TMS over the superior temporal sulcus affects expressivity evaluation of portraits

Abstract

When viewing a portrait, we are often captured by its expressivity, even if the emotion depicted is not immediately identifiable. If the neural mechanisms underlying emotion processing of real faces have been largely clarified, we still know little about the neural basis of evaluation of (emotional) expressivity in portraits. In this study, we aimed at assessing-by means of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)-whether the right superior temporal sulcus (STS) and the right somatosensory cortex (SC), that are important in discriminating facial emotion expressions, are also causally involved in the evaluation of expressivity of portraits. We found that interfering via TMS with activity in (the face region of) right STS significantly reduced the extent to which portraits (but not other paintings depicting human figures with faces only in the background) were perceived as expressive, without, though, affecting their liking. In turn, interfering with activity of the right SC had no impact on evaluating either expressivity or liking of either paintings' category. Our findings suggest that evaluation of emotional cues in artworks recruit (at least partially) the same neural mechanisms involved in processing genuine biological others. Moreover, they shed light on the neural basis of liking decisions in art by art-naïve people, supporting the view that aesthetic appreciation relies on a multitude of factors beyond emotional evaluation.

Neural correlates of visual aesthetic appreciation: insights from non-invasive brain stimulation

“…Non-invasive brain stimulation can critically complement neuroimaging and electrophysiological evidence in research on neuroaesthetics by informing about brain-behavioral causal relationships. Overall, studies conducted so far seem to suggest that various regions along the visual dorsal and ventral pathways are involved in aesthetic valuation of bodies and artworks (Calvo-Merino et al 2010;Cattaneo et al 2015Cattaneo et al , 2017Cazzato et al 2014Cazzato et al , 2016Ferrari et al 2015Ferrari et al , 2018. Evidence on the role of motor and premotor cortices in contributing to aesthetic valuation appears to be more preliminary, with available TMS findings supporting a role of premotor cortices (Calvo-Merino et al 2010;Cazzato et al 2016) in mediating preference for bodies, whereas no brain stimulation study has directly assessed the contribution of premotor cortices to aesthetic valuation of artworks.…”

“…Even if this were the case, MEPs do not uniquely reflect motor-resonance or motor-preparation mechanisms. A further TMS study (Ferrari et al 2018) has investigated whether the STS and somatosensory cortex, regions important in processing facial expressions, play a role in aesthetic appreciation of portraits. No support for this hypothesis was found.…”

“…In discussing embodied mechanisms contributing to aesthetic appreciation, I also briefly consider a recent experiment by Ferrari et al (2018). In this study, we employed TMS to assess whether valuation of emotional expressivity of portraits (i.e., the degree to which a face expresses an internal/emotional state) recruits the superior temporal sulcus (STS) and the somatosensory cortex (SC).…”

Social cognition in the blind brain: A coordinate‐based meta‐analysis

“…This cluster appears to be consistently engaged in both groups during social processing and activations in these regions are likely to play a more general function in the perception of socially relevant stimuli, which is not bound to visual experience (Fairhall et al, 2017). These results fit with the involvement of the right STG and TPJ in a variety of social‐cognitive processes (Bahnemann, Dziobek, Prehn, Wolf, & Heekeren, 2010; Yang, Rosenblau, Keifer, & Pelphrey, 2015), such as biological motion perception (Beauchamp, Lee, Haxby, & Martin, 2003; Grossman et al, 2000; Peelen, Wiggett, & Downing, 2006), mentalizing (Schneider, Slaughter, Becker, & Dux, 2014; Wolf, Dziobek, & Heekeren, 2010), and emotion attribution to others on the basis of both visual and auditory/verbal information (e.g., Alba‐Ferrara, Ellison, & Mitchell, 2012; Ferrari, Schiavi, & Cattaneo, 2018; Gamond & Cattaneo, 2016; Lettieri et al, 2019; Redcay, Velnoskey, & Rowe, 2016; Sliwinska & Pitcher, 2018). These data suggest a two‐stage process in which the STS underpins an initial parsing of a stream of information, whether auditory or visual, into meaningful discrete elements, whose communicative meaning for decoding others' behavior and intentions involves more in‐depth analysis associated with increased activation in the TPJ node (Arioli & Canessa, 2019; Bahnemann et al, 2010; Redcay, 2008).…”

Noninvasive Brain Stimulation: An Overview of Available Approaches for Research in Neuroaesthetics

“…Finally, an interesting line of research has compared neural responses with observation or evaluation of artworks (e.g., a painting, a sculpture) versus photographs depicting a similar content (e.g., an everyday object, a face, a human body), finding indeed some relevant differences between artistic and nonartistic stimuli (e.g., Di Dio, Canessa, Cappa, & Rizzolatti, 2011; Kesner & Horáček, 2017; Lutz et al., 2013). Within this framework, we have recently used TMS to investigate whether the evaluation of emotional cues in portraits recruits the same neural mechanisms involved in processing emotional expressions in real faces (Ferrari, Schiavi, & Cattaneo, 2018; see Figure 2). Specifically, we targeted the superior temporal sulcus (STS), at the intersection of the ventral and dorsal stream, and the somatosensory cortex, both critical regions for processing of facial emotion expressions (Engell & Haxby, 2007; J. S. Winston, O’Doherty, & Dolan, 2003).…”