the fact that the rat is responding more to a 'super' rectangle implies that it is learning a rule. this effect can be applied to human pattern recognition and aesthetic preference. some artists attempt to capture the very essence of something in order to evoke a direct emotional response. in other words, they try to make a 'super' rectangle to get the viewer to have an enhanced response. to capture the essence of something, an artist amplifies the differences of that object, or what makes it unique, to highlight the essential features and reduce redundant information. this process mimics what the visual areas of the brain have evolved to do and more powerfully activates the same neural mechanisms that were originally activated by the original object. some artists deliberately exaggerate creative components such as shading, highlights, and illumination to an extent that would never occur in a real image to produce a caricature. these artists may be unconsciously producing heightened activity in the specific areas of the brain in a manner that is not obvious to the conscious mind. a significant portion of the experience of art is not self-consciously reflected upon by audiences, so it is not clear whether the peak-shift thesis has any special explanatory power in understanding the creation and reception of art. isolation isolating a single visual cue helps the organism allocate attention to the output of a single module, thereby allowing it to more effectively enjoy the peak shift along the dimensions represented in that module. in other words, there is a need to isolate the desired visual form before that aspect is amplified. this is why an outline drawing or sketch is sometimes more effective as art than an original color photograph. for example, a cartoonist may exaggerate certain facial features which are unique to the character and remove other forms which it shares such as skin tones. this efficiency prevents non-unique features from detracting from the image. this is why one can predict that an outline drawing would be more aesthetically pleasing than a color photograph. the viewers attention is drawn towards this single area allowing one's attention to be focused on this source of information. enhancements introduced by the artist more carefully noted resulting in the amplification of limbic system activation and reinforcement. grouping perceptual grouping to delineate a figure from the background may be enjoyable. the source of the pleasure may have come about because of the evolutionary necessity to give organisms an incentive to uncover objects, such as predators, from noisy environments. for example, when viewing ink blots, the visual system segments the scene to defeat camouflage and link a subset of splotches together. this may be accomplished most effectively if limbic reinforcement is fed back to early vision at every stage of visual processing leading up to the discovery of the object. the key idea is that due to the limited attentional resources, constant feedback facilitates processing of features at earlier stages due to the discovery of a clue which produces limbic activation to draw one's attention to important features. though not spontaneous, this reinforcement is the source of the pleasant sensation. the discovery of the object itself results in a pleasant 'aha' revelation causing the organism to hold onto the image. an artist can make use of this phenomenon by teasing the system. this allows for temporary binding to be communicated by a signal to the limbic system for reinforcement which is a source of the aesthetic experience. contrast extracting contrast involves eliminating redundant information and focusing attention. cells in the retina, the lateral geniculate body or relay station in the brain, and in the visual cortex respond predominantly to step changes in luminance rather than homogeneous surface colors. smooth gradients are much harder for the visual system to detect rather than segmented divisions of shades resulting in easily detectable edges. contrasts due to the formation of edges may be pleasing to the eye. the importance of the visual neuron's varying responses to the orientation and presence of edges has previously been proven by david h. hubel and torsten wiesel. this may hold evolutionary significance since regions of contrast are information rich requiring reinforcement and the allocation of attention. in contrast to the principle of grouping, contrasting features are typically in close proximity eliminating the need to link distant, but similar features. perceptual problem solving tied to the detection of contrast and grouping is the concept that discovery of an object after a struggle is more pleasing than one which is instantaneously obvious. the mechanism ensures that the struggle is reinforcing so that the viewer continues to look until the discovery. from a survival point of view, this may be important for the continued search for predators. ramachandran suggests for the same reason that a model whose hips and breasts are about to be revealed is more provocative than one who is already completely naked. a meaning that is implied is more alluring than one that is explicit. the generic viewpoint the visual system dislikes interpretations which rely on a unique vantage point. rather it accepts the visual interpretation for which there is an infinite set of viewpoints that could produce the class of retinal images. for example, in a landscape image, it will interpret an object in the foreground as obscuring an object in the background, rather than assuming that the background figure has a piece missing. in theory, if an artist is trying to please the eye, they should avoid such coincidences. however, in certain applications, the violation of this principle can also produce a pleasing effect. visual metaphors ramachandran defines a metaphor as a mental tunnel between two concepts that appear grossly dissimilar on the surface, but instead share a deeper connection. similar to the effects of perceptual problem solving, grasping an analogy is rewarding. it enables the viewer to highlight crucial aspects that the two objects share. although it is uncertain whether the reason for this mechanism is for effective communication or purely cognitive, the discovery of similarities between superficially dissimilar events leads to activation of the limbic system to create a rewarding process. support for this view is highlighted by the symptoms of capgras delusion, where sufferers experience reduced facial recognition due to impairments in the connections from the inferotemporal cortex to the amygdala, which is