Neuroaesthetics Studies in the Natural Conditions Of The Museum Visiting

Shemyakina, Natalia Vyacheslavovna
PhD in Biology, Leading Research Fellow, Laboratory of Comparative Ecological and Physiological Research, the Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg, Russia
shemyakina_n@mail.ru

Birukova, Svetlana Vladimirovna
Head of the Multimedia Center of the Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
svetbir@mail.ru

Potapov, Yuri Gennadyevich
Artist, Co-founder of the Art Gallery
elov@list.ru

Abstract
Aesthetic experience is one of the most “human” type of feelings. Studies of brain activity in aesthetic experience are the subject of modern neuroscience, but there is still are few studies. It was shown (Brieber et al., 2014) that when visiting the museum, participants evaluate art works as more attractive and interesting than in laboratory conditions and watch them more time. In our pilot study, we compared the neurophysiological features of professional artists and participants without special art education when visiting the expositions of the Russian Museum. The perception of paintings by artists and non-artists is presumably different not only by behavioral characteristics (Kristjanson, Antes, 1989), but also by brain activity (Fudali-Czyz et al., 2018), which may indicate a different level of attention to the characteristics of the paintings and different emotional-aesthetic attitude to paintings in artists and non-artists.

Keywords: neuroaesthetics, natural/ecological conditions, emotional-aesthetic assessment of painting, creativity, electroencephalography