The study of positive aesthetic appraisal on a neurological level is a topic that has been of long interest within the field of neuroscience-- one that cannot be defined in simple terms. There are various factors that underpin the approach to understanding a human’s expression of aesthetic response to beauty around the world. Studies have been done to see if there are perhaps universal principles of visual preferences based on processing mechanisms in the brain and the interaction between different neural systems.
To begin with, in his seminar and paper “Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder or an Objective Truth? A Neuroscientific Answer,” one of the main questions that Dr. Norberto Gryzwacz’s research examined was whether beauty is objective or subjective. In understanding how each mind perceives beauty differently, he and his research team performed a meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies on 93 brains to observe which brain areas activated in response to art, and how this leads to positive aesthetic appraisal. From the neuroimages, the researchers found various areas of the brain activated commonly among participants: the visual cortex, the medial orbital frontal cortex, the anterior insula, and the ventral basal ganglia. The information from these areas of the brain converge to influence a human’s judgment, or their decision on whether they like something. The processing fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure was described in his paper and seminar as being able to process stimuli that are more familiar. This greater ease of processing can lead to a more positive aesthetic response. Dr. Gryzwacz gives an example of this when he describes how symmetry is often highly appreciated because it is evolutionarily significant to the brain, specifically the extrastriate visual cortex. To test this theory for visual art, participants in the study were shown spontaneously snapped pictures as well as posted control portraits from the Early Renaissance. The researchers then asked them about symmetry, balance, and complexity. Cognitive mechanisms were also observed to understand how cultural experiences influence how the brain processes beauty.
The researchers came to a few conclusions about beauty. The subjective aesthetic value a participant gives to a painting is related to their learning of values from experience and motivation. Stimulations of balance and complexity at varying weights were presented to participants, and it was found that different cultures have reward functions, which in turn influence their perception of beauty. Complexity and balance also compete in the brains of different people based on if they are a risk-take or risk-averse person. The researchers found that risk-takers prefer more complex and less balance, while risk-averse people do not prefer complexity as there is a lot of uncertainty paired with it. In summary, this research study concluded that objectivity of beauty stems from shared appreciation for qualities of the world, such as symmetry, due to shared neural circuitry and fluency; subjectivity stems from processing within the reward-based learning neural circuitry and cultural experiences.
Another research study, “The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex mediates the interaction between moral and aesthetic valuation: a TMS study on the beauty-is-good stereotype”, by Chiara Ferrari, aims to understand neural mechanisms involved in both aesthetic and moral valuation. Ferrari begins by describing the importance of understanding the neural mechanisms that underpin the overlap between moral and aesthetic valuation in humans. It has been found that a person’s physical attractiveness has been linked to the way others perceive their personality traits, also known as the Beauty-is-Good stereotype. People who are viewed as attractive in this stereotype are likely to be viewed to have personality traits. Transcranial magnetic stimulation was used to observe how the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (d1PFC) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) play a role in mediating one’s social and aesthetic evaluation of someone. Dr. Gryzwacz’s study focused on presenting paintings to participants as stimuli, while here, in Dr. Ferrari’s study, she presented a set of faces on a screen and then asked the participants to indicate if they viewed the face as trustworthy. TMS over the d1PFC was paired with faces to be judged as trustworthy and a repeated-measures ANOVA with prime (beauty vs. ugliness). These results were fascinating, because the stimulation of d1PFC had led participants to view faces as less trustworthy preceded by prime adjectives. TMS over the dmPFC led to a decrease in the effect of priming, telling the researchers more about the role of that specific region in the brain. Overall, the researchers concluded that the dmPFC plays a causal role in the one’s cognitive linkage between aesthetic and moral valuation.
Both studies focus on the neural mechanisms that influence a human’s perception of beauty. Dr. Gryzwacz’s study aimed to focus on understanding whether beauty was objective or subjective, while Dr. Ferrari’s study aimed to focus on the relationship between one’s moral judgment of someone and their attractiveness as well as the Beauty-is-Good stereotype long known to society. Moreover, Dr. Ferrari’s study used TMS to observe a change in participants’ behavior, while Dr. Gryzwacz’s used fMRI to see which brain regions activated in response to visual stimuli. These two studies delved deep into explaining what beauty means to humans, and they melded together neuroscience and sociology to help better understand the field of neuroaesthetics.
Works Cited:
Gryzwacz, Norberto M., & Aleem, Hassan & Pombo, Maria & Correa, Ivan (2019) Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder or an Objective Truth? A Neuroscientific Answer. Springer, Cham, Vol 10.
Ferrari, Chiara et al. “The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex mediates the interaction between moral and aesthetic valuation: a TMS study on the beauty-is-good stereotype.” Social cognitive and affective neuroscience vol. 12,5 (2017): 707-717. doi:10.1093/scan/nsx002
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