Unveiling the relationship between aesthetic experiences and attention through a cross-experiment validation of their processing biomarkers

A centuries-old tradition encompassing philosophy, psychology, and artistic practice describes aesthetic experiences as characterized by a special state of heightened attention toward external stimuli (i.e. an "aesthetic attitude"). In recent years, this view has motivated wide-ranging claims about the nature of our aesthetic encounters and the cognitive benefits of exposure to art. Despite sustained efforts from a growing stream of interdisciplinary research, however, it is still unclear whether aesthetic experiences can be systematically linked to observable attentional enhancements. In this study, we address this long-standing question using electroencephalography (EEG) and advanced machine learning (ML) techniques. We performed a series of EEG experiments measuring brain activity elicited by synthetic and natural images during an aesthetic (beauty judgments) and a pragmatic (symmetry judgments) task. Visual evoked potentials and neural oscillations were used to assess whether the aesthetic task induces attentional enhancements. In line with our hypotheses, the power of alpha and beta prestimulus oscillations significantly decreased in the aesthetic vs. pragmatic task. Furthermore, larger late positive potentials and N170 responses (the latter for natural images only) were found in the aesthetic vs. pragmatic task. ML analyses further showed that prestimulus neural oscillations and N170 responses were systematically able to predict the type of task. Overall, our results highlight the presence of a perceptual processing enhancement and a heightened state of attention in aesthetic contexts. The upshot is a clearer understanding of the dynamics and neural underpinnings of our aesthetic experiences.