Hoshi Hideyuki, Ishii Akira, Shigihara Yoshihito, Yoshikawa Takahiro
Department of Sports Medicine, Osaka Metropolitan University Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka, Japan.
Precision Medicine Centre, Hokuto Hospital, Obihiro, Japan.
Front Neurosci. 2024 May 24;18:1339479. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2024.1339479. eCollection 2024.
Aesthetic emotions are a class of emotions aroused by evaluating aesthetically appealing objects or events. While evolutionary aesthetics suggests the adaptive roles of these emotions, empirical assessments are lacking. Previous neuroscientific studies have demonstrated that visual stimuli carrying evolutionarily important information induce neural responses even when presented non-consciously. To examine the evolutionary importance of aesthetic emotions, we conducted a neuroscientific study using magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure induced neural responses to non-consciously presented portrait paintings categorised as biological and non-biological and examined associations between the induced responses and aesthetic ratings.
MEG and pre-rating data were collected from 23 participants. The pre-rating included visual analogue scales for , , , and scores, in addition to ',' which was used for subcategorising stimuli into biological and non-biological. The stimuli were presented non-consciously using a continuous flash suppression paradigm or consciously using binocular presentation without flashing masks, while dichotomic behavioural responses were obtained (beauty or non-beauty). Time-frequency decomposed MEG data were used for correlation analysis with pre-rating scores for each category.
Behavioural data revealed that saliency scores of non-consciously presented stimuli influenced dichotomic responses (beauty or non-beauty). MEG data showed that non-consciously presented portrait paintings induced spatiotemporally distributed low-frequency brain activities associated with aesthetic ratings, which were distinct between the biological and non-biological categories and conscious and non-conscious conditions.
Aesthetic emotion holds evolutionary significance for humans. Neural pathways are sensitive to visual images that arouse aesthetic emotion in distinct ways for biological and non-biological categories, which are further influenced by consciousness. These differences likely reflect the diversity in mechanisms of aesthetic processing, such as processing fluency, active elaboration, and predictive processing. The aesthetic processing of non-conscious stimuli appears to be characterised by fluency-driven affective processing, while top-down regulatory processes are suppressed. This study provides the first empirical evidence supporting the evolutionary significance of aesthetic processing.
审美情感是一类由对具有审美吸引力的物体或事件进行评估而引发的情感。虽然进化美学提出了这些情感的适应性作用，但缺乏实证评估。先前的神经科学研究表明，携带进化重要信息的视觉刺激即使在无意识呈现时也会诱发神经反应。为了检验审美情感的进化重要性，我们进行了一项神经科学研究，使用脑磁图（MEG）来测量对无意识呈现的、分类为生物和非生物的肖像画诱发的神经反应，并研究诱发反应与审美评分之间的关联。
从23名参与者收集了MEG和预评分数据。预评分除了用于将刺激细分为生物和非生物的“生物/非生物”外，还包括视觉模拟量表用于愉悦度、唤醒度、支配度和复杂度评分。刺激通过连续闪光抑制范式无意识呈现，或通过无闪光掩模的双眼呈现有意识呈现，同时获得二分行为反应（美或不美）。时频分解的MEG数据用于与每个类别的预评分进行相关分析。
行为数据表明，无意识呈现刺激的显著性评分影响二分反应（美或不美）。MEG数据显示，无意识呈现的肖像画诱发了与审美评分相关的时空分布低频脑活动，这在生物和非生物类别以及有意识和无意识条件之间是不同的。
审美情感对人类具有进化意义。神经通路对以不同方式唤起生物和非生物类别的审美情感的视觉图像敏感，并且这些图像还受到意识的进一步影响。这些差异可能反映了审美加工机制的多样性，如加工流畅性、主动阐释和预测加工。无意识刺激的审美加工似乎以流畅性驱动的情感加工为特征，而自上而下的调节过程受到抑制。本研究提供了支持审美加工进化意义的首个实证证据。
