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Beauty is in the medial orbitofrontal cortex of the beholder, study finds
Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa (c. 1503–1519) (source)
“Beauty is in the forebrain of the beholder, a study has found.
Scientists have identified a region at the front of the brain that “lights up” in appreciation of art or music. But how active it becomes depends on personal taste, whether an individual finds pleasure from abstract art, classical masterpieces, grand opera or rock music.
The region, known as the medial orbito-frontal cortex, is also the most honest of art critics. It responds only on the basis of enjoyment rather than technical ability or “artistic merit”.
Professor Semir Zeki, from the Wellcome Laboratory of Neurobiology at University College London, who led the study, said: “The question of whether there are characteristics that render objects beautiful has been debated for millennia by artists and philosophers of art, but without an adequate conclusion.
“So too has the question of whether we have an abstract sense of beauty, that is to say one which arouses in us the same powerful emotional experience regardless of whether its source is, for example, musical or visual. It was time for neurobiology to tackle these fundamental questions.”
Professor Zeki’s team recruited 21 volunteers from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds, who were asked to rate a series of paintings or musical excerpts as “beautiful, indifferent or ugly”. The participants then looked at the pictures or listened to the music again while undergoing a functional magnetic resonance imaging brain scan.
Music and art previously rated as “beautiful” both stimulated activity in the medial orbito-frontal cortex, which lessened when volunteers were “indifferent”. In contrast, no brain region in particular responded to works rated as “ugly”.
Professor Zeki said: “Almost anything can be considered art but we argue that only creations whose experience correlates with activity in the medial orbito-frontal cortex would fall into the classification of beautiful art.” (…)
“A painting by Francis Bacon, for example, may have great artistic merit but may not qualify as beautiful. The same can be said for some of the more ‘difficult’ classical composers - and whilst their compositions may be viewed as more ‘artistic’ than rock music, to someone who finds the latter more rewarding and beautiful, we would expect to see greater activity in the particular brain region when listening to Van Halen than when listening to Wagner.”
— Beauty? Why, it’s all in the mind, The Scotsman, 07 July 2011, and in Wellcome Trust, July 7, 2011.
See also:
☞ Beauty is in the brain of the beholder, Discover Magazine
☞ Ishizu & Zeki, Toward A Brain-Based Theory of Beauty, PLoS ONE, 2011
☞ Beauty in a smile: the role of medial orbitofrontal cortex in facial attractiveness (pdf), Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London
☞ Alumit Ishai, Sex, beauty and the orbitofrontal cortex (pdf), Institute of Neuroradiology, University of Zurich
☞ Edmund T. Rolls, Fabian Grabenhorst, The orbitofrontal cortex and beyond: From affect to decision-making (pdf), University of Oxford, Department of Experimental Psychology, 2008
☞ Denis Dutton: A Darwinian theory of beauty, TED
☞ The Science of Art. A Neurological Theory of Aesthetic Experience, Lapidarium
☞ Why Does Beauty Exist? Jonah Lehrer: ‘Beauty is a particularly potent and intense form of curiosity’
