Tactile aesthetics: towards a definition of its characteristics and neural correlates

Abstract

The past few decades have seen a rapid rise in the popularity of studies addressing the cognitive and neural correlates of aesthetic judgments in humans. However, despite this growing trend, and despite the fact that artists have, over the centuries, exploited each and every one of the human senses for their communicative purposes, very little research has investigated this important topic from the point of view of the sense of touch. In this review, we highlight for the first time a number of the key characteristics that an aesthetics of touch ought to have. In particular, starting from the artists’ and the visual aesthetics points of view, we summarize those empirical findings relevant to the tactile modality. We suggest that while tactile aesthetics has many similarities with visual aesthetics there are also a number of important differences. In particular, the hedonic experience of touch appears to be more intimate, active (requiring the involvement of body movement), and “primitive” than that generated by visual stimuli. Finally, we show that a widespread network of brain areas appears to be involved in the various different aspects of tactile aesthetic experience.

Keywords:

• aesthetics
• touch
• tactile
• haptics
• art
• neural correlates
• cognition

Acknowledgements

Dr Gallace is funded by a MIUR PRIN 07 grant.

Notes

1. See http://www.rosalyndriscoll.com/pages.php?which_page=book_introduction downloaded on 26/06/2008.

2. “Before dismissing Ramachandran and Hirstein as the Laurel and Hardy of neuroaesthetis, however, we should remind ourselves that they are, in fact, highly distinguished academics: Ramachandran a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California; Hirstein, philosophy professor at William Paterson University. So their theory's hopeless ineptitude illustrates the difficulty of applying scientific research to art, even when fine minds attempt it” (Carey 2005, 74).

3. An interesting anecdote related to the importance of cognitive factors on the appreciations of tactile stimuli comes from Professor Bruce Hood in Bristol (Hood 2009; see also Nemeroff and Rozin 1994). During his talks he sometimes hands a sweater to the audience. He then asks them how much they like the feel of the sweater; under such conditions, people typically report that it feels fairly nice. He then tells the audience that the jumper actually once belonged to Fred West, the infamous serial killer, or to some other motley character. On many different occasions, he found that educated audiences immediately discarded the object, with some individuals even refusing to touch it. This example highlights the importance of top-down factors (e.g. cognition, beliefs, memory, etc.) in the tactile appreciation of objects (see also McCabe et al. 2008). One can think of this as the opposite of people's need to touch certain relics; a piece of Padre Pio's gloves, for example.