Artists are experts of visual representations and experimentally employ lines, forms, and colors of depiction to create visual aesthetics. They discovered what now psychologists and neuroscientists are identifying as principles of visual perception. Conway and Livingstone (2007) revealed how artists employ the complex interaction of components to create the aesthetic impression and experience in their paintings. Sometimes, artists create paintings violate the physics of shadows, colors, reflections or contours. Artists use this alternative physics because these particular deviations from true physics do not matter to the consumers’
perception. This shortcuts representing visual cues more economically and suit the message of the piece rather than the requirements of the physical world (Cavanagh 2005).
Ramachandran and Hirstein (1999) proposed a set of perceptual principle that artists use to create aesthetic experience. They highlighted the “peak shift” phenomenon in perceiving the aesthetics of abstract art. Artists producing abstracts employ specific visual stimuli that respond high vigorously (a shift in their peak response) to evoke our aesthetic responses.
In fact, people’s preference for art primitives differs. Neoclassicism truly represented the world. Barbizon school emphasized on realism and most prominent features of paintings are its tonal qualities, color, loose brushwork, and softness of form. Such as exhibited work
“The Gleaners” by of Jean-François Millet. The characteristics of impressionism painting, as Claude Monet’s “Sunrise,” included relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open
composition. However, every primitive has fans. The neuroaesthetics could recognizes how the nervous system apprehends and organizes it visual stimulus.
Interaction of Bottom-up and Top-down for Logo Aesthetic Preference and Judgment
The real world is full with an abundance of stimuli that individuals are capable of evaluating. When consumers are asked to evaluate a logo, they may form an attitude based on the information presented (bottom-up) and they may retrieve information stored in long-term memory (top-down). As the fundamental cognitive neuroscience model of visual perception proposed by Chatterjee (2004b), after consumers are confronted with the visual stimulus, they firstly process the information of features in visual stimulus such as color, luminance, shape, motion and location. This early processes extract and analyze simple components in different brain areas. Operations in the intermediate stage segregate elements and group others, forming coherent representations. A stage of intermediate vision by
grouping these features is followed. In this later stage, certain regions of the object are selected for further scrutiny, memories are activated, and objects are recognized and associated with meanings. Finally, subsequent emotional response and evaluation are involved. Aesthetically pleasing and experience feedback are into the system via attentional mechanisms. Chatterjee (2004b) suggested that processing both aesthetic stimuli and visual stimuli involves similar visual brain region. What differs cognitive processing of aesthetic stimuli and other visual stimuli is the engagement and interplay of additional non-bottom-up processes, such as emotions and memory-based judgment.
The early visual processing of the basic features of either aesthetic or other visual stimuli takes place in occipital brain regions. Later, the features or elements processed in intermediate stages, such as composition, engage frontal-parietal attentional circuits. Finally, activity in the dorsolateral frontal and medial frontal cortices occurs when consumers render
preference and judgment about the objects. As we experienced, the well artworks touch people affectively. The anterior medial temporal lobe, medial and orbital cortices in the frontal lobe, as well as subcortical structures, mediate emotions, might also be involved in processing affection of the aesthetics (Chatterjee 2004a, b).
As aforementioned visual perception processing, the bottom-up information inevitably interact with top-down information to render a logo’s beauty. The bottom-up processing could not be purified from top-down processing. We could simply learn from the effects of
neurological disease on the production of art, we may figure out how bottom-up information is processed. The effect of brain damage on the capacity to produce visual art contrasts to its effects on common human capacities. Previous researches discovered that people with neurological disorder of frontotemporal dementias (FTDs) have propensity to produce art.
They perceived art tended to be realistic rather than symbolic (Mell, Howard, and Miller 2003; Miller et al. 1998; Miller and Hou 2004).
Here, we review neuroimaging studies concerned with the neuroanatomical correlates of aesthetic preference for visual stimuli among healthy participants. These studies have
comparing neuro-activation for beauty and non-beauty (or ugly) visual stimuli. Cela-Conde et al. (2004, p.6321) noted “brain areas activated during the visual perception of aesthetic objects” and proposed that “prefrontal cortex is selectively activated in humans during the perception of objects qualified as beautiful by the participants.” Participants were asked to decide whether each visual stimulus being beautiful or not beautiful. The prefrontal
dorsolateral cortex (PDC) is corresponding to this aesthetic judgment. This study also remind us that “aesthetic” and “beautiful” only refers to stimuli considered as such by participants themselves.
Similarly, in Kawabata and Zeki (2004), participants viewed a large amount of paintings and classified them into beautiful, neutral, or ugly. They aimed to verify whether there are brain areas that are consistently active across subjects when they perceive a painting as being
beautiful and, conversely, whether there are brain areas that are specifically active when they view paintings that they consider to ugly (Kawabata and Zeki, 2004, p. 1699). They found that activity in the orbitofrontal cortex was greater for stimuli classified as beautiful, while activity in the motor cortex was greater for stimuli classified as ugly. The orbitofrontal cortex was previously observed with beauty for high reward value. Nadal et al. (2008) laid
empirical results over medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DL-PFC) as cortical component of reward value of the aesthetics. Visual stimuli rated as beautiful were associated with a higher reward value in brain than those rated as ugly.
Vartanian and Goel (2004) focused on the neuroanatomical correlates of aesthetic preference for paintings. They also contrasted participants’ brain activity associated with participants’ positively and negatively rating for stimuli. The magnetoencephalography (MEG) record indicated that activity in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex increased in late latencies (400-1000 ms) when participants judged stimuli as beautiful, as compared to the non-beautiful stimuli. By fMRI, Vartanian and Goel (2004) found that right caudate nucleus activities decreased with preference ratings decreasing. Left anterior cingulate gyrus and bilateral occipital gyri activities increased with preference ratings increasing. The caudate cortex works as the subcortical components of reward value. The aesthetically preferred stimuli aroused subjective emotional experience. The subjective emotion experience corresponds to caudate nucleus and anterior cingulate gyrus.
Current study contributes to daily consumers’ responses for aesthetics. At present it is not clear whether decisions about the beauty of commercial stimuli, logos, involve the same cognitive processes as judging the beauty of artistic and decorative stimuli. There is the advantage of studying reactions to real visual stimulus that contains practical meaning. The essential components of real-life daily aesthetic behavior could be identified. In real
commercial communication, logos are always designed to be aesthetic for representing the brand and touching consumers’ heart. Therefore, current study will put emphasis on frontal
activity responding to aesthetics detected by (Cela-Conde et al. 2004, PDC), Kawabata and Zeki (2004, orbitofrontal cortex), and Vartanian and Goel (2004, anterior cingulate).
Furthermore, we follows above studies, our participants created different stimuli conditions varying in beauty or preference as a result of their aesthetic preference ratings while their brain activity was being recorded.