Neuroaesthetics edited by skov, martin and oshin vartanian

SKOV, MARTIN and OSHIN VARTANIAN, eds. Neuroaesthetics. Amityville, NY: Baywood, 2009, iv + 302 pp., 8 color + 47 b&w illus., $68.50 cloth. Neuroaesthetics, as defined by the editors in their brief introductory chapter, “is the study of the neural processes that underlie aesthetic behavior” (p. 3). More precisely, “there are forms of interaction with objects that can be called ‘aesthetic,’ ” and “[t]he job of neuroaesthetics is to identify these aesthetic functions and to investigate their neurobiological causes” (p. 3). They then make two clarifying remarks concerning the scope of the field. First, the study of aesthetic behavior, as the term suggests, should not be restricted to the study of aesthetic response. It should also include the study of the processes involved in the production of aesthetic objects. Second, we engage aesthetically with objects as diverse as paintings, faces, landscapes, and food, which means that the study of aesthetic behavior should not be restricted to our interactions with artworks. These are of course the goals of neuroaesthetics, as a field, so it shouldn't be too surprising if the contribution of the book's fourteen chapters toward fulfilling these goals is rather modest. For example, despite repeated mention by several contributors of the importance of studying the production side of aesthetic behavior, only the chapter by Chatterjee and the one by Zaidel (which both include interesting discussions of the effects of brain damage on artistic production) deal directly with this topic. Similarly, even though many of the contributors explicitly acknowledge that empirical approaches to the study of aesthetics need to go beyond art, discussions of our aesthetic engagement with objects other than artworks are few. Such discussions are, in fact, practically limited to the chapter by Jacobsen, which contains a mini review of the field as well as a useful framework for the psychology of aesthetics, and the one by Chenier and Winkielman, which offers a general explanation of aesthetic pleasure. Neuroaesthetics is in its infancy, and we should expect that progress in this field will be made in small steps. With that in mind, let us examine how the book performs with respect to its own more modest goal. The editors have selected the topics covered in the book according to what they consider to be the “key questions of neuroaesthetics.” The key issues are (1) to identify the main features of aesthetic processes and to explain how they contribute to aesthetic experience, (2) to inquire about the evolutionary significance of aesthetic experience, (3) to elucidate the nature and the role of representation in art and aesthetics in general, and (4) to explain the role of emotion in aesthetic experience. The editors also wanted to highlight the multidisciplinary nature of the field by including contributions from (and also coauthored by) researchers working in a wide range of disciplines and from various theoretical and methodological perspectives; the book features contributions by psychologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, historians, artists, and independent scholars (there is, however, a noticeable absence of philosophers, more on which below). These editorial decisions were made with a specific aim in mind, namely, to allow for genuine integration to occur along the four areas of inquiry just outlined. Researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds propose different, and often competing, explanations of aesthetic response, either at the same level of analysis (for example, cognitive, neurobiological) or at different levels of analysis. To be successful, neuroaesthetics must seek integration among these different explanations, whenever possible. Here the book delivers on its promise. There are several cases of this kind of integration throughout the book. One example is Oshin Vartanian's chapter on the experience of pleasure in art, in which he proposes a way to integrate a recently proposed neurobiological model of the experience of emotion with an influential cognitive model of aesthetic experience. Another example is Chenier and Winkielman's explanation of aesthetic pleasure in terms of processing fluency. They argue that processing fluency, the experience of the ease with which the perceiver perceives a stimulus, can account for the hedonic character of a broad range of previously identified aesthetic phenomena (for example, mere exposure, symmetry, prototypicality). Finally, in their chapter on the evolution of art and aesthetic appreciation, Nadal et al. elegantly use data from comparative neurology, biological anthropology, and cognitive neuroscience to propose a framework for studying the evolution of aesthetic preference. The field of neuroaesthetics presents another integration challenge. There is a great deal of variability in (and sometimes disagreement about) what researchers think must be explained. Indeed, different groups of investigators differently conceptualize aesthetic response. For example, Jacobsen notes that one meaning of the term ‘aesthetics’ is related to processes of sensation and that beauty is “the main conceptualization of aesthetics in Philosophical and Psychological Aesthetics,” and then concludes that “aesthetic processing is sensationbased evaluation of an entity” primarily with respect to the beauty dimension, along with other concepts such as elegant, harmonious, shapely, big, small, and so forth (p. 29). Chenier and Winkielman take aesthetic pleasure to be “the sine qua non of aesthetic experience” (p. 275). However, others focus their discussions on emotion or evaluation or a combination of both. This variability in what researchers view as the focus of explanation suggests that it is an open question what features of aesthetic response need to be explained. It also leaves open the list of features that should be considered essential (if any) to aesthetic response, typical to it, or simply occasional. For example, aesthetic response and evaluation may dissociate if some works of art have great artistic value and yet evoke no pleasure, and pleasure is a necessary component of aesthetic response. This second kind of integration, wherein researchers converge on a common conception of what they are trying to explain, is hard to find in the book. In this respect, it is interesting to note that the book contains virtually no discussions of classical and contemporary philosophical theories of aesthetics. It would seem likely that philosophical analysis could contribute a great deal to the development of a common theoretical concept of aesthetic response. After all, neuroaesthetics, and aesthetic science in general, can easily be conceived as branches of cognitive science, which is itself a multidisciplinary field that has benefited greatly from philosophy. One of the editors (Martin Skov) seems to be well aware of the need for this kind of integration. In his chapter, in which he sketches a framework for neuroaesthetic research, he writes that “the burgeoning field of neuroaesthetics, while primarily concerned with the question of how the brain computes art behavior, must advance with an eye to discussions of what art behavior is” (p. 10). He then adds that “to a high degree, experimental aesthetics cannot get started without using the insights from traditional aesthetics” (p. 11). Skov is here pointing to the need to develop a common conception of art appreciation, but the same point could be made with respect to aesthetic response in general. This is not to say, however, that we should wait for philosophers to provide a satisfactory definition of aesthetic response and then expect scientists to do the job of explaining how its different components are implemented in the brain. As anyone who reads this book will realize, aesthetic science, by discovering the mechanisms behind our aesthetic responses, is telling us a great deal about the nature of this phenomenon that we would have otherwise had no way of finding out. We should therefore expect that a conception of aesthetic response that is productive for research across the different scientific, philosophical, and humanistic disciplines involved in its study will emerge as a result of integration. The book is written for the most part in nontechnical language (with the exception of a small number of chapters in which part of the discussion requires the reader to have some background in cognitive neuroscience) and should therefore be accessible to nonscientists. The book would also be well suited for an advanced undergraduate course or a graduate seminar.

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