Aesthetic value of paintings affects pain thresholds

Pain is modulated by cognitive factors, including attention and emotions. In this study we evaluated the distractive effect of aesthetic appreciation on subjectively rated pain (visual analogue scale;VAS) and multi-channel evoked potentials induced by CO(2) laser stimulation of the left hand in twelve healthy volunteers. Subjects were stimulated by laser in the absence of other external stimulation (baseline condition) and while looking at different paintings they had previously rated as beautiful, neutral or ugly. The view of paintings previously appreciated as beautiful produced lower pain scores and a clear inhibition of the P2 wave amplitude, localized in the anterior cingulate cortex; the inhibition of P2 wave amplitude was lesser or not significant during the presentation of the ugly or neutral paintings, respectively. Dipole source localization analysis of the LEP peaks showed significant changes during different conditions, with a shift from the posterior to the anterior right cingulated cortex while looking at paintings previously rated as beautiful. Our results provide evidence that pain may be modulated at cortical level by the aesthetic content of the distracting stimuli.

[1]  G. Iannetti,et al.  Laser-evoked potentials: normative values , 2005, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[2]  D Yves von Cramon,et al.  Decision-making and the frontal lobes , 2006, Current opinion in neurology.

[3]  Paul Pauli,et al.  Affective modulation of brain potentials to painful and nonpainful stimuli. , 2005, Psychophysiology.

[4]  R. Peyron,et al.  Functional imaging of brain responses to pain. A review and meta-analysis (2000) , 2000, Neurophysiologie Clinique/Clinical Neurophysiology.

[5]  I. Rentschler,et al.  Innate and learned components of human visual preference , 1999, Current Biology.

[6]  Paul Cézanne.  Art and the Brain , 1999 .

[7]  M. Raichle,et al.  Integration of emotion and cognition in the lateral prefrontal cortex , 2002, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[8]  P. Hekkert,et al.  'Most advanced, yet acceptable': typicality and novelty as joint predictors of aesthetic preference in industrial design. , 2003, British journal of psychology.

[9]  M. Catherine Bushnell,et al.  Cognitive modulation of pain: how do attention and emotion influence pain processing? , 2002, Pain.

[10]  Julien Bogousslavsky,et al.  Artistic Creativity, Style and Brain Disorders , 2005, European Neurology.

[11]  M. Frot,et al.  Brain generators of laser-evoked potentials: from dipoles to functional significance , 2003, Neurophysiologie Clinique/Clinical Neurophysiology.

[12]  H. Leder,et al.  A model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments. , 2004, British journal of psychology.

[13]  S. Zeki.  The neurology of ambiguity , 2004, Consciousness and Cognition.

[14]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  The Golden Beauty: Brain Response to Classical and Renaissance Sculptures , 2007, PloS one.

[15]  K L Casey,et al.  Variability of laser-evoked potentials: attention, arousal and lateralized differences. , 1993, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[16]  Tricia Anderson,et al.  Music for pain relief. , 2006, The practising midwife.

[17]  M. Bradley,et al.  Brain potentials in affective picture processing: covariation with autonomic arousal and affective report , 2000, Biological Psychology.

[18]  C. D. Green,et al.  All That Glitters: A Review of Psychological Research on the Aesthetics of the Golden Section , 1995, Perception.

[19]  Till Sprenger,et al.  Distraction modulates connectivity of the cingulo-frontal cortex and the midbrain during pain—an fMRI analysis , 2004, Pain.

[20]  M. Guido,et al.  Abnormal brain processing of cutaneous pain in patients with chronic migraine , 2003, Pain.

[21]  S. O’Brien,et al.  Primate TNF Promoters Reveal Markers of Phylogeny and Evolution of Innate Immunity , 2007, PloS one.

[22]  R. Treede,et al.  Topography of middle-latency somatosensory evoked potentials following painful laser stimuli and non-painful electrical stimuli. , 1993, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[23]  F. Mauguière,et al.  Sources of cortical responses to painful CO2 laser skin stimulation of the hand and foot in the human brain , 2000, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[24]  T. Jacobsen.  Bridging the Arts and Sciences: A Framework for the Psychology of Aesthetics , 2006, Leonardo.

[25]  Anjan Chatterjee,et al.  The neuropsychology of visual art: conferring capacity. , 2006, International review of neurobiology.

[26]  A. Ishai,et al.  Perception, memory and aesthetics of indeterminate art , 2007, Brain Research Bulletin.

[27]  Malcolm H. Johnson,et al.  How does distraction work in the management of pain? , 2005, Current pain and headache reports.

[28]  P. Rainville.  Brain mechanisms of pain affect and pain modulation , 2002, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[29]  S. Zeki,et al.  Neural correlates of beauty. , 2004, Journal of neurophysiology.

[30]  L. Garcia-Larrea,et al.  Contribution of attentional and cognitive factors to laser evoked brain potentials , 2003, Neurophysiologie Clinique/Clinical Neurophysiology.