responsible for emotions. the result is that a person no longer experiences the warm fuzzy feeling when presented with a familiar face. a person's 'glow' is lost through what is suggested as due to the lack of limbic activation. symmetry the aesthetic appeal of symmetry is easily understandable. biologically it is important during the detection of a predator, location of prey, and the choosing of a mate as all of these tend to display symmetry in nature. it complements other principles relating to the discovering of information rich objects. additionally, evolutionary biologists suggest that the predisposition towards symmetry is because biologically, asymmetry is associated with infection and disease, which can lead to poor mate selection. however, departures from symmetry in visual art are also widely considered beautiful, suggesting that while symmetry may explain the judgment that a particular individual's face is beautiful, it cannot explain the judgment that a work of art is beautiful. areas of the brain linked to the processing of visual aesthetics aesthetic perception relies heavily on the processing by the visual centers in the brain such as the v1 cortex. signals from v1 are distributed to various specialized areas of the brain. there is no single area where all specialized visual circuitry connect, reducing the chances of determining a single neural center responsible for aesthetics, rather a neural network is more likely. therefore, the visual brain consists of several parallel multistage processing systems, each specialized in a given task such as color or motion. functional specializations of the visual brain are already known. physiological phenomenon can explain several aspects of art appreciation. different extrastriate areas of the visual cortex may have evolved to extract correlations of different visual features. the discovery and linking of various visual stimuli is facilitated and reinforced by direct connections from these areas to limbic structures. additionally, art may be most appealing if it produces heightened activity in a single dimension rather than redundant activation of multiple modules, restricted by the allocation of attentional resources. in experimentation to determine specific areas, many researchers allow the viewer to decide the aesthetic appeal prior to the use of imaging techniques to account for the varying perceptions of beauty. when individuals contemplate the aesthetic appeal, different neural processes are engaged than when pragmatically viewing an image. however, processes of object identification and aesthetic judgment are involved simultaneously in the overall perception of aesthetics. location of the orbito-frontal cortex shown through mri prefrontal cortex the prefrontal cortex is previously known for its roles in the perception of colored objects, decision making, and memory. recent studies have also linked it to the conscious aesthetic experience because it is activated during aesthetic tasks such as determining the appeal of a visual stimuli. this may be because a judgment is needed, requiring visiospatial memory. in a study performed by zeki and kawabata, it was found that the medial orbito-frontal cortex (mofc) is involved in the judgment of whether a painting is beautiful or not. there is high activation in this region when a person views paintings which they consider beautiful. other evidence shows that this same area is active during the experience of beauty derived from different sources, including musical beauty and moral beauty, and even mathematical beauty. interestingly, experience of the sublime, as opposed to the beautiful, results in a different pattern of brain activity; moreover, where it comes to judgment, although aesthetic and perceptual judgments leads t activity in the same brain areas, the pattern of activity is also different between the two, one of the most marked differences being the involvement of mofc in aesthetic, but not in perceptual, judgments. surprisingly, when a person views a painting which they consider ugly, no separate structures are activated. therefore, it is proposed that changes in the intensity of activation in the orbito-frontal cortex correlate with the determination of beauty (higher activation) or ugliness (lower activation). additionally, the medial ofc has been found to respond aesthetics in terms of the context of which it is presented, such as text or other descriptions about the artwork. the current evidence linking the ofc to attributed hedonistic values across gustatory, olfactory, and visual modalities, suggests that the ofc is a common center for the assessment of a stimulus's value. the perception of aesthetics for these areas must be due to the activation of the brain's reward system with a certain intensity. prefrontal cortex is highlighted in orange. location of brodmann's areas indicated by numerical tabs. additionally, the prefrontal dorsalateral cortex (pdc) is selectively activated only by stimuli considered beautiful whereas prefrontal activity as a whole is activated during the judgment of both pleasing and unpleasing stimuli. the prefrontal cortex may be generally activated for directing the attention of the cognitive and perceptual mechanisms towards aesthetic perception in viewers untrained in visual arts. in other words, related directly to a person viewing art from an aesthetic perception due to the top-down control of their cognition. the lateral prefrontal cortex is shown to be linked to higher order self-referential procession and the evaluation of internally generated information. the left lateral pfc, brodmann area 10, may be involved in maintaining attention on the execution of internally generated goals associated with approaching art from an aesthetic orientation. as previously mentioned, directing of attention towards aesthetics may have evolutionary significance. additional areas emotions play a large role in aesthetic processing. experiments designed specifically to force the subjects to view the artwork subjectively (by inquiring of its aesthetic appeal) rather than simply with the visual systems, revealed a higher activation in the brain's emotional circuitry. results from these experiments revealed high activation in the bilateral insula which can be attributed to the emotional experience of viewing art. this correlates with other known emotional roles of the insula. however, the correlation between the insula's varying states of activation and positive or negative emotions in this context is unknown. the emotional view of art can be contrasted with perception related to object recognition when pragmatically