Exposure to beautiful art and music can trigger pleasure and love centres in the brain
BEAUTY IS in the eye of the beholder, or more accurately in their medial orbito-frontal cortex. This part of the brain activates when we experience beauty either as art or as music.
The response is consistent across cultures and ethnic backgrounds provided the individual sees beauty in the artistic portrayal, according to research published yesterday evening in the online journal, PLoS ONE.
The research also showed that a second brain area which reacts to visual beauty is a region associated with romantic love. This suggested a relationship between beauty and love, at least in terms of the brain’s response, the researchers said.
There is variation in what any one subject views as beautiful, the researchers from the Wellcome Laboratory of Neurobiology at University College London acknowledge.
“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,” said lead researcher Prof Semir Zeki.
“A painting by Francis Bacon, for example may have great artistic merit but may not qualify as beautiful,” said Prof Zeki. The same was true of some difficult modern composers.
Yet if you prefer rock music to the classics then there will be “greater activity in the particular brain region when listening to Van Halen than when listening to Wagner,” Prof Zeki said.
Researchers took brain scans of 21 volunteers while they viewed paintings or heard music. Some examples were beautiful, such as Ingres's The Grand Odalisque, others less so including Massys's A Grotesque Old Woman. Bach's Violin Concerto No 2 was one of the beautiful pieces of music used.
The stronger the subject’s liking for the image or music, the greater the brain activity in this one region, the researchers found. And the brain’s response was consistent whether the art form was visual or musical, they write. The results imply that beauty exists as an abstract concept within the brain and is not dependent on the art, the authors believe.
The activated region is part of the pleasure and reward centre of the brain. It remained inactive if the person thought the music or painting on offer was ugly, the researchers said.
Exposure to beautiful art also triggered another region near the centre of the brain however, the “caudate nucleus”. Earlier research had shown this area is associated with romantic love.
This suggested that the brain somehow formed a connection between beauty and love, the authors say.
