Beauty as a Neurological Experience

One way of looking at beauty is the idea that we perceive something as beautiful because it triggers some sort of physical response within us which is agreeable. This response to stimuli can be potent.

We cannot always explain it merely due to the complexity of our physical bodies and systems, but this might seem like a very logical explanation. I can certainly imagine that a work of art might somehow help me recall a positive childhood experience: the colors were just the same, or an object in the room or picture reminded me of something else from my past conditioning.

In 1998 V.S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein published a report called “The Science of Art, A Neurological Theory of Aesthetic Experience.” This was the first study of its kind to investigate how the human brain responded to art. In the study, they suggested that artists consciously or subconsciously used specific visual design principles to stimulate the visual areas of the brain to evoke a direct emotional response. If certain principles of art were defined and employed, the brain would respond to those in a specific way.

Ramachandran’s study even tried to define specific principles of art as they relate to Neuroscience. The idea behind this type of thinking almost says that if we correctly understand all the stimuli(color, shapes, etc.) accurately, we can create a particular and agreeable kind of art which will always invoke the proper emotional response. Artwork could be tested objectively, and it could be produced in a formulaic manner.

Another study “The Neural Correlates of Beauty” by Hideaki Kawabata and Semir Zeki presented several paintings to individuals who were asked to rate them as “beautiful,” “neutral,” or “ugly.” The participants viewed these same paintings again while their brain activity was being scanned with an MRI machine. The findings were in line with the principles defined by Ramachandran, as certain visual features in the paintings activated different parts of the visual cortex specific to the features in the paintings. The paintings which were identified as “beautiful” created the most activity in the emotional centers of the brain, while the paintings identified as “ugly” created the most activity in the motor cortex – an area of the brain associated with other aversive stimuli.

These neurological studies show us that the brain and the body play a part in determining, or at least interpreting what makes something beautiful. They also provide glimpses into the types of things we may learn about art in the near future. They do not, however, provide much insight at all as to why one thing is considered beautiful and another ugly. We can speculate, and perhaps draw some logical conclusions about the neurological effect of many different types of stimuli, but it is improbable that any amount of study could ever provide a formula for creating beauty.

It may be true that when we attempt to create something beautiful, we are trying to develop an appropriate and “agreeable” chemical response in a viewers brain. While scientifically accurate, this scientific way of thinking about the aesthetic experience and the arts does very little to inspire the artist and potentially limits the power of the arts.

The physiological response to beauty is an important factor in determining what is beautiful, but it also seems to be quite limiting. There’s too much that we don’t know about what is going on inside of our heads to entirely defer to science as able to provide us with all the answers.