Where creativity meets aesthetics: The Mirror Model of Art revisited with fMRI

How meaning is conveyed from creator to observer is debated in the psychology of art. The Mirror Model of Art represents a theoretical framework for bridging the psychological processes that underpin creative production and aesthetic appreciation of art. Specifically, it postulates that creating art and having an aesthetic experience are “mirrored” processes such that the early stage of aesthetic appreciation corresponds to the late stage of creative production, and conversely, that the late stage of aesthetic appreciation corresponds to the early stage of creative production. We conducted a meta-analysis of fMRI studies in the visual domain to test this hypothesis. Our results reveal that creative production engages the prefrontal cortex, which we attribute to its role in idea generation, whereas aesthetic appreciation engages the visual cortex, anterior insula, parahippocampal gyrus, the fusiform gyrus, and the frontal lobes, regions involved primarily in sensory, perceptual, reward and mnemonic processing. Their direct comparison revealed that creative production was associated with greater activation in the prefrontal cortex, whereas aesthetic appreciation was associated with greater activation in the visual cortex. This meta-analysis largely supports predictions derived from the Mirror Model of Art, by providing a snapshot of neural activity in the relatively early stages in art creators' and observers’ minds. Future studies that capture brain function across longer spans of time are needed to understand the expression of creativity and aesthetic appreciation in different stages of information processing in relation to the Mirror Model of Art.