Neural correlates of emotional response to paintings of Caravaggio
Poster No:
2480
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Akitoshi Ogawa1, Shigetoshi Osano2, Tetsuya Matsuda3, Masamichi Sakagami3, Tatsuya Kameda2
Institutions:
1Juntendo University, Tokyo, Japan, 2The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, 3Tamagawa University, Tokyo, Japan
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Introduction:
An Italian Baroque painter, Caravaggio (1571-1610), innovated the Chiaroscuro technique, which uses light-dark intense contrasts. The limited information in the contrast elevates emotional responses to paintings [1]. Caravaggio's paintings depicting facial and body tension and movement in light-dark contrasts evoked subjective emotional elevation compared to his followers [2]. However, besides such art-historical observation, the neural basis of the distinctive emotional experiences associated with Caravaggio remains largely unknown. In this neuro-cognitive experiment that coupled eye-tracking and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we explored the neural correlates of emotional elevation when viewing Caravaggio's paintings.
Methods:
Eleven expert participants (students majoring in art history, 3 males and 8 females, ranging from 20 to 25 years) and twenty novice participants (other majors, 10 males and 10 females, ranging from 18 to 22 years) without neurological or psychiatric illness participated in this fMRI experiment. We prepared 10 Caravaggio's, 10 followers', and 10 Mondrian's paintings. In each trial, one single painting was presented for 25 s, followed by a fixation cross presented during the inter-trial interval (2, 3, or 4 s). Two senior experts in art history defined three areas of interest (AOIs) for each painting (Fig. 1A). During the fMRI experiment, the eye position was recorded using an MR-compatible eye tracker operating at 250 Hz (EyeLink 1000) (Fig. 1B).
All MRI data were acquired using a 3-T MRI scanner (Prisma Fit) at Tamagawa University with a 32-ch head coil. Functional images were acquired using a multiband GRE EPI sequence (TR = 1.0 s, TE = 26 ms, FA = 59º, in-plane FOV = 192 mm × 192 mm, matrix size = 64 × 64, slice thickness = 3 mm, 45 contiguous slices, and multiband factor = 3 [3]). We used SPM12 and FSL to process the acquired images. The functional images were motion-corrected, distortion-corrected, spatially normalized to the standard space of MNI coordinates, spatially smoothed (Gaussian FWHM = 8 mm), and high-pass filtered (cut off = 256 s). The design matrix of the general linear model included three regressors for the painting types (Caravaggio, Follower, and Mondrian) and six head-motion nuisance regressors. We used voxel-level and cluster-level thresholds to investigate significant activation (P < 0.001 for cluster identification and P < 0.05 for cluster-level significance with family-wise error correction).
All MRI data were acquired using a 3-T MRI scanner (Prisma Fit) at Tamagawa University with a 32-ch head coil. Functional images were acquired using a multiband GRE EPI sequence (TR = 1.0 s, TE = 26 ms, FA = 59º, in-plane FOV = 192 mm × 192 mm, matrix size = 64 × 64, slice thickness = 3 mm, 45 contiguous slices, and multiband factor = 3 [3]). We used SPM12 and FSL to process the acquired images. The functional images were motion-corrected, distortion-corrected, spatially normalized to the standard space of MNI coordinates, spatially smoothed (Gaussian FWHM = 8 mm), and high-pass filtered (cut off = 256 s). The design matrix of the general linear model included three regressors for the painting types (Caravaggio, Follower, and Mondrian) and six head-motion nuisance regressors. We used voxel-level and cluster-level thresholds to investigate significant activation (P < 0.001 for cluster identification and P < 0.05 for cluster-level significance with family-wise error correction).
Results:
The eye-tracking results showed that the expert participants looked at the AOIs longer than the novice participants (F(1,29) = 8.90, P = 0.0057) (Fig. 1C). Imaging results showed that the anterior cingulate cortex, right fusiform gyrus, and right inferior frontal gyrus were significantly activated when viewing Caravaggio's paintings compared to those of his followers (Fig. 2A). Consistent with a previous study [4], Mondrian's paintings activated the early visual area, compared to Caravaggio's and his followers' paintings (Fig. 2B). The contrast between experts and novices when viewing Caravaggio's paintings showed significant activation in the right superior parietal lobule (Fig. 2C). As the amygdala is generally involved in emotional elevation, we compared the activity in the amygdala (Fig. 2D) while participants freely viewed the paintings of Caravaggio and his followers compared to the activity for the paintings of Mondrian. We collapsed experts and novices to examine the amygdala activity because of no significant difference in the amygdala activity; Caravaggio's paintings activated the amygdala more, compared to the followers' paintings (t(30) = 2.08, P = 0.046) (Fig. 2E).
Conclusions:
These results suggest that experts and novices viewed the paintings cognitively differently, but the amygdala was activated similarly in both experts and novices while viewing Caravaggio's paintings, which evoked the characteristic emotional elevation.
Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:
Emotion and Motivation Other 2
Higher Cognitive Functions:
Higher Cognitive Functions Other
Perception, Attention and Motor Behavior:
Perception and Attention Other 1
Keywords:
Emotions
FUNCTIONAL MRI
Learning
Vision
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
·Figure 1.
·Figure 2.
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2. Szajnberg, N.M., 2013. Caravaggio Four Centuries Later. J Am Psychoanal Assoc 61, 311–332.
3. Xu, J., Moeller, S., Auerbach, E.J., Strupp, J., Smith, S.M., Feinberg, D.A., Yacoub, E., Uǧurbil, K., 2013. Evaluation of slice accelerations using multiband echo planar imaging at 3T. Neuroimage 83, 991–1001.
4. McKeefry, D.J., Zeki, S., 1997. The position and topography of the human colour centre as revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Brain 120, 2229–42.