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From: Marcos Nadal, The experience of art: Insights from neuroimaging. In Stanley Finger, Dahlia W. Zaidel, François Boller and
Julien Bogousslavsky, editors: Progress in Brain Research, Vol. 204, Amsterdam: The Netherlands, 2013, pp. 135-158.
ISBN: 978-0-444-63287-6 © Copyright 2013 Elsevier B.V.
Elsevier
Author's personal copy
CHAPTER
The experience of art:Insights from neuroimaging
7Marcos Nadal1
Department of Basic Psychological Research and Research Methods,
University of Vienna, Wien, Austria1Corresponding author. Tel.:þ43-1-4277-47141; Fax: þ43-1-4277-47191,
e-mail address: [email protected]
AbstractThe experience of art is a complex one. It emerges from the interaction of multiple cognitive
and affective processes. Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies are revealing the
broadly distributed network of brain regions upon which it relies. This network can be divided
into three functional components: (i) prefrontal, parietal, and temporal cortical regions support
evaluative judgment, attentional processing, and memory retrieval; (ii) the reward circuit, in-
cluding cortical, subcortical regions, and some of its regulators, is involved in the generation of
pleasurable feelings and emotions, and the valuation and anticipation of reward; and (iii) at-
tentional modulation of activity in low-, mid-, and high-level cortical sensory regions enhances
the perceptual processing of certain features, relations, locations, or objects. Understanding
how these regions act in concert to produce unique and moving art experiences and determin-
ing the impact of personal and cultural meaning and context on this network the biological
foundation of the experience of art–remain future challenges.
Keywordsbrain, art, aesthetics, neuroaesthetics, neuroimaging
1 THE EXPERIENCE OF ARTArt can move and affect us in powerful ways. It was art’s enthralling effects that
caused Saint Augustine to feel apprehensive about his experience of music. In his
Confessions, written between 397 and 400, he welcomed the virtuous power of sing-
ing to intensify religious faith and devotion. He felt compelled to confess, however,
that music also had a pernicious effect on him. Music’s charm sometimes completely
diverted his attention from the holy words:
Progress in Brain Research, Volume 204, ISSN 0079-6123, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-63287-6.00007-5
© 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.135
136 CHAPTER 7 Insights from neuroimaging
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Thus I fluctuate between peril of pleasure and approved wholesomeness; inclined
the rather (though not as pronouncing an irrevocable opinion) to approve of the
usage of singing in the church; that so by the delight of the ears the weaker minds
may rise to the feeling of devotion. Yet when it befalls me to be more moved with
the voice than the words sung, I confess to have sinned penally, and then had
rather not hear music (Augustine, 1909, p. 195).
The power to absorb people, and even to distract them for other matters, even im-
portant and sacred ones, was also recognized in other forms of art. Writing half a
millennia after Saint Augustine, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux complained that the
awe parishioners felt toward churches’ architecture, sculpture, and painting rivaled
with the awe they felt toward God.1 A late twelfth century chronicler described the
similar captivating influence that the paintings and stained glass windows in the
Bishop’s private Chapel at the Cathedral of Le Mans had on visitors:
The pictures painted in the chapel with unusual talent which have a more powerful
effect because they contain the shapes of living beings, and which absorb not only
the eyes, but also the mind of those who look at them, drew their gaze to such an
extent that they delighted in them, forgetting their personal affairs (transcribed by
Mabillon, 1682, pp. 367–368. Translated by Tatarkiewicz, 1970, pp. 172–173).
Although succinct, this last account identifies the fundamental elements of the ex-
perience of art. We engage with art perceptually, cognitively, and affectively. These
are recognized in today’s psychological and neuroscientific literature as the crucial
components of the art experience. They are the cornerstones of Leder et al.’s (2004)
and Chatterjee’s (2004b) well-known models. Leder et al. (2004) proposed a five-
stage psychological account of the cognitive processes involved in the experience
of art (Fig. 1). The first includes processes of perceptual analysis related to complex-
ity, symmetry, grouping, and organization. The second stage is concerned with the
analysis of the artwork’s familiarity, prototypicality, and meaning. It brings into play
the implicit and automatic integration of information with preexisting memory struc-
tures. Cognitive operations related to the recognition of style and content lead to ex-
plicit classifications in the third phase. This is followed by a stage in which specific
art- and self-related interpretations are developed. These stages influence, and are
influenced by, diverse affective processes. The model posits two different outcomes:
a cognitive state, emerging from earlier cognitive stages, and an affective state,
resulting from the continuous interactions among cognitive and affective mecha-
nisms. A crucial aspect of Leder and colleagues’ model (2004) is that the experience
takes place in a particular context whose significance is determined by a social dis-
course and that endows the experienced object with a particular meaning.
1“I say nothing of the immense height of churches, of their excessive length, superfluous breadth, lux-
urious fittings and exaggerated paintings, which, attracting the gaze of those in prayer, stand in the way
of their feelings” (Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, translated in Tatarkiewicz, 1970, p 190).
FIGURE 1
Leder and colleagues’ (2004) model of aesthetic experience of art.
Figure by Helmut Leder, with kind permission.
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138 CHAPTER 7 Insights from neuroimaging
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Chatterjee (2004b) proposed a compatible model, though formulated at a neuro-
functional level. He suggested that artworks’ simpler components, such as color and
form, are divided, extracted, and analyzed by early visual processes. In a subsequent
stage, intermediate visual processes cluster and segregate certain elements, forming
coherent representations. As regions of the artworks are processed in greater detail,
stored information becomes available, and objects are recognized and associated
with their meanings. The visual analysis and recognition elicits emotions associated
with the aesthetic experience. Emotion, perception, and memory provide the grounds
for the evaluation of the work. This model also includes feedback of information, via
attentional processes, from late visual levels and affective systems to early visual
processing stages.
