Beauty and the Brain

Art is uniquely human. No other species of animal has devoted so much time or put so much value on it. It is a frequent pastime. There are museums devoted to showcasing it. Sure, you can place a paintbrush on the tip of an elephant’s trunk and watch it paint a picture of a flower, but these elephants have been trained to move their trunks a certain way and to produce roughly the same image day after day, week after week. As far as we know, only humans are capable of forming a mental picture and translating it onto canvas, constructing both beauty and meaning in one image.

According to Bruce Miller’s work on Visual Creativity and Brain Disease, the right brain is responsible for copying while the left brain is responsible for the symbolic and conceptual aspects of art. Therefore, art uses both hemispheres of the brain. But where in the brain lies the concept of beauty?

Semir Zeki from University College London studied the brain patterns of various individuals from different backgrounds as they were looking at paintings or listening to music they deemed beautiful, ugly, and neutral. The brain patterns were recorded using fMRI. There was a response in the medial orbitofrontal cortex when the painting or music was deemed beautiful. It was also found that music activated the brain response quicker than the visual art did. Also noteworthy was the response of the caudate nucleus to beautiful paintings. The caudate nucleus has been linked to feelings of love, especially in the romantic sense. This finding forms yet another link between love and beauty.

But what area of the brain is activated in response to something ugly? Zeki found that unappealing paintings and music activated the somatomotor cortex and the amygdala. This shows that the concept of beauty isn’t just limited to one area of the brain. Furthermore, neutral stimuli that participants did not deem either beautiful or ugly did not induce a strong response from the fMRI.

The background from Miller’s research stated that art was essentially absent in Neanderthals and only made a sudden appearance around 40,000 years ago. In fact, there was art found in Paleolithic caves from about 20,000 years ago. Art shows the evolution of the brain, and this can be seen in the evidence from both Miller’s and Zeki’s research that found that art involves not just one region, but several areas of the brain. Futhermore, Zeki’s research proved that different areas of the brain are activated depending on the human’s evaluation of the object, whether beautiful or ugly. The brains of Neanderthals and the brains of non-human animals may not have reached the level of evolution possible to appreciate the beauty found in art. Although there are some of us who may think that we have less artistic skill than an elephant with a paintbrush, this doesn’t change the fact that we have the ability to evaluate and to appreciate the beauty in art.

Harmon, Katherine. "Brain on Beauty Shows the Same Pattern for Art and Music." Scientific American. 7 July 2011. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.

Miller, B., & Hou, C. (2004). Portraits of artists emergence of visual creativity in dementia. Archives of Neurology, 61, 842-844.

Images:

http://www.canvasreplicas.com/images/Poppy%20Field%20near%20Vetheuil%20Claude%20Monet.jpg

http://www.flavorwire.com/88679/the-ugliest-most-beautiful-paintings-ever-made