The Brain on Beauty
By: Allira Bellawala
Tags: Neuroscience, Neuroaesthetics, Art, Design, Cognitive Science

Neuroaesthetics is the growing research field studying how the brain processes aesthetic experiences and beauty. [Brain Exhibit illustration by Michelle Lam]

Poets and philosophers alike have long questioned what defines beauty and why we are so drawn to certain sights and looks. We love to walk around art museums and gardens solely to look at the paintings, designs, or flowers or praise famous models for their looks. Growing more popular now among younger generations is the idea of having different aesthetics and aligning with colors and designs most attractive to each person. But why do we find some things beautiful and others not? Why do we enjoy beauty at all? And, if, as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, what causes one person to find something more beautiful than another? Well, the field of neuroaesthetics, for one, would suggest that beauty is not in the eye but in the brain of the beholder.

What is Neuroaesthetics?

Neuroaesthetics is a rapidly growing research field based around understanding the biological and brain bases for aesthetic experiences such as art, beauty, and design. The understanding is that, as aesthetic enjoyment is a frequent part of our lives, examining the neurobiology underlying it can broaden our knowledge of human behavior in relationships, communication, advertising, and more. This desire for knowing why we enjoy certain things is not new: there have been attempts reported as early as the eighteenth century to identify the neural mechanisms of aesthetic experiences. More recent theoretical perspectives have focused on visual neuroaesthetics leading into the twentieth century. Now, the difference is we have more advanced technology and imaging modalities to better determine what is happening in the brain at a biological level. With fMRI, we can look at the functioning of the brain with beauty, with EEG we can analyze different brain waves, and with DTI we can look at structures contributing to the subjective processing of beauty. Paired with these rapid advancements in technology and cognitive science, it is no longer out of reach to examine how the brain processes more abstract concepts.

Neuroaesthetics is an extremely broad field, encompassing design, psychology, neuroscience, biology, history and more. It is also strongly tied to evolutionary perspectives and inputs, examining how certain pressures and adaptive advantages have contributed to our capacity to understand aesthetic experiences. One popular theory suggests that we adapted to appreciate certain traits as a method for reproduction or for the identification of resources and threats in environments to guide habitation. Within the brain, it has been heavily established that neuroaesthetics involves a diffuse brain system and cannot be tied to one area. Despite this, the medial orbitofrontal cortex has been implicated in general for the perception of beauty, be it musical, architectural, moral, or mathematical; within aesthetic enjoyment, regardless of how dispersed the system, there is almost always overlap of systems with the area. However, although broad, experiments within neuroaesthetics usually focus on one of three neural systems: sensory-motor, emotion-valuation, and meaning-knowledge. It’s an important fact to note that the triad of systems are not necessarily equally weighed; some aesthetic experiences can be explained with only one of the systems, or without reference to sensation such as in the enjoyment of mathematical beauty.

The Research Triad:

Within the breadth of sensory-motor, researchers focus on examining sensation, perception, motor movement, and the visual brain as a whole. Visual aspects of the brain are clearly integral to viewing beauty. Here, the visual system is segregated into elements such as color, luminance, and motion, along with more higher-order features like faces, bodies, and landscapes. There have been many exciting revelations under this domain, like how looking at dynamic paintings evokes a sense of movement within the brain and can actually stimulate visual motor areas despite no movement of the person themselves. A related study looked at mirror neurons, or neurons that fire in the brain both when we execute an action and when we see or visualize someone else execute that same action; they are closely tied to empathy and understanding another’s mental state. As the researcher discovered, mirror neurons can also be activated when we look at art that depicts actions; this is critical in understanding what happens when we make inferences about the intent of artistic gestures or observe the consequences of actions. This can also help explain why we feel connected or relate to certain pieces of art. Other research within the visual system has revealed more about what goes on when we view certain art pieces. Looking at paintings including faces and people, for example, has been shown to activate the fusiform gyrus, the face processing center of the brain, even though it is not a physical person, one study demonstrated. Comparatively, studies also showed that the place area in the parahippocampal gyrus (the area responsible for spatial memory and navigation) is activated in landscape paintings. In general, this area has looked at how more neural activity is associated with more of an experience of beauty and suggests that our experience of beauty could arise from the interplay of brain structures underlying perception and sensation.

The emotion-valuation domain of neuroaesthetics is focused on reward, emotion, and liking/wanting. This processing involves several regions responsible for a wide range of aesthetics emotions, including the orbitofrontal cortex, the medial frontal cortex, the ventral striatum, the anterior cingulate, and the insula, which all respond to beautiful visual images. The medial frontal cortex, the orbitofrontal cortex, and the adjacent cingulate cortex all also respond to different, more “unique” sources of pleasure such as music and architectural spaces. Research under emotion-valuation also looks at the biology of aesthetics and how certain objects can induce persisting moods and responses, though there is still a far way to go. Key research within reward has shown how looking at something the brain perceives as beautiful can tap directly into the reward system of the brain; for instance, attractive faces activate the face processing areas of the brain even when people are not explicitly processing or analyzing the beauty. One revolutionary study examined the default mode network, which is the brain network normally active when an individual is at rest but not asleep, or “restful waking.” New studies have examined how the default mode network is implicated in specific aesthetic states and may be active when we are not engaged with activities and stress of the external world. In regards to painting, the default mode network was shown to be engaged when subjects explicitly focused on internal thoughts and emotions while viewing paintings and art. Regions normally deactivated with the default mode network were instead active, especially when subjects viewed paintings as most moving. Furthermore, using MEG imaging, researchers found that different neural patterns appeared following exposure to art; one was within 250 ms and the other between 1000 and 1500 ms. The later pattern can be tied to the default mode network and the second neural pattern can possibly be attributed to the cognitive appraisal of art.