The experience of art, thus, is a complex one. Although psychologists and neu-
roscientists have confirmed that the components highlighted in the description of vis-
itors’ responses to the Bishop’s Chapel at Le Mans constitute the foundations of the
experience of art, they have also shown how deceivingly simple this description is.
Our experience of art is the result of diverse and interdependent processes related to
perception, cognition (memory, attention, decision making), and affect. With the
advancement of knowledge about the human brain and its relation to cognitive
function, scientists have wondered about the neurobiological foundations of the ex-
perience of art. What brain mechanisms are responsible for producing this uniquely
human kind of experience? Can we explain Saint Augustine’s experience of music in
neuroscientific terms? Two main methods have been used to answer these sorts of
questions: analyzing the effects that brain lesions and neurodegenerative diseases
have on the appreciation of art and using noninvasive neuroimaging techniques to
measure the activity of brain regions while people engage with art.
2 BRAIN DAMAGE, NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASE, AND ARTMost studies of the effects of neurological disorders on art have tended to focus on its
creation, rather than its appreciation (Alajouanine, 1948; Annoni et al., 2004; Bazner
and Hennerici, 2006; Bogousslavsky, 2005; Bonvincini, 1926; Budrys et al., 2007;
Chatterjee, 2004a; Colombo-Thuillard and Assal, 2007; Crutch et al., 2001; Drago
et al., 2009; Miller and Hou, 2004; Seeley et al., 2008; Zaidel, 2005; Zaimov et al.,
1969). To date, a few have examined the impact of neurological disorders on the ap-
preciation of art. Furthermore, given their anecdotal nature, conclusions can only be
tentative at this time.
Sellal et al. (2003) presented a case of an epilepsy patient who underwent left tem-
poral lobe resection, which only spared the hippocampus, the parahippocampal gyrus,
and the amygdala. During the first year after the surgery, the patient became aware that
heno longer enjoyed listening to rockmusicand thathenowpreferredCeltic orCorsican
polyphonic singing. His taste in the literature also shifted. He now preferred Kafkian-
inspired novels and not science fiction, as before. The authors reported that the patient
also began showing increased preference for realistic paintings, enjoying the small
1392 Brain damage, neurodegenerative disease, and art
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details that previously went unnoticed to him. These changes in preference for art con-
trasted with his apparently unaffected preferences for food, fashion, and faces.
Griffiths et al. (2004) described the surprising case of a stroke patient who was
unable to experience emotion in response to music. The lesion affected mainly the
left insula but extended into the left frontal cortex and amygdala. He recovered
speech, which was also initially affected, after a year. However, he was still emotion-
ally unmoved by music a year and a half after the stroke, even though his perception
of diverse musical features was normal, and that he was able to take pleasure in other
activities. These observations led the authors to suggest that the perceptual and
emotional components of music processing rely on functionally and anatomically
distinct neural networks and that the insula is a crucial piece in the neural underpin-
nings of the emotional response to music.
Two studies of the effects of damage to the amygdala suggest that it plays a role
in the appreciation of art and design. Adolphs and Tranel (1999) reported substantial
differences in preferences for visual stimuli between two patients with bilateral
amygdala damage and a group of healthy controls. Both patients expressed
higher liking for three-dimensional geometrical shapes, landscapes, and color
arrangements than healthy control participants. This difference was especially strong
for the stimuli that controls liked least. Similar results were obtained from the
examination the musical processing of a patient with almost exclusive bilateral
damage to the amygdala (Gosselin et al., 2007). She was selectively incapable of
recognizing scary and sad music, but not happy music, despite being able to process
musical features correctly, even tempo and mode. Thus, it seems that the amygdala is
part of the mechanisms underlying aesthetic preference, especially in the experience
of disliking and in relation to negatively valenced stimuli.
Two strategies have been devised to overcome the limitations inherent to single-
patient accounts of the impact of neurological disorders on art appreciation: the anal-
ysis of preference consistency and the standardization of measurement instruments.
Halpern et al. (2008) and Halpern and O’Connor (2013) focused on the effects that
neurodegenerative disorders have on the consistency of preferences for art. Their re-
sults showed that artistically untrained patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease
(Halpern et al., 2008) and frontotemporal dementia (Halpern and O’Connor, 2013)
were as consistent as healthy controls in their preference for visual artworks
presented at different times, even though Alzheimer’s patients were unable to
remember they had seen the stimuli before. Thus, despite Alzheimer’s disease
and frontotemporal dementia’s devastating effects on general cognitive function,
these disorders do not seem to prevent patients from experiencing art in a personally
meaningful and consistent way.
Does this mean that neurodegenerative diseases do not alter the experience of art?
Halpern’s studies (Halpern and O’Connor, 2013; Halpern et al., 2008) showed that
consistency of art experience is preserved in the face of Alzheimer’s disease and
frontotemporal dementia. They did not report, however, differences in preference
between patients and controls. Two reports of patients with frontotemporal dementia
suggest that this neurological disorder could have profound effects on the experience
140 CHAPTER 7 Insights from neuroimaging
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of art. Geroldi et al. (2000) and Boeve and Geda (2001) describe how three patients
experienced marked changes in preference for music after the onset of frontotem-
poral dementia. The patients began compulsively listening to music they had not
particularly enjoyed previously, playing it for hours on end. Thus, although fronto-
temporal dementia patients seem to preserve the capacity for enjoying art, and their
preferences are consistent over time, this disorder can alter the kind of art these
patients enjoy.
