Neuroanatomical correlates of aesthetic preference for paintings

A study was conducted to determine the neuroanatomical correlates of aesthetic preference for paintings using fMRI. Subjects were shown representational and abstract paintings in different formats (original, altered, filtered), and instructed to rate them on aesthetic preference. Our primary results demonstrated that activation in right caudate nucleus decreased in response to decreasing preference, and that activation in bilateral occipital gyri, left cingulate sulcus, and bilateral fusiform gyri increased in response to increasing preference. We conclude that the differential patterns of activation observed in the aforementioned structures in response to aesthetic preference are specific examples of their roles in evaluating reward-based stimuli that vary in emotional valence.

[1]  S. G. Cox,et al.  Functional MRI study of the cognitive generation of affect. , 1999, The American journal of psychiatry.

[2]  M. Bradley,et al.  Neuroanatomical correlates of pleasant and unpleasant emotion , 1997, Neuropsychologia.

[3]  D. Rawlings.  Personality correlates of liking for 'unpleasant' paintings and photographs , 2003 .

[4]  Mark Tatham,et al.  The General Approach , 2006 .

[5]  S. Paradiso,et al.  Cerebral blood flow changes associated with attribution of emotional valence to pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral visual stimuli in a PET study of normal subjects. , 1999, The American journal of psychiatry.

[6]  K Overbeeke,et al.  An empirical evaluation of the visual rightness theory of pictorial composition. , 1999, Acta psychologica.

[7]  L. Nystrom,et al.  Tracking the hemodynamic responses to reward and punishment in the striatum. , 2000, Journal of neurophysiology.

[8]  M. Raichle,et al.  A functional anatomical study of unipolar depression , 1992, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[9]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  Statistical parametric maps in functional imaging: A general linear approach , 1994 .

[10]  J C Mazziotta,et al.  Cerebral metabolic rates for glucose in mood disorders. Studies with positron emission tomography and fluorodeoxyglucose F 18. , 1985, Archives of general psychiatry.

[11]  J. Ashburner,et al.  Nonlinear spatial normalization using basis functions , 1999, Human brain mapping.

[12]  I. Gordon,et al.  RESPONSES TO ALTERED PICTURES , 1974 .

[13]  C. Lollar.  Inner Vision , 1991, Science.

[14]  Paul Locher,et al.  The Structural Framework of Pictorial Balance , 1996 .

[15]  M. Delgado,et al.  Dorsal striatum responses to reward and punishment: Effects of valence and magnitude manipulations , 2003, Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience.

[16]  A. Nakamura,et al.  Neuroanatomical correlates of the assessment of facial attractiveness , 1998, Neuroreport.

[17]  R. Dolan,et al.  The functional anatomy of humor: segregating cognitive and affective components , 2001, Nature Neuroscience.

[18]  N. Sadato,et al.  Age‐related differences in the medial temporal lobe responses to emotional faces as revealed by fMRI , 2002, Hippocampus.

[19]  D. Perrett,et al.  Beauty in a smile: the role of medial orbitofrontal cortex in facial attractiveness , 2003, Neuropsychologia.

[20]  D. Ariely,et al.  Beautiful Faces Have Variable Reward Value fMRI and Behavioral Evidence , 2001, Neuron.

[21]  G. Fink,et al.  Neural activation during selective attention to subjective emotional responses , 1997, Neuroreport.

[22]  Terry M. Peters,et al.  3D statistical neuroanatomical models from 305 MRI volumes , 1993, 1993 IEEE Conference Record Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference.

[23]  R. E. Robinson,et al.  The art of seeing : an interpretation of the aesthetic encounter , 1993 .

[24]  P. Montague,et al.  Neural Economics and the Biological Substrates of Valuation , 2002, Neuron.

[25]  K. Luan Phan,et al.  Subjective rating of emotionally salient stimuli modulates neural activity , 2003, NeuroImage.