P200 and N400 Induced Aesthetic Quality Assessment of an Actor Using Type-2 Fuzzy Reasoning

The paper introduces a novel technique for aesthetic quality assessment of an actor from her/his audio-visual clips using the acquired P200 and N400 EEG-responses of the experimental subjects. The P200 signal responds with high amplitude when the subject experiences a non-beautiful stimulus, whereas the N400 signal offers a high negativity for good tonal quality of the actor in the audio-visual stimulus. The synergy of small P200 amplitude and large N400 negativity jointly indicates good aesthetic quality of the actor present in the audio-visual stimulus. The intra/inter-subjective variations in the assessment of aesthetic quality are resolved using a General Type-2 Fuzzy Reasoning. The novelty of the present research lies in the design of the General Type-2 Fuzzy Reasoning algorithm for assessment of aesthetic quality from the measurement of peak power and total power in the selected band of the above two signals. Experiments undertaken confirm that the proposed technique outperforms the state-of-the art techniques when realized for the present application. Finally, the top-ranking stimuli are identified based on the average score of the aesthetic quality of the stimuli assessed by 30 subjects. The top-ranking stimuli may be utilized for psychological nourishment of mentally-challenged people. Statistical technique undertaken confirms the superiority of the proposed technique with its competitors.