The second strategy, developed by Chatterjee et al. (2010), involved the creation
of an instrument—the Assessment of Art Attributes—that allows testing the effects
of different neurological conditions on the perception of different aspects of visual
art. Specifically, this scale allows the measurement of six perceptual features, such as
color, balance, depth, and complexity, and six conceptual features, including abstrac-
tion, symbolism, or emotional expressiveness. In conjunction with voxel-lesion-
symptom-mapping, Bromberger et al. (2011) used the Assessment of Art Attributes
to show how specific brain lesions impair the appreciation of some of these art at-
tributes but not others. Their results indicated that patients with damage to different
regions within the right frontal, parietal, and lateral temporal cortices deviated sig-
nificantly from healthy participants when rating four of the six conceptual scales:
abstractness, symbolism, realism, and animacy. Brain damage, specifically to the
insula and the right temporal and frontal lobes, seemed to influence the appreciation
of only one of the formal attributes: depth.
Overall, the study of the impact of neurological disorders on the experience of art
argues against the existence of specialized brain mechanisms underlying the expe-
rience of art (Zaidel, 2005). The studies reviewed above suggest that any of the three
cornerstones of the experience can be affected, impairing the perception of an art-
work’s particular sensory features, its recognition or recollection, or the capacity
to emotionally engage with it. Most patients, however, are still able to recognize
and experience art in a meaningful and consistent way, even in the face of extensive
brain damage or disabling neurodegenerative diseases.
3 NEUROIMAGING STUDIES OF THE APPRECIATION OF ARTResearchers have used neuroimaging techniques to study healthy participants’ expe-
rience of art in controlled situations. This has allowed them to draw general conclu-
sions about the neural processes underlying this kind of experience. The emerging
picture suggests that at least three functionally distinct sets of brain regions underlie
the experience of art, roughly corresponding to its three main components: (i) pre-
frontal, parietal, and temporal cortical regions involved in evaluative judgment, at-
tentional processing, and memory retrieval; (ii) the reward circuit, including cortical
and subcortical regions, as well as some of the regulators of this circuit; and (iii) low-,
mid-, and high-level cortical sensory regions (Nadal and Pearce, 2011). We will
examine these three sets in turn.
FIGURE 2
Brain regions related to evaluative judgment, attention, and memory involved in the
experience of art.
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3.1 Activity of cortical areas involved in evaluative judgment,attention, and memory
Cela-Conde and colleagues (2004), Cupchik and colleagues (2009), Jacobsen and
Hofel (2003), Jacobsen et al. (2006), and Lengger et al. (2007) found evidence of
neural activity associated with evaluative judgment, decision making, and memory
while their participants were engaged with artworks (Fig. 2).
3.1.1 Dorsolateral prefrontal cortexCela-Conde and colleagues (2004) believe that increased left prefrontal activity ob-
served while their participants viewed photographs and paintings they regarded as
beautiful (Fig. 3) reflected the process of making a decision about their beauty.
Cupchik et al. (2009) also found greater activity in the left lateral prefrontal cortex
when participants were asked to approach the stimuli with an engaged aesthetic atti-
tude than when they were required to take an objective and detached approach. They
interpreted this as reflecting top-down control of perception. Lengger et al. (2007)
found that neural activity in the left frontal cortexwas lowerwhen participants viewed
modern artworks for which they had been given stylistic information than when they
had not. The authors believe that without the information, participants struggled to
categorize the stimuli and searched for related concepts in memory.
3.1.2 Anterior medial prefrontal cortexJacobsen and Hofel (2003) and Jacobsen et al. (2006) found that activity in the an-
terior medial cortex was greater when participants were asked to rate the beauty of
geometric patterns than when they were asked to rate their symmetry. Kirk (2008)
FIGURE 3
Results from Cela-Conde et al.’s (2004) experiment. Left panel shows activity while
participants viewed stimuli they regarded as beautiful. Right panel activity while participants
viewed stimuli they regarded as not beautiful.
142 CHAPTER 7 Insights from neuroimaging
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found that activity in this region correlated with aesthetic appeal ratings of images
with unusual or unexpected figure-ground combinations. The authors believe that
this activity reflects the engagement of evaluative judgment processes.
Although all of these studies (Cela-Conde et al., 2004; Cupchik et al., 2009;
Jacobsen and Hofel, 2003; Jacobsen et al., 2006; Kirk, 2008) found that prefrontal
activity varied with evaluative judgments of paintings, photographs, and designs,
some located this activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and others in the an-
terior medial prefrontal cortex. Cela-Conde et al. (2011) provided a functional ex-
planation for this discrepancy. The frontomedial prefrontal cortex has been shown
to be involved in self-referential evaluative judgments (Northoff and Bermpohl,
2004; Zysset et al., 2002). Jacobsen and Hofel’s (2003) and Jacobsen et al.’s
(2006) use of abstract geometric patterns to elicit beauty judgments might have in-
creased the subjective elements of such judgments, where participants could only
base their decision on internally generated information. In contrast, Cela-Conde
et al.’s (2004) and Cupchik et al.’s (2009) use of paintings and photographs might
have encouraged participants to base their decisions about beauty on the richer ex-
ternal information provided by the stimuli, such as their style, explicit content, and
degree of artistry. This interpretation is in accordance with Christoff and Gabrieli’s
(2000) suggestion that while activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex seems to be
primarily involved with information generated externally, activity in the frontome-
dian prefrontal cortex seems to reflect the engagement of processes related to the
evaluation and manipulation of internally generated information.
