Aesthetic appreciation: from time-frequency analysis to synchronization

Improvements in neuroimaging methods have afforded significant advances in our knowledge of the cognitive and neural foundations of aesthetic appreciation. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to register brain activity during an aesthetic appreciation task. The data were analyzed with Event-Related Field (ERF) and Time-Frequency (TF) procedures. ERFs revealed no significant differences between brain activity related with stimuli rated as beautiful and not-beautiful. TF analysis showed clear differences between both conditions 400 ms after stimulus onset. In the four frequency bands (theta, alpha, beta and gamma) oscillatory power was significantly greater for stimuli rated as beautiful than those regarded as not-beautiful. These results are interpreted in the frame of synchronization studies.