Beauty and the brain

We brush up against the aesthetic daily, whether through music, performances, paintings, movies, or even nature. Some experiences, however, reach beyond the ordinary, captivating our senses, unfolding our minds, and transporting us somewhere else.

Neuroaesthetics is an emerging sub-discipline of experimental aesthetics, which seeks to understand the neurobiological underpinnings of an aesthetic experience.

As you’d expect, the brain and body’s response to any form of art is complicated. To reach “peak aesthetic experience”, the brain engages multiple neural systems that dynamically interact with one another. This includes those responsible for movement and sensation, emotions, value judgments and interpretation of meaning.

In other words, what is important is not only how the brain and body process sensory input, but also how they assign emotional value to and make sense of aesthetic stimuli. The more these systems play off each other, the more immersed and connected we feel to an aesthetic experience so powerful that our sense of time and space collapse.

Research has isolated different mechanisms involved in the perception of beauty, emotion, and meaning. The perception of beauty, for instance, is largely driven by areas of the brain associated with reward and subjective pleasure, and areas involved in self-referential thought underpin our ability to find meaning in artwork. This makes an aesthetic experience an inherently personal process.

Yet it remains unclear how the brain – as a system in constant communication with itself and its environment – responds globally to art.

My colleagues and I at the University of Auckland seek to address this gap by mapping the neural networks that contribute to aesthetic experience, detailing how various brain regions and systems interact when we engage with art, and how this resonates with the beholder at a physical level.

Aesthetic experience is often misunderstood simply as an overwhelming sense of beauty, or the feeling of liking a work of art, but such responses are more nuanced than this.

I am leading a project involving 36 participants in which people engage with artworks from Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki’s Gothic Returns: Fuseli to Fomison. This exhibition explores the “persistent appeal of ‘the gothic’, a broad term that embraces some of the most darkly charismatic imagery ever produced”. The work will be on show in the gallery mezzanine until November 16.

Spanning eras, mediums, themes, and techniques, such artworks aim to evoke a range of responses, including those that emphasise perceptual details, emotional resonance, and conceptual depth.

The project will entail three distinct experiments spaced approximately six months apart. First, participants will view a selection of 21 artworks from the Gothic Returns exhibition in a traditional laboratory setting as on-screen digital reproductions.

For the second session, these same artworks will be viewed in person at Auckland Art Gallery, and six months later they’ll view the pieces in virtual reality. Across all sessions, the participants’ brain activity will be recorded via sensors placed on the scalp, while heart and sweat gland activity will be monitored via electrodes on the chest and fingers.

After viewing each artwork, participants will answer a questionnaire designed to capture which works aroused the greatest and also the lowest engagement. We hope the difference between the two – neurally and physiologically – will point to what is unique to aesthetic experience.

Alongside brain networks involved in high aesthetic response, we are also interested in participants’ bodily reactions. Though often occurring beneath the level of awareness, initial physical reactions can trigger emotional and cognitive processes, which in turn influence further bodily responses. Whether participants feel calm, relaxed, excited or tense in response to the artworks will show up in the timing of their heartbeats, and emotional intensity will be reflected in changes in skin conductance caused by sweat.

Most neuroaesthetics research has involved screen-based experiments in laboratories, but the brain works differently in the real world. We don’t look at art simply as a puzzle to solve or symbols to decode – we feel it. It hits us on a sensory level and connects to the world around us. Our research aims to explore how the experience of viewing art on a screen differs from seeing it in person, and whether virtual reality can offer a similar aesthetic experience.

It’s well documented that the arts and aesthetic experiences are good for us, that they promote mental and physical healing, can amplify learning, and even inspire personal and collective growth.

It is crucial the arts remain accessible and that we recognise their value, especially at a time when the cultural sector is facing public funding cuts. Understanding the tangible impact of art on our minds and bodies can only strengthen the argument for the intrinsic value of art for art’s sake and its contribution to our wellbeing.