The neural mechanism of the aesthetics of dynamic animal-stick figures

Abstract

“The love of beauty is an essential part of all healthy human nature.” Aesthetic need is a high-level spiritual pursuit of human beings. In recent years, researchers have gradually paid more and more attention to the importance of beauty. Although researchers have carried out many aesthetic studies, most have focused on the study of static stimuli and not dynamic stimuli such as flying birds or fast trotting horses. Thus, research in cognitive experimental aesthetics and cognitive neuroaesthetics has not addressed the following questions: beautiful. In Experiment 2 we explored neural mechanisms that underlie aesthetic judgment of dynamic animal-stick figures and compared the neural mechanisms between the aesthetic judgments of dynamic animal-stick figures and static ones. 20 participants who did not participate in Experiment 1 were scanned while they performed aesthetic judgments on dynamic animal-stick figures and matched static animal-stick figures. Results revealed that regions of occipital lobe, frontal lobe, hippocampus, cingulate cortex, insula, orbital frontal cortex (OFC) and amygdala were commonly activated in the aesthetic judgments of both dynamic and static animal-stick figures. The neural networks involved in aesthetic judgments of dynamic animal-stick figures overlapped with those involved in aesthetic judgments of static animal-stick figures. Furthermore, compared to static animal-stick figures, stronger activations of lingual gyrus and middle temporal gyrus (MT/V5) were found in the aesthetic judgments of dynamic animal-stick figures. However, compared to dynamic animal-stick figures, no significant activations were found in beautiful judgments of static animal-stick figures. In summary, the present study indicated that the dynamic property of animal-stick figures affected aesthetic judgment and dynamic animal-stick figures were more beautiful than static ones.