The final area of study most common in neuroaesthetics is knowledge-meaning, which emphasizes expertise, context, and culture. This area and its contributions are the most unknown, because it spreads across many areas and varies widely across individuals, cultures, history, and experiences. Here, the contribution is in research that manipulates the context in which stimuli are experienced and closely relates to the emotions-valuation focus. There have been fewer findings, but one key aspect looks at how things with meaning are more beautiful to the human brain. Participants in one study consistently rated art as more beautiful if they were told it was in a museum versus if they were told it was computer generated; we like to know the work and passion behind the art, and that continued in preference regardless of if a piece was actually computer generated. Neurologically, this is accompanied with great activity in the medial orbitofrontal and ventro-medial prefrontal cortex, areas associated with emotion-valuation, executive function, and cognitive appraisal. Furthermore, people have been shown to appreciate art more when knowing its title as it facilitates greater engagement and a deeper aesthetic experience. Along that line of thought, original art was also always favored more than copies: authentic pieces evoke orbitofrontal activity, but the copies of the piece activated other areas. Furthermore, this domain looks at the impacts of context and background knowledge in determining beauty, suggesting that what we view as beautiful depends on our culture, experience, life, and more. Compared to the other two domains, not only is more research is needed on knowledge-meaning but more diverse research; this area includes history, sociology, and more from humanities.

The brain is key in understanding why we find certain people attractive over others. [Attractiveness by Michelle Lam].

Can facial attractiveness be measured?

Many studies within neuroaesthetics have looked into facial attractiveness and the subjective experience of beauty within people. Across time and across cultures, society has held changing standards of beauty, and many more people have contested that with their own. We each have our own beauty and reasons for seeing beauty in others. It has been a long known fact within cognitive science that we as humans react strongly to faces; in brain scans, the event-related potential for facial processing is N170, meaning that it appears 170 ms after the onset of stimulus presentation. By comparison, N400 is the ERP marker for sentence comprehension. This shows that, before we process what a person is saying, we process their facial expressions and emotions.

One study looked at individual differences in perceived facial attractiveness and found exclusive activation in the right middle temporal gyrus, an area that plays a role in integrating information across areas. This is not, curiously, part of the regions associated with face perception. This activation seems to suggest that there is more to judgement of facial attractiveness than one reason; rather, it appears there is an integration of information from areas beyond simple face processing, including any relevant semantic, emotional, social, and cultural factors. This is supported by the theory that the perception of beauty is also culturally and contextually determined. As Semir Zeki, Professor of Neuroaesthetics at University College London, explained, “A Muslim may think a mosque is more beautiful than a Catholic cathedral because it has accrued more meaning for him, but that’s a culturally inherited trait, not biologically.” Things that have more meaning for us could be interpreted as more beautiful. To you, your best friend could be one of the most beautiful people because you’ve lived through adventures and challenges and seen them smile when you’re laughing over something random. Or maybe someone is more beautiful to you because they remind you of a happy moment of time in your life. So, beauty is also dependent on experience and previous knowledge. More studies are needed in this area for more specific conclusions.

Flowers can have a significant impact on our mood and mental state. [Flowers by Michelle Lam]

What’s in a flower?

One interesting area of study within neuroaesthetics is the impact of flowers on our mental states. As much as we love bouquets and gardens, it is true that flowers themselves have relatively little practical use. However, flowers do have powerful effects on people’s emotions and behaviors. As Nancy L. Etcoff, a Professor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School, explains, “People give flowers for forgiveness, at funerals, to celebrate. They provide solace, joy, forgiveness, compassion.” In a study conducted at Rutgers University, researchers gave flowers to a group of women and examined the effects for the next week. Those with flowers were assessed as having a significantly more positive mood than those with other gifts, and they were more likely to reach out socially to those around them, suggesting flowers can also influence our behavior to an extent.

Evolution is a leading explanation in neuroaesthetics for this phenomenon: once flowers may have signaled that an environment was good for human habitation. So, it would follow that flowers would provide a relief from stress and a feeling of security, still ingrained into our monkey brains that it is a safe area. In general, flowers elicit positive emotions, following the “Big Bloom” theory of evolution that explains how flowers cause positive emotions which promote survival. Not so coincidentally, in some video games, flowers function as a need for success. In the survival game Don’t Starve, flower petals can be collected and used to make items like a flower crown to keep a character from going insane (and thus eventually dying). However, other theories that the various sensory aspects of flowers are what combine to influence our mood. Some floral scents, for example, have been shown to reduce depression when added to cologne or perfume. Even more studies have looked into other aspects such as color theory, smiling, shaper perception, and more. Other researchers have looked deeper into how flowers could impact memory and cognition as well. Further research is needed to learn more, but it’s an interesting insight into the evolutionary perspective of neuroaesthetics.

What now?

Neuroaesthetics has shown no signs in slowing in growth, and soon we may see it take a more permanent place in society, research, and education. More and more frequently, colleges are looking into neuroaesthetics as a real field of pursuit: Harvard already has one class devoted to Neuroaesthetics, and researchers are more frequently receiving grants to pursue study under examining the science of art and aesthetics. Applications can be within many areas, both understanding ourselves and the world around us, all from the perspective of beauty and enjoyment. The field is at a historical turning point, looking to improve art, science, and history, and possibly help us understand a little better what makes things so beautiful.