OH YES, darling, it’s fabulous! You don’t need classes to boost your art appreciation, just zap your brain.
Zaira Cattaneo at the University of Milan Bicocca in Italy and her colleagues showed paintings to 12 people. Each rated the images before and after receiving either mock treatment or transcranial direct current stimulation, which delivers a low current via electrodes on the head, to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) – a brain area involved in processing emotion.
Volunteers rated real-world images more highly after stimulation. There was no difference in rating after the mock treatment or for abstract art, possibly because different brain areas are used to process abstract art (Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, doi.org/pn5).
“Stimulating the DLPFC may improve your mood – like looking through rose-coloured glasses,” says Anjan Chatterjee, a neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania.
Cattaneo hopes the technique may help people with anhedonia – an inability to experience pleasure that can accompany Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Artificially stimulating a love of art”