neuroesthetics neuroesthetics neuroesthetics (or neuroaesthetics) is a relatively recent sub-discipline of empirical aesthetics. empirical aesthetics takes a scientific approach to the study of aesthetic perceptions of art, music, or any object that can give rise to aesthetic judgments. neuroesthetics is a term coined by semir zeki in 1999 and received its formal definition in 2002 as the scientific study of the neural bases for the contemplation and creation of a work of art. neuroesthetics uses neuroscience to explain and understand the aesthetic experiences at the neurological level. the topic attracts scholars from many disciplines including neuroscientists, art historians, artists, art therapists and psychologists. researchers are looking to neuroscience for answers behind why the human brain finds artistic works like davinci's mona lisa so alluring. overview neuroaesthetics is a field of experimental science that aims to combine (neuro-)psychological research with aesthetics by investigating the "perception, production, and response to art, as well as interactions with objects and scenes that evoke an intense feeling, often of pleasure.". the recently developed field seeks among other things the neural correlates of aesthetic judgment and creativity. it is argued that visual aesthetics, namely the capacity of assigning different degrees of beauty to certain forms, colors, or movements, is a human trait acquired after the divergence of human and other ape lineages, rendering the experience of beauty a defining characteristic of humankind. one core question for the field is whether art or aesthetic preferences are guided by a set of scientific laws or principles. additionally, the evolutionary rationale for the formation and characteristics of these principles are sought. it is believed that identification of the brain circuitry involved in aesthetic judgments (e.g., by using through the use of brain imaging) can help pinpoint the origin of these responses. approaches of study researchers who have been prominent in the field combine principles from perceptual psychology, evolutionary biology, neurological deficits, and functional brain anatomy in order to address the evolutionary meaning of beauty that may be the essence of art. it is felt that neuroscience is a very promising path for the search for the quantified evaluation of art. with the aim of discovering general rules about aesthetics, one approach is the observation of subjects viewing art and the exploration of the mechanics of vision. it is proposed that pleasing sensations are derived from the repeated activation of neurons due to primitive visual stimuli such as horizontal and vertical lines. in addition to the generation of theories to explain this, such as ramachandran's set of laws, it is important to use neuroscience to determine and understand the neurological mechanisms involved. neuroaesthetics approaches can be either descriptive or experimental. descriptive neuroaesthetics refers to the practice of mapping properties of the brain onto aesthetic experiences. for example, if color is important to the experience of fauvist art, then it is likely that areas of the brain that process color will be engaged when looking at such art. the claims of descriptive neuroaesthetics are regarded as hypothesis-generating and are typically qualitative in nature. experimental neuroaesthetics, like any experimental science, produces data that are quantitative and vetted statistically. experimental neuroaesthetics tests hypotheses, predicts results, and invites replication or falsification. the typical experimental methods used are those of cognitive neuroscience: fmri, erp, tms, tdcs, and neuropsychology. critics of neuroaesthetics typically target descriptive and not experimental neuroaesthetics. the link between specific brain areas and artistic activity is of great importance to the field of neuroesthetics. this can be applied both to the ability to create and interpret art. a common approach to uncover the neural mechanisms is through the study of individuals, specifically artists, with neural disorders such as savant syndrome or some form of traumatic injury. the analysis of art created by these patients provides valuable insights to the brain areas responsible for capturing the essence of art. the aesthetic enjoyment of individuals can be investigated using brain imaging experiments. when subjects are confronted with images of a particular level of aesthetics, the specific brain areas that are activated can be identified. it is argued that the sense of beauty and aesthetic judgment presupposes a change in the activation of the brain's reward system. in 2004, helmut leder has developed a broad research program on the psychology of aesthetics and the arts. this program was introduced as a cognitive model of the appreciation of art in a paper published in the british journal of psychology. this model has served to frame many studies on the cognitive foundations of art, neuroaesthetics, product design, and web design, among other fields. a crucial aspect of research lies in whether aesthetic judgment can be thought of as a bottom-up process driven by neural primitives or as a top-down process with high level cognition. neurologists have had success researching primitives. however, there is a need to define higher level abstract philosophical concepts objectively with neural correlates. it is suggested that aesthetic experience is a function of the interaction between top-down, intentional orientation of attention and the bottom-up perceptual facilitation of image construction. in other words, because untrained persons automatically apply the object-identification habit to viewing artworks, top-down control to reduce this habit may be necessary to engage aesthetic perception. this suggests that artists would show different levels of activation than non-artists. aesthetic responses to different types of art and techniques has recently been explored. cubism is the most radical departure