Owing to the techniques Cela-Conde et al. (2004) and Jacobsen and Hofel (2003)
used, their studies afford a degree of temporal precision the others do not. Both stud-
ies showed that the appreciation of art and design includes an early and brief
1433 Neuroimaging studies of the appreciation of art
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evaluation phase, grounded on internally or externally elaborated information, be-
tween 400 and 600 ms after stimuli onset. It seems unlikely that such evaluation ac-
tually represents the final decision elaborated by the participants. It is more plausible
that this early brain activity corresponds to the formation of an initial impression,
which can thereafter influence subsequent processes related to attention, perception,
response selection, and so on, and which could lead to decisions to continue or sus-
pend engagement with the artwork or design (Cela-Conde et al., 2011).
3.1.3 Ventrolateral prefrontal cortexJacobsen et al. (2006) found increased activity bilaterally in the inferior frontal gyrus
when participants were asked to rate the beauty of geometric designs as compared to
symmetry judgments, and Kirk (2008) found that activity in this region correlated
with aesthetic appeal ratings of images with unusual or unexpected figure-ground
combinations. The authors believed that this activity owes to the greater attentional
demands under these experimental conditions, which required transforming a non-
dichotomous judgment into a binary response (Jacobsen et al., 2006) or decoding
and processing complex visual stimuli (Kirk, 2008).
3.1.4 Temporal poleJacobsen et al. (2006) found that activity in the left temporal pole was greater when
participants gave beauty ratings to geometric designs than when they were asked to
rate their symmetry. They believe that this effect reflects the retrieval of information
frommemory to create a semantically and emotionally rich context as a reference for
valuing the visual stimuli. Kirk’s (2008) study revealed that activity in the left tem-
poral pole was greater when participants viewed photographs depicting abnormal
figure-ground pairings they found appealing than when they saw similar images they
found unappealing. In his view, this activity is related to participants’ use of prior
knowledge to organize the affectively salient combinations of figure-ground into
comprehensible scenes they could engage with (Kirk, 2008).
3.1.5 Posterior cingulate cortex and precuneusKirk (2008) found that activity in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) correlated
with aesthetic ratings of scenes portraying congruent figure-ground pairings. The au-
thor hypothesized that it reflected the role of semantic memory and familiarity in
participants’ responses to the stimuli. Jacobsen et al. (2006) found greater activity
in the PCC and precuneus when participants rated the beauty of geometric forms than
when they were asked to rate their symmetry. They believe that this activity reflects
processes of memory retrieval, either because the participants were taking into ac-
count patterns previously seen in the experiment or stored in memory from their ev-
eryday experience. Kirk et al. (2009a) found greater activity in the precuneus when
expert architects assessed the aesthetic appeal of buildings, an effect that was not
found for nonexperts. The authors believe that this activity reflects experts’ retrieval
of information stored in memory to create an appropriate context for rating.
FIGURE 4
Brain regions related to reward, affect, and emotion involved in the experience of art.
144 CHAPTER 7 Insights from neuroimaging
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Taken together, these studies suggest that experiencing art, as well as design, en-
gages a network of cortical regions related to evaluative judgment, based on inter-
nally or externally elaborated information, the allocation of attentional resources,
and the retrieval of information from memory to contextualize the stimuli and judg-
ment. The weight of such processes in the experience of art depends on the kind of
task participants are required to perform, and the stimuli they were presented with.
3.2 The role of the reward circuit in the experience of artMany studies have shown that several regions that constitute the reward circuit have
a prominent role in the experience of art. These include cortical (anterior cingulate,
orbitofrontal, and ventromedial prefrontal) and subcortical (caudate nucleus, nucleus
accumbens) components, as well as some of the regulators of this circuit (amygdala,
thalamus, hippocampus). The regions most consistently reported in the neuroimag-
ing literature include the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), the ventromedial prefrontal cor-
tex (VMPFC), the anterior cingulate cortex, insula, and nucleus accumbens (Fig. 4).
3.2.1 Orbitofrontal cortexActivation of the OFC has been observed while people rated the beauty of diverse
visual artworks (Ishizu and Zeki, 2011; Kawabata and Zeki, 2004), the aesthetic ap-
peal of photographs (Kirk, 2008; Kirk et al., 2009a,b; Lacey et al., 2011), or when
they listened to moving musical fragments (Blood and Zatorre, 2001; Blood et al.,
1999; Ishizu and Zeki, 2011). Based on numerous studies in other domains, this ac-
tivity is usually interpreted as reflecting the reward value of the presented artworks or
aesthetic stimuli. Activity in the medial OFC (mOFC) seems to be related in a
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positive and linear manner to people’s liking or preference (Kawabata and Zeki, 2004;
Kirk, 2008; Kirk et al., 2009a,b). Activity in the lateral OFC (lOFC), however, seems
to be negatively correlated with appeal ratings (Kirk, 2008; Munar et al., 2012). This
functional dissociation is coherent with the lOFC’s role in the evaluation of punishers
and uncertainty, and with the involvement of the mOFC in the monitorization of
reinforcer reward value (Kringelbach and Rolls, 2004; O’Doherty et al., 2001).
During the experience of art, the OFC seems to be especially sensitive to mod-
ulation by environmental factors, such as semantic context, and by personal factors,
such as prior knowledge. For instance, Kirk et al. (2009a) reported that the belief that
visual stimuli were gallery artworks enhanced activity in the mOFC, which corre-
lated with increased aesthetic appeal scores awarded by participants (Fig. 5). Simi-
larly, Lacey et al. (2011) showed that activity in the mOFC was greater while
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Computer label
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FIGURE 5
Results from Kirk et al.’s (2009b) study. Upper panel: the figure shows activation in right
mOFC where the BOLD signal correlates with the first-order linear term for the contrast
(gallery–computer). The activation is overlaid on sagittal, coronal, and axial sections of the
canonical SPM structural image. Lower panel: Parameter estimates for voxels inmOFC for the
two conditions gallery (G) and computer (C), where the x-axis reflects the two stimulus
conditions and the y-axis shows BOLD signal changes. Error bars indicate 90% confidence
interval.
