Iosa Marco, Aydin Merve, Candelise Carolina, Coda Natascia, Morone Giovanni, Antonucci Gabriella, Marinozzi Franco, Bini Fabiano, Paolucci Stefano, Tieri Gaetano
Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2021 Jan 7;11:611956. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.611956. eCollection 2020.
The vision of an art masterpiece is associated with brain arousal by neural processes occurring quite spontaneously in the viewer. This aesthetic experience may even elicit a response in the motor areas of the observers. In the neurorehabilitation of patients with stroke, art observation has been used for reducing psychological disorders, and creative art therapy for enhancing physical functions and cognitive abilities. Here, we developed a virtual reality task which allows patients, by moving their hand on a virtual canvas, to have the illusion of painting some art masterpieces, such as The Creation of Adam of Michelangelo or The birth of Venus of Botticelli. Twenty healthy subjects (experiment 1) and four patients with stroke (experiment 2) performed this task and a control one in which they simply colored the virtual canvas. Results from User Satisfaction Evaluation Questionnaire and the NASA Task Load Index highlighted an appropriate level of usability. Moreover, despite the motor task was the same for art and control stimuli, the art condition was performed by healthy subjects with shorter trajectories ( = 0.001) and with a lower perception of physical demand ( = 0.049). In experiment 2, only the patients treated with artistic stimuli showed a reduction in the erroneous movements performed orthogonally to the canvas ( < 0.05). This finding reminds the so-called Mozart effect that improves the performance of subjects when they listen to classic music. Thus, we called this improvement in the performance when interacting with an artistic stimulus as Michelangelo effect.
艺术杰作的视觉体验与观众大脑中相当自发发生的神经过程引起的大脑兴奋有关。这种审美体验甚至可能在观察者的运动区域引发反应。在中风患者的神经康复中，艺术观察已被用于减少心理障碍，而创造性艺术疗法则用于增强身体功能和认知能力。在此，我们开发了一种虚拟现实任务，让患者通过在虚拟画布上移动手部，产生绘制一些艺术杰作的错觉，比如米开朗基罗的《创造亚当》或波提切利的《维纳斯的诞生》。20名健康受试者（实验1）和4名中风患者（实验2）执行了此任务以及一个对照任务，在对照任务中他们只是给虚拟画布上色。用户满意度评估问卷和美国国家航空航天局任务负荷指数的结果突出显示了适当的可用性水平。此外，尽管艺术和对照刺激的运动任务相同，但健康受试者在艺术条件下执行任务时轨迹更短（P = 0.001）且对身体需求的感知更低（P = 0.049）。在实验2中，只有接受艺术刺激治疗的患者在与画布垂直方向上执行有误动作的情况有所减少（P < 0.05）。这一发现让人联想到所谓的莫扎特效应，即当受试者听古典音乐时其表现会得到改善。因此，我们将与艺术刺激互动时表现的这种改善称为米开朗基罗效应。
