The science community is constantly looking for explanations
and processes to everything around and inside us. One big question that has
been around for a while is, how does the brain define beauty and how is it
processed? Ancient philosopher believed that beauty was a objective matter,
meaning that it came from the object itself. As time progressed scientist began
to switch over to beauty being subjective. Meaning that an object’s beauty was
determined from the brain. This subjective in recent years has come to be known
as Neuroaesthetics. Neuroaesthetics is the study of aesthetic perceptions of
art, music and any object that arises aesthetic judgment.
In an article titles "Neuroaesthetics: Understanding
Our Perception of Beauty" a study conducted by Ishizy and Zeki called “A Brain Based Theory of Beauty” was analyzed.
The researchers used 21 participants and showed them art paintings and music
excerpts. These participants were then asked to rate these art pieces from 1-9.
One being the least beautiful and nine being the most. During this process they
would have their brain activity recorded using fMRI. The fMRI would be used to
keep track of the active areas during the process. The results showed that
several areas of the brain were active during the presentation of each type of
stimulus. However the only part of the reward and pleasure center that was
present regardless of the stimulus is the medial orbito-frontal cortex. Another
interesting finding is that rating correlated to activation of the mOFC. Meaning
the higher the stimulus was rated, the more blood flow was detected to that
area. In the same article the author criticized the field of neuroaesthetics as potentially
damaging and something that would turn art into a “right or wrong criteria”. In
1993 Komar and Melamid conducted a study were they asked 1,001 American about
their art preferences to determine the USA’s most wanted painting. The final
results were nothing out of the ordinary and to most people not typically considered
beautiful.
Dr. Grzywacz and his
colleagues on the other hand published a paper called “Is Beauty in the eye of
the beholder or an objective truth? A neuroscientific answer”. This paper aims to come up with a theory that
proves that aesthetic response (such as finding something to be beauty) is a
very individual and changing. Their goal is not to find a set definition on
what constitutes beauty and what doesn’t, but aims to explain why we all have
different standards of beauty. In the
first part of their study Dr. Grzywacz analyzed the fluency theory, which
states the more fluently perceivers can process an object the more positive
their aesthetic response is. The theory
behind the brain preferring fluency is that it is able to process the stimuli
better and avoid danger. The brain is trained to process 3 main components of
fluency ( aesthetic variables )really well. Those include balance, symmetry and
complexity. To analyze the truth behind this theory, they analyzed too major
questions “ Do artists have biases for
properties like these? and is so are they optimized?. The way these questions
were answer is by digitized images are stored as arrays of intensity values,
often from 0 to 255 or 0 to 1. Balance was demonstrated with similarities in
number found in the right and left side. Complexity was analyzed by trying to
predict points in the image. Three groups of images were analyzed renaissance
paintings, spontaneous pictures, and carefully posed portraits. In the end each
painter had a high degree of individuality on how they paint. Meaning their
ideas on what makes a painting beautiful was very different and intentional. The
main theory this research article came up with is “The theory on how the brain
learns aesthetics”. The overall summary is a Person is looking at object. The
person needs to make a prediction on the object. The predictions will be made
based on the color, shape, size etc. The person will determine whether the
object is good or not. If they decide it is, the person takes the action on the
object. The decision can either be good or bad. If it is good the object gives
pleasure. If the object is not good to, there is a mistake in the prediction.
The person then changes the prediction model to make better predictions in the
future. No change is made for the positive aesthetic response. A person’s
aesthetic response can be influenced by motivation and culture during the
learning phase, which can lead to aesthetic individuality. This was shown
through a study that determined that risk takers appeared to like higher levels
of complexity in their paints versus risk avoiders which preferred balance. The
second major conclusions in this paper is that people can learn aesthetic
values. This was tested by having participants play a game where they learned
to predict reward based on the images they got, participants did not know which
had the highest reward. Initially the participants were favoring the images
with the highest number of dots were associated with the bigger reward.
However, over time they noticed a specific image with a specific number of dots
was tied to the highest reward. This made them change their previous favored
images. Lastly their final study concluded that aesthetic values can change
over time. This was shown by asking participants which was their favorite
shirt, and then asking three days later. Most people changed their answer.
Overall it seems that every person may have the same
areas of the brain that activate when they see something they consider
beautiful such as the anterior insula and the orbitalfrontal cortex but everyone has different criteria that define beauty. It appears
that the perception of beauty is both subject and objective, since it is
influenced by culture but also triggered by aesthetic values. Neuroaesthetics is not a limiting field and is constantly evolving, discovering and understanding a human's complex mind.
Citations:
· Aleem, H., Pombo,
M., Correa-Herran, I., & Grzywacz, N. M. (2019). Is Beauty in the Eye of
the Beholder or an Objective Truth? A Neuroscientific Answer. Springer
Series on Bio- and Neurosystems Mobile Brain-Body Imaging and the Neuroscience
of Art, Innovation and Creativity, 101-110.
doi:10.1007/978-3-030-24326-5_11
·
Masri, Y. (2019, June 06).
Neuroaesthetics: Understanding Our Perception of Beauty. Retrieved October 16,
2020, from
https://medium.com/swlh/neuroaesthetics-understanding-our-perception-of-beauty-eabf06fc65a3
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