Banner by Malia Lyman

Neuroaesthetics: How the Brain Perceives Beauty 

by Sophie Burd

Everyone has their own sense of style. For example, your favorite painting might look like a scattered mess of colors to someone else. In this way, beauty seems subjective. But on the other hand, consider scenic views in national parks. The aurora borealis. Colorful flowers. This beauty seems universal. Overall, beauty is subjective, but there are some phenomena almost everyone admires. Why does the brain perceive certain things as characteristically beautiful and not others?  

This is a question neuroscientists have asked themselves, leading to the development of neuroaesthetics. 

The study of beauty began around the early eighteenth century as a field of philosophy, known as aesthetics. Aesthetics covers many theories related to beauty and art, but one major focus of aesthetics is to determine the factors that make art, or any aesthetic experience, appealing to humans. However, the field’s biggest limitation is its theories lacking scientific research as a backbone. As a result, interdisciplinary research combining the arts and science grew in popularity over recent decades, allowing researchers to discover scientific bases for aesthetics. Neuroaesthetics, a term coined by neurobiologist Semir Zeki, emerged in 1999 and continues to grow with studies of neural processes behind aesthetics, ranging from music to visual art. 

Several areas of the brain are involved in analyzing art. First, depending on the medium, either visual input is sent to the occipital lobes or auditory input goes to the temporal lobes. The frontal lobe, specifically the prefrontal cortex, aids in decision making about aesthetics of art. It assesses sensory input with information from past experiences and breaks down the art to its elements, such as colors and shapes. Then, the amygdala and hippocampus work together to create an emotional response to art. The amygdala stores the emotions attached to each memory, while the hippocampus encodes the context to form new memories. If art is perceived as beautiful, the brain’s reward system (largely the mesolimbic dopamine pathway) is triggered. A major goal of neuroaesthetics research is to uncover the way in which the prefrontal cortex and ventral tegmental area—a structure in the midbrain that releases dopamine—decide to trigger this reward system.  

Neuroaesthetics research can be conducted in several ways, including the usage of Function Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) or Electroencephalography (EEG) to study brain activity during aesthetic experiences, meta-analysis of art and sensory input, and the creation of visual art. There are several institutions around the world with neuroaesthetics initiatives, but only the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine has a dedicated center for the field: the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics, founded by neurology professor Anjan Chatterjee in 2018. The center has an "artist-in-residence” who creates exhibitions to help researchers understand why certain things are perceived as beautiful while other things are not. Judith Schaechter, one of the center’s most recent artists-in-residence, creates art thataims to demonstrate humans’ innate connection to nature, known as biophilia.  

Most neuroaesthetics research is ars gratia artis (art for art’s sake), or in this context, research for research’s sake. Researchers, such as Alexander Kranjec, director of the Art & Language Lab at Duquesne University, focus their neuroaesthetics research on defining art and how perceptions of beauty have changed over time. For example, Kranjec’s article “Conceptual art made simple for neuroaesthetics” dives into the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and conceptual art, which includes abstract and contemporary art rather than the “aesthetically pleasing” art typically used in neuroaesthetics research. 

However, neuroaesthetics research can also be applied to healthcare. Understanding neural processes behind aesthetics can help develop therapy methods for patients with depression, traumatic brain injury (TBI), dementia, and other disorders. Understanding what elements in music and art calm us, for example, can advance cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a type of therapy focused on problem solving and reversing negative thought patterns. Although the application of neuroaesthetics to CBT is a relatively new idea, some studies suggest that aesthetic chills—the chills felt from viewing art or listening to music—can lessen negative emotions among patients with depression.  

Neuroaesthetics connects neuroscience, the arts, and philosophy, creating multitudinous possibilities for its research and applications. Scholars have theorized about beauty for centuries, and neuroaesthetics finally makes it possible to uncover the biology behind aesthetic experiences. Whether someone is interested in the definition of art or using the arts for therapy, neuroaesthetics is an exciting field that may eventually explain how the human mind perceives beauty.