Modulation of aesthetic value by semantic context: An fMRI study

Aesthetic judgments, like most judgments, depend on context. Whether an object or image is seen in daily life or in an art gallery can significantly modulate the aesthetic value humans attach to it. We investigated the neural system supporting this modulation by presenting human subjects with artwor...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:NeuroImage (Orlando, Fla.) Fla.), 2009-02, Vol.44 (3), p.1125-1132
Main Authors: Kirk, Ulrich, Skov, Martin, Hulme, Oliver, Christensen, Mark S., Zeki, Semir
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Aesthetics
Art exhibits
Art galleries & museums
Brain Mapping
Cerebral Cortex - physiology
Computers
Cues
Esthetics
Female
Humans
Hypotheses
Judgment - physiology
Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods
Male
Medical imaging
Modern art
Neuroimaging
Preferences
Ratings & rankings
Scanners
Semantics
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Summary:Aesthetic judgments, like most judgments, depend on context. Whether an object or image is seen in daily life or in an art gallery can significantly modulate the aesthetic value humans attach to it. We investigated the neural system supporting this modulation by presenting human subjects with artworks under different contexts whilst acquiring fMRI data. Using the same database of artworks, we randomly labelled images as being either sourced from a gallery or computer generated. Subjects' aesthetic ratings were significantly higher for stimuli viewed in the ‘gallery’ than ‘computer’ contexts. This contextual modulation correlated with activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex and prefrontal cortex, whereas the context, independent of aesthetic value, correlated with bilateral activations of temporal pole and bilateral entorhinal cortex. This shows that prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices recruited by aesthetic judgments are significantly biased by subjects' prior expectations about the likely hedonic value of stimuli according to their source.
ISSN:1053-8119
1095-9572
DOI:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.10.009