Copyright 2008 by Elsevier. Reprinted with permission.
146 CHAPTER 7 Insights from neuroimaging
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participants viewed stimuli they regarded as artworks than while they saw stimuli
depicting similar content but which were not regarded as artworks.
3.2.2 Ventromedial prefrontal cortexThis region is functionally and anatomically related to the OFC. Kirk et al. (2009a)
found that labeling abstract images as gallery artworks increased activity in the fron-
topolar aspect of the VMPFC, as well as aesthetic appeal scores. Similarly, Harvey
et al. (2010) showed that when paintings were paired with the logos of companies
that were supposedly paying for participants’ involvement in the experiment, activity
in the VMPFC was greater than when the paintings were paired with other logos.
These increases were also accompanied by higher liking ratings for the paintings
when they were presented together with the sponsoring logo.
3.2.3 Anterior cingulate cortexAnother common finding is that anterior cingulate activity is higher when people
engage with artworks they like than when they do so with artworks they like less.
This effect has been observed with music, paintings, and architecture (Blood
et al., 1999; Brown et al., 2004; Cupchik et al., 2009; Kirk et al., 2009a;
Vartanian and Goel, 2004). Based on many prior findings, the role of the anterior
cingulate cortex in the experience of art has been related to participants’ monitoring
of their own affective state. People presumably use this information to guide their
evaluations and decisions regarding the object in question.
3.2.4 Insular cortexCupchik et al. (2009) found greater activity in the insula when participants engaged
subjectively with paintings, allowed themselves to experience the evoked mood and
feelings, and attended to their colors and composition, than when they viewed the
paintings in a detached manner and focused on their content. They attributed this
activation to the experience of emotion while participants viewing the paintings with
an aesthetic attitude. Brown et al. (2004) and Koelsch et al. (2006) also reported
greater insular activity while participants enjoyed musical fragments than while they
listened to fragments they did not enjoy. This suggests that the insula plays a funda-
mental role in the emotional response to music, confirming Griffiths and colleagues’
(2004) aforementioned neurological findings.
3.2.5 Nucelus accumbensFinally, many studies have identified activity in the subcortical components of the
reward circuit while people engage with art (Bar and Neta, 2007; Blood and
Zatorre, 2001; Blood et al., 1999; Brown et al., 2004; Cupchik et al., 2009;
Di Dio et al., 2007; Gosselin et al., 2007; Ishizu and Zeki, 2011; Kirk et al.,
2009a; Koelsch et al., 2006; Lacey et al., 2011; Mitterschiffthaler et al., 2007;
Salimpoor et al., 2011; Vartanian and Goel, 2004; Yue et al., 2007). This set of varied
brain regions is crucial for a variety of complex operations related to learning, reward
prediction and anticipation, emotions, and pleasure. The ventral striatum is one of the
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key neurobiological elements contributing to the experience of art. Kirk et al.
(2009a) found that activity in the nucleus accumbens was greater while participants
viewed photographs of faces and buildings that were rated as highly appealing than
those rated as unappealing. This effect was independent of degree of expertise with
the architectural stimuli. The authors conjectured that this activity reflects the encod-
ing of the affective salience of the stimuli. Likewise, Lacey et al. (2011) showed that
activity in the ventral striatum was greater while participants viewed stimuli they
regarded as artworks than while they saw stimuli depicting similar content but which
were not regarded as artworks. Given that this brain region is involved in the gen-
eration of pleasurable experiences (Kringelbach and Berridge, 2009), the ventral
striatum might be responsible for the pleasurable aspect of our experiences with art.
Although their role has been examined separately, the nucleus accumbens,
the orbitofrontal, ventromedial prefrontal, anterior cingulate cortices, and insula
together constitute an extended network that processes different aspects of artworks
and contribute with the affective and emotional qualities of the experience of art.
Each of these regions interacts with the rest of the network. Moreover, they are
profusely intertwined with the set of brain regions related to evaluative judgment,
memory, and attention noted above, as well as with a different set of brain regions
involved in the analysis of perceptual features.
3.3 Enhancement of cortical sensory processesNeuroimaging studies have consistently identified increased activity in cortical
regions related to sensory processing while people enjoy art, possibly reflecting
an enhancement of perceptual analyses. Although this sort of brain activity is often
found unexpectedly, and its relevance generally overlooked, it is a common finding
in studies of painting, music, and dance (Fig. 6).
3.3.1 Occipital cortexVartanian and Goel (2004) asked their participants to rate their preference for a series
of abstract and representational artistic paintings. Results of the fMRI scans showed
that activity in occipital cortex, including bilateral fusiform gyri, correlated with
preference ratings for the visual stimuli. The more people preferred the paintings,
the greater the activity in the visual cortex. The authors suggest that this activity
could be related to the positive valence of preferred images or with the increased
visual attention they attracted. Kirk (2008) found that, independently of aesthetic
judgment, bilateral activity in the lateral occipital cortex was greater when partici-
pants rated the aesthetic appeal of images depicting congruent figure-ground pairings
than when rating images depicting unusual or unexpected pairings. These results are
congruent with Lacey et al.’s (2011), who showed that activity in several regions of
the occipital cortex was greater while participants viewed stimuli they regarded as
artworks than while they saw stimuli depicting similar content but which were
not regarded as artworks. Cupchik et al. (2009) aimed to dissociate the contribution
of bottom-up processes (hard-edge vs. soft-edge style) and top-down processes
FIGURE 6
Brain regions related to enhanced perceptual processing involved in the experience of art.
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(objective and detached vs. subjective and engaged orientation) in aesthetic valua-
tion of artworks. Their results revealed an activation increase in bilateral occipital
gyri while participants viewed the artworks in relation to the baseline condition.
