Abstract
Compared with traditional Western landscape paintings, Chinese traditional landscape paintings usually apply a reversed-geometric perspective and concentrate more on contextual information. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we discovered an intracultural bias in the aesthetic appreciation of Western and Eastern traditional landscape paintings in European and Chinese participants. When viewing Western and Eastern landscape paintings in an fMRI scanner, participants showed stronger brain activation to artistic expressions from their own culture. Europeans showed greater activation in visual and sensory-motor brain areas, regions in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and hippocampus when viewing Western compared to Eastern landscape paintings. Chinese participants exhibited greater neural activity in the medial and inferior occipital cortex and regions of the superior parietal lobule in response to Eastern compared to Western landscape paintings. On the behavioral level, the aesthetic judgments also differed between Western and Chinese participants when viewing landscape paintings from different cultures; Western participants showed for instance higher valence values when viewing Western landscapes, while Chinese participants did not show this effect when viewing Chinese landscapes. In general, our findings offer differentiated support for a cultural modulation at the behavioral level and in the neural architecture for high-level aesthetic appreciation.
Highlights
Neuroscientific research on aesthetic processes in the visual system has offered evidence for a correspondence between certain properties of artworks and organizational principles in the brain (Zeki, 1999; Kawabata and Zeki, 2004; Chatterjee, 2011; Chatterjee and Vartanian, 2014; Bao et al, 2017a)
Compared with Eastern paintings, Western paintings were rated significantly higher on valence [t(15) = 4.01, p = 0.001, ES = 1.276], preference [t(15) = 3.75, p = 0.002, ES = 1.036], beauty [t(15) = 3.62, p = 0.003, ES = 0.938], relaxation [t(15) = 4.18, p = 0.001, ES = 0.842], empathy [t(15) = 4.84, p = 0.001, ES = 1.093], and object-related absorption [t(15) = 4.01, p = 0.002, ES = 0.968], but lower on arousal [t(15) = 2.63, p = 0.019, ES = 0.703]
Paired t-tests indicated that preference levels and beauty levels were not significantly different between traditional Chinese and Western landscape paintings [t(14) = 0.55, p = 0.58, ES = 0.037; t(14) = 1.36, p = 0.18, ES = 0.097]
Summary
Neuroscientific research on aesthetic processes in the visual system has offered evidence for a correspondence between certain properties of artworks and organizational principles in the brain (Zeki, 1999; Kawabata and Zeki, 2004; Chatterjee, 2011; Chatterjee and Vartanian, 2014; Bao et al, 2017a). Piet Mondrian’s paintings are exemplary of visual art that excites orientation-selective neurons in the primary visual area. These neurons respond selectively to dots and straight lines, especially horizontal and vertical ones. Zeki’s (1999) principal idea is that different kinds of artworks excite different groups of neurons in the brain, leading to differential bottom-up processes These neurons respond selectively to dots and straight lines, especially horizontal and vertical ones. Zeki’s (1999) principal idea is that different kinds of artworks excite different groups of neurons in the brain, leading to differential bottom-up processes
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