy content of visual materials (15). Activation of the mFPC is consistent with findings that the mPFC figures prominently in explanations of processes that have an affective component; furthermore, the medial orbitofrontal cortex and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex are activated when people judge objects to be beautiful (5, 16–19). Interestingly, the main activation in this contrast can be related to thepleasure/reward/appetitive component in the model by Chatterjee (10).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Gender-specific brain activation during visual art perception

Gelder

Watson

Zhan

et al. 2017

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The human body is the most common object of pictorial representation in western art.The goal of this study was to probe its evolutionary basis of visual art perception by investigating neural markers of gender-specific brain activity triggered by paintings of male and female images. Our results show significant activity in brain areas other than those recently associated with visual arts perception. Novel findings concern participantgeneral as well as gender specific brain activity. Although our participants were fully aware that they were viewing artworks, the inferior parietal lobule -known for its role in the perception of emotional body images -and the somatosensory cortex -which is related to touch -were selectively active for female body paintings in all participants. The most interesting finding as regards gender was that the sight of female bodies activates the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex in males, an area known to subserve autonomic arousal. In contrast, in females the sight of the male body activated reward and control related parts of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. This supports the notion that basic evolutionary processes operate when we view body images, also when they are paintings far removed from daily experience.peer-reviewed)

show abstract

“…Furthermore, one might perceive certain facial structures that remind one of a loved person as particularly beautiful, thus leading to a slightly biased evaluation of shown image material. It has, for example, been shown that transcranial current stimulation of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex enhances aesthetic appreciation, 17 which points out that perception of beauty can clearly be altered by different mechanisms. Thus, it seems that beauty does not only lie in the eyes but also in the brain of the beholder.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%