Tài liệu CHAPTER TwENTY ONE A BIOLOGICAL APPROACH TO A MODEL OF AESTHETIC ExPERIENCE OSHIN VARTANIAN

CHAPTER TwENTY ONE

A BIOLOGICAL APPROACH TO A MODEL

OF AESTHETIC ExPERIENCE

OSHIN VARTANIAN AND MARcos NADAL

Recently, Leder and colleagues (2004) introduced an information-processing

model to account for aesthetic experience. This model breaks the computation

ofthe aesthetic response into five stages, associating each stage with a particular

process of interest. In this paper we review results from recent neuroimaging

studies of visual aesthetics to determine the extent to which they support this

model. In addition, we derive specific hypotheses from the model that remain to

be tested at a biological level. We argue that because all the cognitive and

emotional processes that comprise the model are instantiated in the brain, one

should in principle be able to test this model using biological methods. We

conclude that the model is a promising framework within which to conduct such

work on aesthetics.

There is now general agreement that the aesthetic experience is the outcome

of a complex interplay of cognitive and affective processes. Recently, Leder and

colleagues introduced an information-processing model to account for the

interaction of various component processes in the computation of aesthetic

experience (Leder el al., 2004, 2005). Their model of aesthetic experience was

described at the psychological level, and unlike other models (e.g., Chatterjee,

2003) was not designed to account for the biological underpinnings of aesthetic

experience per se. Nevertheless, the model of aesthetic experience has certain

characteristics that make it amenable to neuroscientific investigation. First, it

breaks the computation ofthe aesthetic response into various stages, associating

each stage with a particular process of interest. Because neuroscientists have

studied those processes in contexts other than aesthetics, rudimentary cortical

maps oftheir neural correlates have begun to emerge. This feature allows one to

test hypotheses about whether any particular process of interest iSOlated within

this model will map onto plausible cortical structures. Second, and critically,

there are built-in temporal constraints in the structure of the model. In other

words, information flows in specified ways through the system, and this orderly