The "anaesthetic properties" of the images in regard to their affective and aesthetic content: Preliminary results

The aesthetic perception may induce a specific effect on central pain processing. The aim of the present study, was to evaluate the pain rating and Laser Evoked Potentials (LEPs), obtained during the vision of International Affective Pictures System images (IAPS), rated under an aesthetic point of view as beautiful, neutral or ugly. Six out off 24 healthy subjects, evaluated in a previous experimental task, were required to attribute to the same IAPS images, seen six months before, an aesthetic judgment, giving a subjective aesthetic rating from 0 (maximum of the ugliness) to 10 (maximum of the beauty). We considered the LEPs from the hand stimulation, obtaining for each case the averaging of the evoked potentials recorded during the vision of the IAPS images, judged as beautiful (rating 7-10 B), ugly (rating 1-4 Ug) or neutral (rating 5-6 Ne), in three separate blocks of at least 10 artefact-free responses. The aesthetic rating attributed to the IAPS pictures, correlated in a significant way to their affective content. The laser pain significantly correlated with the aesthetic rating attributed to the IAPS pictures. The vertex LEPs appeared significantly reduced during the vision of beautiful IAPS pictures, in respect to basal condition and the ugly pictures vision condition. These preliminary results suggest that the visual context is able to influence pain when the emotive impact matches with physical features, and confirm the aesthetic appraisal as a fundamental function able to influence the most important expressions of human brain. © 2010 Nova Science Publishers, Inc