Anatomy of Aesthetic Appreciation: How We Perceive Beauty • MindsWonders

The beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Actually, it might be best to say that the beauty is in the brain of the beholder. But what is it in our anatomy that makes us feel all fuzzy at the sight of something we define beautiful? And why are we wired that way?

The beauty and the brain It is common to view the brain as a modular structure, where each substructure has its specific function, be it coordinating movement or recalling memories. While it is generally true that different structures have distinct roles, it is important to understand that to perform complex tasks, such as movement, emotions or thoughts, various parts of the brain must work together in a coordinated manner.

How we see the world Vision starts in the retina, the light-sensitive layer of neurons in the eye. From there, information travels to the visual cortex, in the occipital and adjacent temporal lobes, for higher level processing. Different aspects of an image are processed in distinct regions: the lateral occipital complex is responsible for object recognition, while the parahippocampal places area is all about processing scenes. Facial features and human body shapes have their own dedicated areas: the fusiform face area and the extrastriate body area, respectively.

This high degree of precision in processing visual information is what has enabled humans to survive and thrive in the natural environment. Did you know that we have areas located in the temporal lobes dedicated to visual motion (area MT/MST), moving bodies or biological motion (superior temporal sulcus)? All these structures are essential to process visual stimuli, but when trying to understand how we evaluate beauty we need to consider another key player: the limbic system.

How we feel the world The limbic system is a set of brain structures located on both sides of the thalamus, immediately beneath the medial temporal lobe. These structures are involvend in various degree of emotional processing.

The amygdala plays a role in coloring our memories with emotions and it processes fear and anxiety. The basal ganglia, along with the orbitofrontal cortex, contribute to our experiences of pleasure and rewards. The ventral striatum and the nucleus accumbens, both parts of the basal ganglia, recieve the pleasure chemical signals, such as dopamine and opioid and cannabinoid neurotransmitters. The insula harbors connections to the hypothalamus and together these structures regulate hormones and the autonomic nervous system. The anterior cingulate mediates pain and tries to sort out conﬂicts we face.

When we see something we percieve as beautiful, our visual cortex interacts with our pleasure centers to create the experience of beauty.

How we perceive the world In addition to increased neural activity in visual areas for more attractive faces, some researchers found more activity in the frontal regions of the brain when people judged beauty. These areas were probably engaged because people had to pay attention to the faces and make decisions about which faces they thought were attractive.

When people looked at people but were not actively thinking about beauty, the areas dedicated to faces and objects in visual cortex continued to respond more vigorously to more attractive than to less attractive faces. Despite the irrelevance of beauty in that context, their visual brains continued to react with changes in blood ﬂow to these areas. Interestingly, there was also overlapping neural activity in response to beauty and to goodness within the orbitofrontal cortex. Our visual brain reacts to facial beauty, associating it with goodness, automatically.

Amazingly, while we all engage with beauty, without our knowledge, beauty also engages us. - Anjan Chatterjee, MD

Even when we are not consciously paying attention to what we are looking at, our brain can deem it beautiful, causing a chain of chemical reactions that makes us feel good.

What came first, the chicken or the egg? There is plenty of research showing that we categorize faces as “beautiful” when they meet specific criteria. One of the most discussed is symmetry, but other factors, such as mixed features and the effects of hormones, also come into play.

These are generally all indicators of health. Symmetry appeals to us because developmental abnormalities are often associated with asymmetries. Mixed features can indicate greater genetic diversity. Hormones also have a strong influence on our perception of beauty. In women, we regard as beautiful features that are caused by estrogen, which signal fertility. In men, testosterone is responsible for features we perceive as attractive. Contrary to popular belief, testosterone actually lowers the immune system and thus is not a sign of greater well-being. So why do we find features that are not indicators of health attractive? Dr. Anjan Chatterjee explains that scientists believe the answer lies in the handicap principle: only particularly fit organisms can afford to divert resources to maintaining unnecessary features.

This doesn’t mean that we are all magically born with the ability to discriminate between healthy and unhealthy potential partners. Our preferences are not directly about health; we simply like what we like. However, these preferences are associated with the likelihood of producing offspring. With each subsequent generation, the proportion of people who prefer healthier traits increases. Over a sufficient number of generations, this preference can become universal.

While preferences for specific physical features can be arbitrary for the individual, if those features are heritable and they are associated with a reproductive advantage, over time, they become universal for the group. - Anjan Chatterjee, MD

Bibliography

“The Aesthetic Brain: How We Evolved to Desire Beauty and Enjoy Art”; Anjan Chatterjee MD
“The Neuroscience of Beauty”; Comfort, William Edgar, and Ana Luísa Freitas.
“The artful mind: sexual selection and an evolutionary neurobiological approach to aesthetic appreciation.”; De Ridder, Dirk, and Sven Vanneste.
“Neurocognitive decoding of aesthetic appreciation.”; García-Prieto, J., Pereda, E., & Maestú, F.
“The Image and Neuroaesthetics” in: Purgar, K. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Image Studies; Palgrave Macmillan, Rampley, M.
TedTalk: “How your brain decides what is beautiful”; Anjan Chatterjee
TedTalk: “The Neuroscience of Beauty”; Claudia Aguirre