Behavioural Brain Research 278 (2015) 147–154 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Behavioural Brain Research jou rn al hom epage: www.elsevier.com/locate/bbr Research report Do you like Arcimboldo’s? Esthetic appreciation modulates brain activity in solving perceptual ambiguity M. Boccia a,b,* , F. Nemmi c , E. Tizzani a , C. Guariglia a,b , F. Ferlazzo a , G. Galati a,b , A.M. Giannini a a Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy b Neuropsychology Unit, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia of Rome, Italy c Klingberg Lab, Neuroscience Department, Karolinska Institute, Sweden h i g h l i g h t s • Activity in the fusiform gyrus contributes to the esthetic experience of ambiguous portraits. • State of mind interacts with perceptual features in the superior parietal lobe. • Study confirms the interaction between top-down and bottom-up processes. a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 26 May 2014 Received in revised form 22 September 2014 Accepted 24 September 2014 Available online 5 October 2014 Keywords: Neuroaesthetic fMRI Ambiguity Esthetic judgment a b s t r a c t Esthetic experience is a unique, affectively colored, self-transcending subject–object relationship in which cognitive processing is felt to flow differently than during everyday experiences. Notwithstanding previous multidisciplinary investigations, how esthetic experience modulates perception is still obscure. We used Arcimboldo’s ambiguous portraits to assess how the esthetic context organizes ambiguous per- cepts. The study was carried out using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in healthy young volunteers (mean age 25.45; S.D. 4.51; 9 females), during both an explicit esthetic judgment task and an artwork/non-artwork classification task. We show that a distinct neural mechanism in the fusiform gyrus contributes to the esthetic experience of ambiguous portraits, according to the valence of the esthetic experience. Ambiguous artworks eliciting a negative esthetic experience lead to more pronounced activa- tion of the fusiform face areas than ambiguous artworks eliciting a positive esthetic experience. We also found an interaction between task and ambiguity in the right superior parietal lobule. Taken together, our results demonstrate that a neural mechanism in the content-dependent brain regions of face processing underlies the esthetic experience of ambiguous portraits. Furthermore, they suggest that esthetic expe- rience interacts with perceptual qualities of stimuli in the right superior parietal lobe, supporting the idea that esthetic experience arises from the interaction between top-down orienting of attention and bottom-up perceptual facilitation. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In the past decade several studies have assessed neural under- pinnings of esthetic experience [1–7], giving rise to the field of Neuroaesthetics [8]. Actually, earlier theories about the mind pro- cesses subtending esthetic experience can be found both in Kant * Corresponding author at: Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università Sapienza di Roma, via dei Marsi 78, 00100 Roma, Italy. Tel.: +39 06 49917527; fax: +39 06 49917711. E-mail address: maddalena.boccia@gmail.com (M. Boccia). [9] and Schopenhauer [10]. Especially with Schopenhauer’s theory, the notion of esthetic attitude began to emerge. If an esthetic atti- tude does exist, then it has to be supposed that esthetic experience requires an intentional shift from an automatic visuo-perceptual processing to an esthetic state of mind, more explicitly directed to the sensory experience [11,12]. Indeed, esthetic experience allows for the objects processing in a unique, emotionally colored, self- transcending subject–object relationship [13,14]. Interestingly, the neural bases of esthetic experience were recently studied as a function of the interaction between top- down orienting of attention and bottom-up perceptual facilitation [3]. These authors found that different neural networks subtend http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2014.09.041 0166-4328/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.