ArticleSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2021
Visceromotor roots of aesthetic evaluation of pain in art: an fMRI study.
Article in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Neural correlates of negative aesthetic evaluations in visual art: a neuroimaging meta-analysis.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Pooled it
- A transdisciplinary framework for empathy research.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- The aesthetic triad and traditional Chinese art symbols: a theoretical framework.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- The 'hand-brain-emotion' axis: a theoretical model for handicraft art-based intervention in anxiety disorders through neuroplasticity and autonomic regulation.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Art promotes exploration of negative content.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Exploring the evocative qualities of masks' visual imagery and their associations with adversity and trauma.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- The influence of sensorimotor experience on beauty evaluation of preschool children.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2023Article
- Cognitive and affective interaction with somatosensory afference in acupuncture-a specific brain response to compound stimulus.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2023Article
- Inside the Michelangelo effect: The role of art and aesthetic attractiveness on perceived fatigue and hand kinematics in virtual painting.PsyCh journal · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Empathy for pain involves sensory and visceromotor brain regions relevant also in the first-person pain experience. Focusing on brain activations associated with vicarious experiences of pain triggered by artistic or non-artistic images, the present study aims to investigate common and distinct brain activation patterns associated with these two vicarious experiences of pain and to assess whether empathy for pain brain regions contributes to the formation of an aesthetic judgement (AJ) in non-art expert observers. Artistic and non-artistic facial expressions (painful and neutral) were shown to participants inside the scanner and then aesthetically rated in a subsequent behavioural session. Results showed that empathy for pain brain regions (i.e. bilateral insular cortex, posterior sector of the anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior portion of the middle cingulate cortex) and bilateral inferior frontal gyrus are commonly activated by artistic and non-artistic painful facial expressions. For the artistic representation of pain, the activity recorded in these regions directly correlated with participants' AJ. Results also showed the distinct activation of a large cluster located in the posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus for non-artistic stimuli. This study suggests that non-beauty-specific mechanisms such as empathy for pain are crucial components of the aesthetic experience of artworks.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.