They believe that this reflected the recruitment of attentional resources for perceptual
analysis of the paintings’ visual details.
3.3.2 Parietal cortexCela-Conde and colleagues’ (2009) study revealed greater activity in bilateral angu-
lar gyrus when participants viewed paintings, photographs, and designs they
regarded as beautiful than when they viewed similar stimuli regarded as not beauti-
ful. The authors attributed this activity to the enhancement of spatial processing strat-
egies while viewing images considered by each participant as beautiful. Cupchik
et al.’s (2009) study mentioned in the preceding paragraph also revealed enhanced
activity in the superior parietal cortex while participants were aesthetically engaged
with soft-edge artworks. Based on this region’s involvement in spatial cognition and
visual imagery, the authors believe that such activity reflects participants’ endeavors
to elaborate coherent representations of the indeterminate forms.
3.3.3 Auditory cortexIn their fMRI study, Koelsch et al. (2006) asked 11 participants to listen to musical
excerpts and to rate their pleasantness or unpleasantness. The stimuli consisted of
instrumental fragments of joyful dance melodies and continually dissonant
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counterparts. When compared to unpleasant stimuli, pleasant music was associated
with greater bilateral activity in Heschl’s gyri, location of the human primary audi-
tory cortex, and where fixed pitches are processed (Levitin and Tirovolas, 2009).
Koelsch et al. (2006) suggested that this effect owed to the positive affective valence
of pleasant fragments engaging top-down attentional mechanisms that increased ac-
tivity in the primary auditory cortex and thereby enhancing the perceptual analyses
of these fragments.
3.3.4 Representation of body and movementCalvo-Merino et al. (2008) asked participants with no dance expertise to rate how
much they liked a series of dance movements while their brain activity was scanned
with fMRI. Results revealed that liking scores were strongly correlated with activity
in the occipital cortex and premotor cortex. Both of these regions are involved in the
perception of bodies. In a subsequent study, Calvo-Merino et al. (2010) used transcra-
nial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to examine the contribution of the extrastriate body
area of the occipital cortex, involved in processing local body features, and the ventral
premotor cortex, involved in configural body processing, to the aesthetic valuation of
dance postures. Their results revealed that their lay participants’ aesthetic sensitivity
to dance postures was reduced to a greater extent when TMSwas applied to the extra-
striate body area than when it was to the ventral premotor cortex. The authors con-
clude from these results that early local perceptual processes in the extrastriate
body area make a significant contribution to aesthetic valuation of body stimuli.
3.3.5 Functional accountWhat role does the activity in these sensory regions play in the experience of art?
Biederman and Vessel (2006) argued that endomorphins and m-opioid receptors
are crucial mediators in this relation. Their hypothesis is based on Lewis et al.’s
(1981) observation that the density of m-opioid receptors on macaque cortical neu-
rons increases along visual, somatic, and auditory sensory processing hierarchies,
from primary sensory regions to association cortices. Biederman and Vessel
(2006) believe that such receptors, and their gradient distribution—especially the
great density in the parahippocampal cortex—represent the biological cornerstone
of pleasure derived from the acquisition of novel information: “If a stimulus contains
a great deal of interpretable information, it should lead to more neural activity in the
association areas and hence to a greater release of endomorphins and increased stim-
ulation of m-opioid receptors” (Biederman and Vessel, 2006, p. 251). This perceptual
pleasure is hypothesized to be independent of the reward circuit discussed earlier. In
an fMRI study, participants were asked to rate their preference for 200 different
scenes of landscapes, cityscapes, rooms, and so on (Yue et al., 2007). Confirming
their initial hypothesis, results showed stronger activity in the right parahippocampal
cortex while participants viewed highly preferred scenes than when they saw scenes
they did not prefer. In addition, activity in the right ventral striatum was also stronger
for stimuli rated as highly preferred. The authors suggest that activity in right
150 CHAPTER 7 Insights from neuroimaging
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parahippocampal cortex, related to processing of perceptual pleasure, might engage
the ventral striatum, allowing a possible role for the conventional reward system.
Although Yue and colleagues’ (2007) study indeed showed increased activity in
the parahippocampal cortical “place area” while people viewed scenes they preferred
a lot, it does not represent a confirmation of the opioid substrate hypothesis, as the
authors themselves acknowledge. In fact, there is an alternative possibility that can-
not be discarded. Because opiates have effects on brain structures that are not directly
involved in reward (LeMerrer et al., 2009), m-opioid receptors along sensory proces-sing pathways are not necessarily related to the generation of pleasurable experi-
ences. They could function as modulators of common sensory and associative
operations (Koepp et al., 2009; Wise and Herkenham, 1982). In fact, Lewis et al.
(1981) did not relate the density gradient with pleasure. They believed that it played
an important role in selective attention, and in fact, Arnsten et al. (1983) confirmed
that opioids broaden the focus of attention in humans.
Is it possible that the enhanced sensory processes identified inVartanian andGoel’s
(2004), Calvo-Merino et al.’s (2008), Cela-Conde et al.’s (2009), Cupchik et al.’s
(2009), and Koelsch et al.’s (2006) studies owe to the effects of attention? Attention
canmodulate brain activity at almost every processing stage, from sensation to decision
making (Chun et al., 2011; Kanwisher and Wojciulik, 2000; Posner and DiGirolamo,
2000). Attention can influence perceptual processing along both the dorsal and ventral
visual pathways, and fundamentally in the fusiform and parahippocampal gyri
(Chelazzi and Corbetta, 2000). Attention modulates neural activity in sensory cortices
when selecting spatial locations, specific features, and even whole visual objects
(Kanwisher and Wojciulik, 2000). These forms of attention seem to operate through
similar principles: by increasing the sensitivity of neurons coding certain spatial loca-
tions (Hopfinger et al., 2000), features (Liu et al., 2007), or object recognition (Yantis
and Serences, 2003), thereby facilitating processing at attended locations, of attended
features, and of attended objects (Reynolds and Chelazzi, 2004).
