Figure 1.
(A) Painting stimuli: from up to bottom: 1953 Suspended; 1954 Painting number 2 and 1952 Painting Number 7 (B) Modified stimuli created removing the dynamic components of the three original paintings.
Figure 2.
Clusters of electrodes selected for the analysis of ERP component.
Six different clusters, of three electrodes each, have been selected: 2 frontal (red), 2 central (blue), and 2 parietal (yellow).
Figure 3.
Grande-average ERP waveform (19 participants).
The different colors indicate the 2 different Conditions: Paintings (blue line) and Modified stimuli (red line).
Figure 4.
ERP waveforms recorded over frontal (F3 and F4), central (C3 and C4) and parietal (P3 and P4) sites.
The different colors indicate the 2 different Conditions: Paintings (blue line) and Modified stimuli (red line). Paintings evidently have a greater effect especially on the signal recorded on left frontal and central sites.
Figure 5.
T-test applied on the two conditions (Paintings vs Modified stimuli).
It was conducted on bins of 40(from −200 to 1000 ms). In the upper part of the figure the t values topomaps are shown. The lower part of the figure shows the modulation, in the two experimental Conditions (blue line = Paintings; red line = Modified stimuli), of grand averaged signal recorded from C3. 240 ms after stimulus presentation the two conditions significantly differ on the fronto-central electrodes.
Figure 6.
Modulation of the negative ERP component during observation of Paintings and Modified stimuli.
Bars represent significant RegionXCondition interaction resulted from the ANOVA performed on the mean amplitude (µV). Paintings (dark gray) and Modified stimuli (light gray). In the frontal and central electrodes the two conditions are significantly different (*).
Table 1.
Significant activations (p<0.01) resulted from the sLORETA source analysis.
Figure 7.
sLORETA inverse solution applied on the difference wave ‘Paintings – Modified Stimuli’.
The neural generators resulted in the following cortical areas: sensorimotor (dashed lines), left prefrontal (continuous lines) and orbitofrontal (dotted lines), are evidenced.
Figure 8.
Results of the T-test conducted on the scores of the questionnaire.
Scores given to the “Amount of movement” and to the “Aesthetic appraisal” resulted significantly higher for the Paintings than for the Modified stimuli (ps<0,01).