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Neuroaesthetics: the Cognitive Neuroscience of Aesthetic Experience

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Neuroaesthetics: the Cognitive Neuroscience of Aesthetic Experience PPSXXX10.1177/1745691615621274Pearce et al.Cognitive Neuroscience of Aesthetic Experience 621274research-article2016 Perspectives on Psychological Science 2016, Vol. 11(2) 265 –279 Neuroaesthetics: The Cognitive © The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Neuroscience of Aesthetic Experience DOI: 10.1177/1745691615621274 pps.sagepub.com Marcus T. Pearce1, Dahlia W. Zaidel2, Oshin Vartanian3, Martin Skov4, Helmut Leder5, Anjan Chatterjee6, and Marcos Nadal5 1School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, England; 2Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles; 3Department of Psychology, University of Toronto–Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; 4Copenhagen Business School and Copenhagen University Hospital Hvidovre, Copenhagen, Denmark; 5Department of Basic Psychological Research and Research Methods, University of Vienna, Austria; and 6Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Neurology, University of Pennsylvania Abstract The field of neuroaesthetics has gained in popularity in recent years but also attracted criticism from the perspectives both of the humanities and the sciences. In an effort to consolidate research in the field, we characterize neuroaesthetics as the cognitive neuroscience of aesthetic experience, drawing on long traditions of research in empirical aesthetics on the one hand and cognitive neuroscience on the other. We clarify the aims and scope of the field, identifying relations among neuroscientific investigations of aesthetics, beauty, and art. The approach we advocate takes as its object of study a wide spectrum of aesthetic experiences, resulting from interactions of individuals, sensory stimuli, and context. Drawing on its parent fields, a cognitive neuroscience of aesthetics would investigate the complex cognitive processes and functional networks of brain regions involved in those experiences without placing a value on them. Thus, the cognitive neuroscientific approach may develop in a way that is mutually complementary to approaches in the humanities. Keywords aesthetics, empirical aesthetics, cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience, neuroaesthetics In all products of human industry we notice the Laan, De Ridder, Viergever, & Smeets, 2012), in judgments keenness with which the eye is attracted to the of built environments (e.g., Kirk, Skov, Christensen, & mere appearance of things: great sacrifices of time Nygaard, 2009; Vartanian, Navarrete, et al., 2013) and nat- and labour are made to it in the most vulgar ural environments (e.g., Balling & Falk, 1982; Kaplan, manufactures. There must therefore be in our 1987), and in attitudes, judgments, and behavior toward nature a very radical and wide-spread tendency to other people (e.g., Kampe, Frith, Dolan, & Frith, 2001; observe beauty, and to value it. No account of the Leder, Tinio, Fuchs, & Bohrn, 2010; Mende-Siedlecki, principles of the mind can be at all adequate that Said, & Todorov, 2012). By virtue of what neural processes passes over so conspicuous a faculty. do aesthetic features influence people’s attitudes, deci- —George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty: Being sions, and behavior? More generally, what are the neural the Outline of Aesthetic Theory, pp. 1–2 underpinnings of aesthetic appreciation? These are some of the questions neuroaesthetics aims to answer. Humans, as Santayana (1896) observed, are drawn to the aesthetic features of objects and the environment around them. Such features are not mere inconsequential adorn- ments; they influence people’s affective responses, deci- Corresponding Author: sions, and behavior. In fact, aesthetics plays a central Marcus Pearce, School of Electronic Engineering and Computer role in consumers’ choice of products (e.g., Reimann, Science, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, England. Zaichkowsky, Neuhaus, Bender, & Weber, 2010; Van der E-mail: [email protected] Downloaded from pps.sagepub.com at Queen Mary, University of London on April 12, 2016 266 Pearce et al. Neuroaesthetics is a relatively recent field of research 2011; Vartanian & Skov, 2014). Their efforts have inte- in which investigators’ general goal is to understand the grated and made sense of the results of brain lesion and neural substrates of human aesthetic appreciation. Neu- neuroimaging studies on the appreciation of painting, roaesthetics can properly be viewed as a subfield of cog- sculpture, music, and dance. Moreover, they have galva- nitive neuroscience, given that it involves the study of nized and consolidated research, while also increasing human cognition and behavior using a combination