However, the enhancement of sensory processing while engaged with art requires
an explanation that can cut across multiple sensory modalities. Vartanian and Goel’s
(2004), Cela-Conde et al.’s (2009), and Cupchik et al.’s (2009) participants viewed
paintings, Calvo-Merino et al.’s (2008) and Calvo-Merino et al.’s (2010) viewed dance
movements, and Koelsch et al.’s (2006) listened to musical fragments. Could the en-
hancement of perceptual processes during positive aesthetic experiences be a common
trait of the experience of painting, dance, and music? Ishizu and Zeki’s (2011) results
showing that appreciation of painting andmusic engages themOFC in concert with the
visual and auditory cortices, respectively, would suggest so. Indeed, in humans, atten-
tion modulates neural activity in the auditory cortex while attending to specific tone
sequences (Woldorff et al., 1993), in the somatosensory cortex while expecting tactile
stimulation at certain body locations (Johansen-Berg and Lloyd, 2000), in the gustatory
cortexwhile trying to detect tastes (Veldhuizen et al., 2007), and in the olfactory cortex
when sniffing for odorants (Zelano et al., 2005).
However, an increase in the activity of sensory cortical areas is also commonly
observed in response to emotionally significant pleasant and aversive sounds, voices,
printed words, images of faces, and complex scenes (Lang et al., 1998; Murphy et al.,
1513 Neuroimaging studies of the appreciation of art
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2003; Phan et al., 2002; Vuilleumier, 2005; Vuilleumier et al., 2004). Vuilleumier
(2005) believes that these effects are independent of the regular frontoparietal atten-
tional network and that they could result from feedback modulation from the amyg-
dala, which projects to all stages in the ventral visual processing pathway (Phan et al.,
2002; Vuilleumier et al., 2004). Thus, once the amygdala has identified relevant emo-
tional content in a stimulus, it enhances the activity of the cortical regions involved in
the representation of the relevant location, feature, or object (Compton, 2003).
Nevertheless, the fact that signals from the amygdala can enhance sensory proces-
sing in response to emotional stimuli does not preclude the possibility of concurrent
influence from frontoparietal attentional networks. In fact, under Vuilleumier’s
(2005) framework, signals from the amygdala to visual processing regions add
to—or under certain circumstances, even compete with—those imposed by the fron-
toparietal attentional network.When the emotional content of the stimuli is not strong
enough, attentional biasing signals may take precedence over signals from the amyg-
dala. In this scenario, it is possible that activity in cortical sensory regions that accom-
panied the experience of artworks in Vartanian and Goel’s (2004), Calvo-Merino
et al.’s (2008), Cela-Conde et al.’s (2009), Cupchik et al.’s (2009), and Koelsch
et al.’s (2006) studies reflects the confluence of signals from different sources related
to attentional and emotional mechanisms, mediated by a frontoparietal network and
the amygdala, respectively, aimed at biasing activity at different stages of sensory
processing. Both emotion and attention are closely related to prioritizing information
to be processed (Compton, 2003). The consequence of such enhanced activity would
be a deeper processing at earlier stages, resulting in an advantage over other stimuli or
features competing for attention (Murphy et al., 2003; Vuilleumier et al., 2004).
The effective connectivity study performed by Lacey et al. (2011), who asked
participants to view artistic and nonartistic stimuli matched for content, offers ten-
tative conclusions to this section. Their results revealed that activity in the ventral
striatum was driven by activity in the calcarine sulcus and the presupplementary mo-
tor area in the left hemisphere, and by activity in the hypothalamus, the posterior
frontal gyrus, and the lateral occipital complex in the right hemisphere. Conse-
quently, Lacey et al. (2011) suggested that the enhanced sensory processing observed
in the neuroimaging studies of aesthetic preference is not per se a correlate of pos-itive effect, as posited by Biederman and Vessel (2006), but a trigger for activity in
the ventral striatum, which in turn would generate the positive hedonic states asso-
ciated with liked stimuli, as observed in Yue et al.’s (2007) experiment.
As for the emotional or attentional mechanisms responsible for increased activity
in sensory cortices observed in the studies noted earlier (Calvo-Merino et al., 2008;
Cela-Conde et al., 2009; Cupchik et al., 2009; Koelsch et al., 2006; Vartanian and
Goel, 2004), Lacey et al.’s (2011) analysis of connectivity found no evidence that
amygdala drives activity in the visual regions. In fact, Lacey et al.’s (2011) connec-
tivity study shows that activity in the occipital gyri was driven predominantly by the
cingulate cortex and the posterior frontal gyrus, suggesting top-down influence from
attentional systems. In light of these results, it seems that the enhancement of per-
ceptual processes while experiencing art, at least in laboratory settings, owes primar-
ily to the effects of attention, rather than emotion.
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4 CONCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS, AND PROSPECTSOver the past decades, neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies have taught us
quite a lot about the biology of the art experience. We know that it is a complex ex-
perience. We might even conceive of it as a complex of experiences, of perceptual,
cognitive, and emotional experiences. There is no localized seat for art in the brain.
Rather, our experience of art emerges from the interaction among the nodes of a
broadly distributed network of cortical and subcortical brain regions. None of these
are specialized in responding to art alone, not even in the sense that one could think of
Broca and Wernicke’s regions as specialized for language processing. They all play
crucial roles in other domains of human experience, from perceiving small details in
the world or making small decisions to abstract reasoning or establishing social
relationships.
