Neural Correlates of Beauty

Kawabata, Hideaki; Zeki, Semir

doi:10.1152/jn.00696.2003

Cited by 729 publications

(633 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…For example, Cela-Conde et al (2004) found that liked pictures elicited stronger prefrontal cortex activations than disliked pictures. Kawabata and Zeki (2004) found stronger activation of orbitofrontal cortex for pictures found beautiful than for pictures judged ugly, and stronger activation of sensorimotor cortex for the opposite contrast. Calvo-Merino et al (2008) applied this approach to dance actions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 80%

“…The few published neuroaesthetic studies using visual stimuli have not achieved consensus on the lateralisation of aesthetic responses. For example, two fMRI studies report left sensorimotor cortex activations associated with explicit subjective judgements of ugliness (Di Dio et al, 2007;Kawabata and Zeki, 2004). In contrast, Calvo-Merino et al's (2008) participants first viewed dance movements, and later gave them aesthetic evaluations in a separate session.…”

Section: Hemispheric Lateralisation Of Aesthetic Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Specifically, neural correlates of aesthetic experience have been proposed in reward regions of the brain (i.e. orbitofrontal cortex) (Kawabata and Zeki, 2004;Vartanian and Goel, 2004), in emotional centres such as the amygdala (Di Dio et al, 2007), in specialised visual perceptual areas (Zeki and Lamb, 1994), in dorsolateral prefrontal regions associated with higher 'executive' functions such as monitoring (CelaConde et al, 2004) and with frontomedian regions underlying social and moral judgment (Jacobsen et al, 2006) (see Nadal et al, 2008 for a comprehensive review).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Extrastriate body area underlies aesthetic evaluation of body stimuli

et al. 2010

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This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link AbstractHumans appear to be the only animals to have developed the practice and culture of art. This practice presumably relies on special processing circuits within the human brain associated with a distinct subjective experience, termed aesthetic experience, and preferentially evoked by artistic stimuli. We assume that positive or negative aesthetic judgments are an important function of neuroaesthetic circuits. The localization of these circuits in the brain remains unclear, though neuroimaging studies have suggested several possible neural correlates of aesthetic preference. We applied repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over candidate brain areas to disrupt aesthetic processing while healthy volunteers made aesthetic preference judgments between pairs of dance postures, or control non-body stimuli. Based on evidence from visual body perception studies, we targeted the ventral premotor cortex (vPMC) and extrastriate body area (EBA), in the left and right hemispheres.rTMS over EBA reduced aesthetic sensitivity for body stimuli relative to rTMS over vPMC, while no such difference was found for non-body stimuli. We interpret our results within the framework of dual routes for visual body processing. rTMS over either EBA or vPMC reduced the contributions of the stimulated area to body processing, leaving processing more reliant on the unaffected route. Disruption of EBA reduces the local processing of the stimuli, and reduced observers' aesthetic sensitivity.Conversely, disruption of the global route via vPMC increased the relative contribution of the local route via EBA, and thus increased aesthetic sensitivity. In this way, we suggest a complementary contribution of both local and global routes to aesthetic processing.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Section: Hemispheric Lateralisation Of Aesthetic Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Extrastriate body area underlies aesthetic evaluation of body stimuli

et al. 2010

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“…Concrete, or representational, pictures are preferred to abstract ones (e.g. Kawabata & Zeki, 2004;Vartanian & Goel, 2004); the visual complexity of pictures, websites and graphic patterns has a significant influence on aesthetic appeal judgements (e.g. Berlyne, 1974;Bauerly & Liu, 2008;Jacobsen & Hofel, 2002;Lai et al, 2010;Moshagen & Theilsch, 2010Orth & Wirtz, 2014); and, of course, familiarity enhances appeal for a wide range of…”

Section: Stimulus Characteristics That Might Affect Icon Appeal Evalumentioning

confidence: 99%

What makes icons appealing? The role of processing fluency in predicting icon appeal in different task contexts

et al. 2016

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Although icons appear on almost all interfaces, there is a paucity of research examining the determinants of icon appeal. The experiments reported here examined the icon characteristics determining appeal and the extent to which processing fluency -the subjective ease with which individuals process information -was used as a heuristic to guide appeal evaluations. Participants searched for, and identified, icons in displays. The initial appeal of icons was held constant while ease of processing was manipulated by systematically varying the complexity and familiarity of the icons presented and the type of task participants were asked to carry out. Processing fluency reliably influenced users' appeal ratings and appeared to be based on users' unconscious awareness of the ease with which they carried out experimental tasks.

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“…Brain imaging research on neuroesthetic shows that the core neural networks underlying pleasure evoked by beauty are likely to engage the same neural structures that mediate emotions, and, in particular, the reward systems (Cela-Conde et al, 2004;Ishizu and Zeki, 2011;Kawabata and Zeki, 2004;Marzi and Viggiano, 2010;Vartanian and Goel, 2004;Wiesmann and Ishiai, 2008;Chatterjee et al, 2009). Thus, it has been found that the esthetic experience involves a widely distributed circuit with greater activation for beautiful stimuli in anterior cingulate gyrus, dorsolateral and medial frontal cortices (Berridge and Kringelbach, 2008;Breiter et al, 2001;Di Dio et al, 2011;Kirk et al, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attractiveness and affordance shape tools neural coding: Insight from ERPs

Righi

Orlando

Marzi

2014

International Journal of Psychophysiology

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This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues.Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. The relation between attractiveness and motor affordance is a key topic in design and has not yet been investigated electrophysiologically. In this respect, action affordance and attractiveness represent two crucial dimensions in object processing (specifically for tools). In light of this evidence, Event Related Potentials (ERPs) enabled us to gain new insights into the time course of the interaction between these two dimensions during an explicit tool evaluation task. Behaviorally, tools that were judged as high affording and high attractive yielded faster response times than those judged as low affording and low attractive. The ERP results showed that early processes related to sensory gating and feature extraction (N100) were sensitive to both affordance and attractiveness; the P200 was dominated by affordance, indexing a facilitated access to motor action representation. The N300, P300 and the Late Positive Potential (LPP) showed enhanced responses for highly affording/attractive tools, reflecting the interconnection between attractiveness and affordance. Later responses were entirely affected by attractiveness, suggesting additional affective responses evoked by desirable tools. We are showing that things that are perceived as more functional and attractive have a privileged neural activation in the time course of tool evaluation, for the first time.

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Neural Correlates of Beauty

Cited by 729 publications

References 32 publications

Extrastriate body area underlies aesthetic evaluation of body stimuli

Extrastriate body area underlies aesthetic evaluation of body stimuli

What makes icons appealing? The role of processing fluency in predicting icon appeal in different task contexts

Attractiveness and affordance shape tools neural coding: Insight from ERPs

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