of awareness of the field, which, perhaps inevitably, has methods from neuroscience and cognitive science, bring- generated controversies among a wider audience. ing together the cognitive and neural levels of explana- Thus, rather than adding another review of neuroaes- tion (Churchland & Sejnowski, 1988; Gazzaniga, 1984). thetics research to the aforementioned list, we aimed in Research in empirical aesthetics has a long history, origi- this article to outline a much needed conceptual frame- nating with Fechner’s (1876) pioneering use of psycho- work for the field. In doing so, we also attempted to physics to study aesthetic appreciation. In a general address some controversies regarding the nature of neu- sense, psychophysics deals with the relation between roaesthetics, its aims and scope, and what it can contrib- stimulation and sensation, specifically with the scaling of ute to science and the humanities. sensory magnitude. This, however, is the object of outer There are at least two reasons that addressing such psychophysics, which Fechner regarded as an indirect questions is important in a broader sense. First, as neuro- approximation to a more fundamental relation. The cru- aesthetics has begun to draw attention, it has aroused cial aim of psychophysics, in Fechner’s (1860) view, was criticism from several quarters, including humanistic to explain the relation between sensation and neural researchers who believe it is either irrelevant or mis- activity, and this was the object of inner psychophysics guided as a scientific enterprise. Similar criticisms have (Boring, 1950; Scheerer, 1987). Fechner (1860) was previously been leveled at other subdisciplines of cogni- unable to study this relation experimentally because the tive neuroscience that intrude on topics traditionally appropriate technology and methods had not yet been addressed using nonbiological approaches, including developed. Nevertheless, he elaborated the conceptual economics, philosophy, and sociology. It is important not foundations of inner psychophysics, characterizing the only to show why these arguments, when cast in general neural concomitants of sensation and memory in terms terms, are misleading or unjustified, but also to clarify of oscillatory processes throughout broadly distributed how understanding neural mechanisms can tell research- neural networks (Fechner, 1882/1987). ers something important and novel about aesthetic expe- A true experimental study of the neural substrates of rience. Second, although it probably appears obvious to aesthetics—what Fechner might have conceived as the most neuroscientists that studying the neural correlates of experimental inner psychophysics of aesthetics—has consciousness, economics, or social behavior is impor- emerged only in the last decade or so. Nevertheless, the tant for understanding cognition and the brain, it is per- field of neuroaesthetics is finding its feet (Chatterjee, haps not readily apparent what is gained by studying the 2011) and developing the proper formal and institutional neural substrates of aesthetic experience or the produc- mechanisms that characterize any scientific domain, as tion of artworks. Hence, it is also important to highlight demonstrated by the convening, in 2009, of the field’s the distinctive features of aesthetic experience that make first international conference (Nadal & Pearce, 2011) and it an object of interest for neuroscientists. the publishing of a Research Topic on brain and art in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (Segev, Aims and Scope Martínez, & Zatorre, 2014), a special issue of the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts (Nadal & Neuroaesthetics has become an interdisciplinary field of Skov, 2013), and several books on the neural foundations study incorporating research at the intersection of differ- of aesthetic experience (Chatterjee, 2014a; Shimamura & ent fields by scientists with varied interests, priorities, and Palmer, 2012; Skov & Vartanian, 2009; Zaidel, 2005). paradigmatic backgrounds (Chatterjee, 2011; Nadal & With articles reporting experimental research on the Pearce, 2011). Nevertheless, we believe there is sufficient cognitive neuroscience of aesthetic preference, valuation, empirical evidence and conceptual development to begin and experience now numbering in the hundreds, neuro- delineating a consensus on its aims and scope. aesthetics has reached a stage where it is useful to con- A comprehensive understanding of aesthetics requires sider what neuroaesthetics has accomplished and where explanations at several levels of analysis. Based on it should go in the future. In several articles, researchers Aristotle’s four causes, Killeen (2001) argued that com- have reviewed the recent literature (Chatterjee, 2011; plex forms of cognition and behavior call for efficient, Chatterjee
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