Art enhances meaning by stimulating integrative complexity and aesthetic interest.

Menninghaus et al. portrayed meaning in art as a vehicle for transforming negative emotions into pleasure. Although it is intuitively appealing that meaningful experiences should feel good, meaningfulness does not necessarily entail pleasure or positive emotions.

Turning art into mere illustration: concretizing art renders its influence context dependent.

Broadly speaking, artworks are accorded a special significance and are recognized as powerful communication tools. In the current research, the authors posit that the "specialness" of artworks may be diminished simply by emphasizing that which is depicted in them. This emphasis results in the artwork being viewed as a mere illustration rather than a work of art.

Art for reward's sake: visual art recruits the ventral striatum.

A recent study showed that people evaluate products more positively when they are physically associated with art images than similar non-art images. Neuroimaging studies of visual art have investigated artistic style and esthetic preference but not brain responses attributable specifically to the artistic status of images. Here we tested the hypothesis that the artistic status of images engages reward circuitry, using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during viewing of art and non-art images matched for content.