Paolo B Pascolo and Caterina A Rossi
Accepted Abstracts: J Neurol Neurophysiol
In this work, the connection into individual reactions at abstract artwork vision and personal background is related. Moreover, worth of the embodied simulation is also estimated. This research involved 100 subjects of the same age (equally divided into males and females, mean age 18) and a sample of 14 unsorted subjects with mean age 28.3. The sample of 100 subjects has been selected according to their scholastic skills (Mechanical experts, art students, building surveyor students, vocational institute students). The analysis has shown the subjects? interpretation of simple abstract artwork (as Lucio Fontana?s works) produces a variety of responses that can?t be connected to the embodied simulation only. On the basis of the obtained data, the hypothesis is the existence of a complex functional model that can be defined as Neuronal Comparative Mnestic System (CMS). During the artwork?s observation, in the subject there is an empathic reaction and we can?t also neglect cultural and environmental factors that influence individual characteristics in the empathic event. The brain, during art fruition, recalls the subject?s cultural background, and his social and familiar context and environmental influences. This emotional experience combines to the common unconscious brain activity searching a sense or an emotional value in the images. There?s a brain activation of a very complex series of connections, a functional valence and not reducible to a motor or premotor valence. It was hypothesized that these connections involve a lot of sub-system of perception. So, a more complex functional model than known models is supposed, and called as neuronal Comparative Mnestic System (CMS). In CMS the involvement of typically motor cortical areas is the result of the ?recovery? of knowledge and skills already present in the self, in response to what has been observed by the subject. According to the author, only in respect of this theory, a direct association between visual perception and motor competence is justified. CMS model has a functional valence, resolving the problem of a more feed-forward phenomenon, that characterizes the complete corporal system, in particular, referred to action comprehension and other feelings comprehension phenomena we can see during the comparison with similar and dissimilar subjects.