The modulation of personal traits in neural responses during the aesthetic experience of mundane art

Abstract

Abstract Objectives To date, individual differences in the neuroaesthetics of mundane art are seldom studied. This study addresses group differences with regard to the neural mechanisms of aesthetic emotions and aesthetic judgments toward everyday designed products according to levels of everyday aesthetic experience and expertise in design. Methods A fMRI experiment that included 26 college students was employed. The stimuli were 30 pictures of everyday designed products in each of the categories: beautiful, medium, and ugly. Results The findings revealed that rich everyday aesthetic experience elicited more brain activations in aesthetic judgments, and expertise in design elicited more brain activations in aesthetic emotions. Notably, rich everyday experience and expertise may modulate the integration of external sensation and internal states, top-down attention, reward processing, and emotion regulation when viewing beautiful stimuli, whereas poor everyday experience and expertise may modulate conscious assessment of self-relevant meaning as well as retrieval of negative memory and emotions when viewing ugly stimuli. Conclusions The findings of this study provide insights for enhancing aesthetic ability through daily life experience and instruction.