The distributed and unspecific quality of the neural underpinnings of the art ex-
perience might be the reason why it is resilient to neurological disorders. In spite of
the different effects that these disorders seem to have on the experience of art, pa-
tients continue to engage with art in personally meaningful ways, even though per-
ceptual, memorable, or affective qualities might escape them.
Neuroimaging studies suggest that the experience of art involves three functionally
discernible sets of brain activity, which roughly match the components highlighted in
the insightful description of visitors’ reactions to the Bishop’s chapel at Cathedral of
Le Mans, and current psychological models (Chatterjee, 2004b; Leder et al., 2004).
Appreciating art engages processes related to perception (attentional enhancement
of the analyses of certain features), cognition (evaluative judgment, attention, and re-
trieval of information frommemory), and affect (generation of pleasant feelings, emo-
tions, representation and anticipation of reward, and awareness of one’s own affective
state). These processes are performed in parallel, they are highly interrelated, and they
rely heavily on information feedback, making it impossible to describe anymeaningful
sequence of events. One cannot even say that an art experience begins with perception,
given the strong biasing influences that context, expectations, and prior knowledge
have even on very early perceptual processes (Churchland et al., 1994).
In light of the multilayered nature of the experience of art, it is fair to forgive Saint
Augustine for being distracted from the divine words. Listening to the music must
have given him pleasure. It might have soothed him, relaxed him, or aroused him,
but he was definitively moved by it. His attention might have been caught by some
parts of the melody, to which he listened intently. He might have recognized some of
the music, and thought that it sounded different, or similar to other tunes. It might
have brought back memories from people and places he used to know. Some of
the melodies might have been difficult to follow and required more effort. Concen-
trating on the words on top of all of this could not have been an easy task.
Despite how much science has reveled about the biology underlying art, to some
humanists, the studies reviewed earlier add little value to our understanding of the
experience of art (Tallis, 2008a,b). When the art experience is studied in the con-
trolled conditions of the laboratory, art loses crucial qualities that make it interesting
1534 Conclusions, limitations, and prospects
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from the humanities perspective. To philosophers, art theorists, and art historians, art
is fundamentally a cultural construction subject to contextual variation, to historical
change, and to criticism; they value the way it flexibly adapts to different roles in
different cultures at different times (Davies, 2012). Humanists believe that consid-
ering artistic and aesthetic objects merely as physical elements—stimuli—strips
them of their essential historical, cultural, and intentional context and significance
(Margolis, 1980). Accordingly, their response to the scientific approach to art and
aesthetics commonly varies from mild skepticism to strong criticism, and to outright
hostility. Some humanists have even suggested that art is in principle not amenable to
scientific inquiry (Massey, 2009; Tallis, 2008a,b). Gopnik (2012), for instance,
believes that “The crucially artistic aspects of artworks are the kind of painfully com-
plex cultural and cognitive phenomena that are likely to escape experimental study,
at least for the foreseeable future” (Gopnik, 2012, p. 144). Others believe that
scientists simply miss the whole point of studying art and aesthetics (Currie,
2003). In a renowned paper, Dickie (1962) argued that scientific approaches to
aesthetics are completely irrelevant with regard to two of the main issues aesthetics
deals with: the logical problems of aesthetics, related to the meaning of aesthetic
notions and the veracity of descriptive and evaluative aesthetic assertions, and the
understanding of the aesthetic experience.
However, some of the questions philosophers ask are not well suited for psychol-
ogy or neuroscience (Fenner, 1992), such as what is art? or what is the definition of
art? Psychology and neuroscience should not be expected to address the same ques-
tions that philosophers and art theorists pose, or carry out their studies at the same
level of generality. It is unfair to judge the success of psychological or neuroscientific
approaches to art and aesthetics based on how they fair on philosophical or art-
theoretical issues. Maybe it is true that neuroscience will never be able to explain
why a given artwork is a good artwork. But maybe neuroscientists are more inter-
ested in explaining other issues, such as the biological mechanisms underlying peo-
ple’s enjoyment of some artworks and not others.
It is undeniable, however, that neuroscientists, and to a great extent psychologists
too, have overlooked the impact of context andmeaning on the experience of art. This
owes mainly to methodological constraints and to the strategy of starting small and
building up. Neuroimaging techniques require highly controlled environments. It is,
therefore, not easy to create contextual conditions that can bemanipulated experimen-
tally. Researchers have circumvented this problem by creating semantic contexts cre-
ated with verbal or visual cues, such as Kirk et al.’s (2009a) use of “gallery” and
“computer” labels to indicate that some stimuli had been taken from an art gallery
and others had been created using computer software, or Harvey and colleagues’
(2010) presentation of logos of companies that sponsored people’s participation in
the experiment or not. No doubt this is still a far cry from the idea of cultural and his-
torical context humanist scholars have in mind. It is, nonetheless, a first step in that
direction. The same could be said about psychological experiments showing that am-
biguity, knowledge, and information have crucial effects on the experience of art
(Belke et al., 2006, 2010; Leder et al., 2006; Russell, 2003; Temme, 1992).
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In this chapter, I have outlined the basic role of several brain regions in the ex-
perience of music, painting, architecture, and dance. This analysis provides only a
static image of the biology of art appreciation. What we need now is to understand
the dynamic interactions among these components. Fortunately, some scientists are
already turning toward this issue (Lacey et al., 2011; Salimpoor et al., 2011).
However, only interdisciplinary collaboration among scientists—also between
scientists and philosophers, art theorists and historians—together with scientific in-
genuity, can lead to a true understanding of the biological foundations of the kind of
art experience that troubled Saint Augustine and marveled the Le Mans chronicler.
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