the golden beauty brain response to classical and renaissance sculptures黄金美丽大脑反应古典和文艺复兴时期的雕塑.pdfVIP

The Golden Beauty: Brain Response to Classical and Renaissance Sculptures 1,2 2 1 Cinzia Di Dio , Emiliano Macaluso , Giacomo Rizzolatti * ` 1 Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Universita di Parma, Parma, Italy, 2 Fondazione Santa Lucia, Neuroimaging Laboratory, Rome, Italy Is there an objective, biological basis for the experience of beauty in art? Or is aesthetic experience entirely subjective? Using ¨ fMRI technique, we addressed this question by presenting viewers, naıve to art criticism, with images of masterpieces of Classical and Renaissance sculpture. Employing proportion as the independent variable, we produced two sets of stimuli: one composed of images of original sculptures; the other of a modified version of the same images. The stimuli were presented in three conditions: observation, aesthetic judgment, and proportion judgment. In the observation condition, the viewers were required to observe the images with the same mind-set as if they were in a museum. In the other two conditions they were required to give an aesthetic or proportion judgment on the same images. Two types of analyses were carried out: one which contrasted brain response to the canonical and the modified sculptures, and one which contrasted beautiful vs. ugly sculptures as judged by each volunteer. The most striking result was that the observation of original sculptures, relative to the modified ones, produced activation of the right insula as well as of some lateral and medial cortical areas (lateral occipital gyrus, precuneus and prefrontal areas). The activation of the insula was particularly strong during the observation condition. Most interestingly, when volunteers were required to give an overt aesthetic judgment, the