[31]  Anthony K. P. Jones,et al.  Caudal cingulate cortex involvement in pain processing: an inter-individual laser evoked potential source localisation study using realistic head models , 2003, Pain.

[32]  P. Cavanagh.  The artist as neuroscientist , 2005, Nature.

[33]  N. Ramnani,et al.  Distinct portions of anterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex are activated by reward processing in separable phases of decision-making cognition , 2004, Biological Psychiatry.

[34]  Anjan Chatterjee,et al.  The neuropsychology of visual artistic production , 2004, Neuropsychologia.

[35]  M. Catherine Bushnell,et al.  Sex differences in pain perception and anxiety. A psychophysical study with topical capsaicin , 2004, Pain.

[36]  E. Rolls.  The functions of the orbitofrontal cortex , 1999, Brain and Cognition.

[37]  V. Ramachandran,et al.  The science of art: A neurological theory of aesthetic experience , 1999 .

[38]  Martha D. Buffum,et al.  A Music Intervention to Reduce Anxiety Prior to Gastrointestinal Procedures , 2003, Gastroenterology nursing : the official journal of the Society of Gastroenterology Nurses and Associates.

[39]  Hunter G. Hoffman,et al.  Modulation of thermal pain-related brain activity with virtual reality: evidence from fMRI , 2004, Neuroreport.

[40]  G. Lancioni,et al.  Influence of aesthetic perception on visual event-related potentials , 2008, Consciousness and Cognition.

[41]  S. Zeki.  Neural Concept Formation and Art: Dante, , 2002 .

[42]  M. Verbaten,et al.  Affective pictures processing, attention, and pain tolerance , 2001, Pain.

[43]  Jurgen Jung,et al.  Strukturqualität akut-internistischer rheumatologischer Kliniken – Projektgruppenarbeit des VRA , 2002, Zeitschrift für Rheumatologie.

[44]  N. Schwarz,et al.  Processing Fluency and Aesthetic Pleasure: Is Beauty in the Perceiver's Processing Experience? , 2004, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[45]  Walter Magerl,et al.  Left-hemisphere dominance in early nociceptive processing in the human parasylvian cortex , 2003, NeuroImage.

[46]  Thomas Jacobsen,et al.  Electrophysiological indices of processing aesthetics: Spontaneous or intentional processes? , 2007, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[47]  Ronald A. Finke,et al.  Imagery, Creativity, and Emergent Structure , 1996, Consciousness and Cognition.

[48]  D. Yves von Cramon,et al.  Brain correlates of aesthetic judgment of beauty , 2006, NeuroImage.

[49]  Simon Rigoulot,et al.  Arousal and valence effects on event-related P3a and P3b during emotional categorization. , 2006, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[50]  M. Craske,et al.  The effects of anxiety upon attention allocation to affective stimuli. , 2007, Behaviour research and therapy.

[51]  Peter Boesiger,et al.  Segregated neural representation of distinct emotion dimensions in the prefrontal cortex—an fMRI study , 2006, NeuroImage.

[52]  M. Bradley,et al.  Emotional perception: correlation of functional MRI and event-related potentials. , 2006, Cerebral cortex.

[53]  T. Jacobsen,et al.  Descriptive and evaluative judgment processes: Behavioral and electrophysiological indices of processing symmetry and aesthetics , 2003, Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience.

[54]  Susan T. Davis.  Aesthetic preferences for the unity ratio resist the influence of color illusions. , 2007, The American journal of psychology.

[55]  S. Delplanque,et al.  Modulation of cognitive processing by emotional valence studied through event-related potentials in humans , 2004, Neuroscience Letters.

[56]  Michael Scherg,et al.  Functional imaging and localization of electromagnetic brain activity , 2005, Brain Topography.

[57]  Semir Zeki,et al.  Artistic Creativity and the Brain , 2001, Science.

[58]  Satoshi Minoshima,et al.  Gender differences in pain perception and patterns of cerebral activation during noxious heat stimulation in humans , 1998, Pain.

[59]  L. Zambreanu,et al.  Operculoinsular cortex encodes pain intensity at the earliest stages of cortical processing as indicated by amplitude of laser-evoked potentials in humans , 2005, Neuroscience.

[60]  Bevil R. Conway,et al.  Perspectives on science and art , 2007, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[61]  Léon Plaghki,et al.  Nociceptive processing in the human brain of infrequent task-relevant and task-irrelevant noxious stimuli. A study with event-related potentials evoked by CO2 laser radiant heat stimuli , 2003, Pain.

[62]  M. de Tommaso,et al.  Topographic and Dipolar Analysis of Laser‐Evoked Potentials During Migraine Attack , 2004, Headache.

[63]  W. Richter,et al.  Distraction Modulates Anterior Cingulate Gyrus Activations during the Cold Pressor Test , 2001, NeuroImage.

[64]  G. Tiberghien,et al.  Symmetry, averageness, and feature size in the facial attractiveness of women. , 2004, Acta psychologica.