viewing art. the right fusiform gyrus has been revealed to show activation to visual stimuli such as faces and representational art. this holds importance in the field because as ramachandran also speculated, object recognition and the search for meaning can evoke a pleasant emotional response. the motor cortex was also shown to be involved in aesthetic perception. however, it displayed opposite trends of activation from the ofc. it may be a common correlate for the perception of emotionally charged stimuli despite its previously known roles. several other areas of the brain were shown to be slightly activated during certain studies such as the anterior cingulate cortex, previously known for its involvement in the feeling of romance, and the left parietal cortex, whose purpose may be to direct spatial attention. different artistic styles may also be processed differently by the brain. in a study between filtered forms of abstract and representation art, the bilateral occipital gyri, left cingulate sulcus, and bilateral fusiform gyrus showed increased activation with increased preference when viewing art. however, activation in the bilateral occipital gyri may be caused by the large processing requirements placed on the visual system when viewing high levels of visual detail in artwork such as representational paintings. several areas of the brain have been shown to respond particularly to forms representational art perhaps due to the brain's ability to make object associations and other functions relating to attention and memory. this form of stimuli leads to increased activation in the left frontal lobe and bilaterally in the parietal and limbic lobes. also, the left superior parietal lobule, brodmann's area 7, has been shown to play a role in active image construction during the viewing of art specifically containing indeterminate forms such as soft edge paintings. bottom up processes such as edge detection and the exploration of visual stimuli are engaged during this type of aesthetic perception. these roles are consistent with previously known parietal lobe responsibilities in spatial cognition and visual imagery. criticism there are several objections to researchers' attempts to reduce aesthetic experience to a set of physical or neurological laws. it is questionable whether the theories can capture the evocativeness or originality of individual works of art. experiments performed may not account for these theories directly. also, current experimentation measures a person's verbal response to how they feel about art which is often selectively filtered. ramachandran suggests the use of galvanic skin response to quantify the judgment associated viewing aesthetics. overall, it can be argued that there is lack of proportion between the narrow approach to art taken by researchers versus the grand claims they make for their theories. future directions and related fields since 2005 the notion of bridging brain science and the visual arts has blossomed into a field of increasing international interest. in his 2008 book, neuroarthistory: from aristotle and pliny to baxandall and zeki, professor john onians of the university of east anglia considers himself to be at the forefront of the field of neural scientific biased art historical research, although such a 'history' is much shorter than onians would have us believe. many historical figures he deals with as precursors for neuroarthistory (karl marx, for example) have very little to do with modern neuroscience as it is understood today. contemporary artists like mark stephen smith (william campbell gallery, usa), guillaume bottazzi and others have developed extensive bodies of work mapping the convergence of brain science and painting. smith's work explores fundamental visual analogies between neural function and self-expression in abstract art. the past decade has also seen a corresponding growth in the aesthetics of music studied from neuroscientific approaches. psychological and social approaches to art help provide other theories of experience.