Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, United States.
Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, United States.
Neuroimage. 2018 Oct 1;179:156-165. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.06.042. Epub 2018 Jun 17.
Individual differences in aesthetic engagement-the propensity to be moved by art, nature, and beauty-are associated with positive health outcomes, as well as stress resilience. The purpose of the current study was to identify potential neural substrate mechanisms underlying individual differences in aesthetic engagement and reported proneness to aesthetic chill.
Data from the Human Connectome Project (HCP) 1200 Subjects Release were utilized. Resting-state fMRI connectivity was extracted for 361 regions in the brain including cortical, subcortical and cerebellar regions for each participant, using participant-specific segmentation and parcellation of subcortical gray matter nuclei and a network-based statistics analytical approach. The Aesthetic Interests subcluster of the Openness to Experience scale (NEO-Five Factor Inventory; NEO-FFI) was used to characterize individual differences in aesthetic engagement and chill.
Participants reporting higher aesthetic engagement, particularly proneness to aesthetic chill responses, exhibited significantly higher connectivity between the default network and sensory and motor cortices, higher connectivity between the ventral default and salience networks, and decreased connectivity between the cerebellum and somatomotor cortex.
Current findings suggest that greater integration of the default mode network, involving processing of internal narrative, with neural representations of sensory perception and salience detection may be a mechanism underlying individual differences in aesthetic engagement. Thus, these individual differences may reflect general integration of environmental perception with internal emotional experience, which in turn may facilitate comfort with novelty, self-regulation, and positive adaptation to potentially stressful experiences.
审美参与的个体差异——即被艺术、自然和美丽打动的倾向——与健康结果以及抗压能力有关。本研究旨在确定审美参与和报告的审美冷感倾向个体差异的潜在神经基础机制。
利用人类连接组计划（HCP）1200 名受试者的数据。使用基于网络的统计学分析方法，为每位参与者提取大脑 361 个区域的静息状态 fMRI 连接，包括皮质、皮质下和小脑区域，使用参与者特异性的皮质下灰质核分割和分区。开放性经验量表（大五人格量表；NEO-FFI）的审美兴趣子群用于描述审美参与和冷感的个体差异。
报告具有较高审美参与度，特别是容易产生审美冷感反应的参与者，默认网络与感觉和运动皮层之间的连接显著增加，默认网络的腹侧部分与突显网络之间的连接增加，小脑与躯体运动皮层之间的连接减少。
目前的研究结果表明，默认模式网络与感觉知觉和突显检测的神经表象之间的处理的整合度增加，可能是审美参与个体差异的一种机制。因此，这些个体差异可能反映了环境感知与内部情感体验的总体整合，进而促进对新奇事物的舒适感、自我调节能力和对潜在压力体验的积极适应。