from western forms of art, with the proposed purpose of forcing the viewer to discover less unstable elements of the object to be represented. it eliminates interferences such as lighting and perspective angle to capture objects as they really are. this may be compared to how the brain maintains an object's identity despite varying conditions. modern, representational, and impressionistic art has also been studied for the purpose of explaining visual processing systems. yet aesthetic judgments exists in all domains, not just art. frameworks the aesthetic triad aesthetic experiences are an emergent property of interactions among a triad of neural systems that involve sensory-motor, emotion-valuation, and meaning-knowledge circuitry. the visual brain segregates visual elements like luminance, color, and motion, as well as higher order objects like faces, bodies, and landscapes. aesthetic encounters engage these sensory systems. for example, gazing at van gogh’s dynamic paintings evokes a subjective sense of movement and activates visual motion areas v5/mt+. portraits activate the face area in the fusiform gyrus (ffa) and landscape paintings activate the place area in the parahippocampal gyrus (ppa). beyond classifying visual elements, these sensory areas may also be involved in evaluating them. beautiful faces activate the fusiform face and adjacent areas. the question of how much and what kind of valuation takes place in sensory cortices is an area of active inquiry. looking at paintings that depict actions also engages parts of people’s motor systems. this engagement taps into the extended mirror neuron system. mirror neurons, first discovered in monkeys, are neurons that respond to both the execution and perception of actions. a similar system exists in humans. this system resonates when people infer the intent of artistic gestures or observe the consequences of actions such as in lucio fontana’s cut canvases. this subtle motor engagement may represent an embodied element of our empathetic responses to visual art. the pleasure that people derive from looking at beautiful objects automatically engages general reward circuitry. for example, attractive faces activate the ffa and parts of the ventral striatum even when people are not thinking explicitly about the attractiveness of these faces. the orbito- and medial-frontal cortex, the ventral striatum, anterior cingulate and insula respond to beautiful visual images and the medial orbitofrontal cortex and adjacent cingulate cortex respond to different sources of pleasures including music and even architectural spaces. kirk and colleagues investigated the effects of expectations on neural responses. people rated abstract “art-like” images as more attractive if labeled as being from a museum than labeled as generated by a computer. this preference was accompanied by greater neural activity in the medial orbitofrontal and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. thinking an image was a museum piece also produced activity in the entorhinal cortex, suggesting that people’s expectations draw on memories that enhance (or probably also diminish) visual pleasure. similarly, lacey and colleagues found that people’s ventral striatum and parts of the orbitofrontal cortex were more responsive to the “art status” than to the actual content of visual images. huang and colleagues found that people have different neural responses when told that they are looking at an authentic or copied rembrandt portrait. authentic portraits evoked orbitofrontal activity, whereas copies evoked neural responses in the frontopolar cortex and the right precuneus. the implication of these studies is that context and knowledge beyond the sensory qualities of visual images demonstrably affects people’s neural activity in aesthetic experiences. semir zeki's laws of the visual brain semir zeki, professor of neuroesthetics at the university college of london, views art as an example of the variability of the brain. thus a neurological approach to the source of this variability may explain particular subjective experiences as well as the ranges of abilities to create and experience art. zeki theorizes that artists unconsciously use techniques to create visual art to study the brain. zeki suggests that "...the artist is in a sense, a neuroscientist, exploring the potentials and capacities of the brain, though with different tools. how such creations can arouse aesthetic experiences can only be fully understood in neural terms. such an understanding is now well within our reach."he proposes two supreme laws of the visual brain: constancy despite the changes that occur when processing visual stimuli (distance, viewing angle, illumination, etc.), the brain has the unique ability to retain knowledge of constant and essential properties of an object and discard irrelevant dynamic properties. this applies not only to the ability to, for example, always see a banana as the color yellow but also the recognition of faces at varying angles. comparatively, a work of art captures the essence of an object. the creation of art itself may be modeled off of this primitive neural function. the process of painting for example involves distilling an object down to represent it as it really is, which differs from the way the eyes see it. zeki also tried to represent the platonic ideal and the hegelian concept through the statement: forms do not have an existence without a brain and the ability for stored memory, referring to how artists such as monet could paint without knowing what the objects are in order to capture their true form. abstraction this process refers to the hierarchical coordination where a general representation can be applied to many particulars, allowing the brain to efficiently process visual stimuli. the ability to abstract may have evolved as a necessity due to the limitations of memory. in a way, art externalizes the functions of abstraction in the brain. the process of abstraction is unknown to cognitive neurobiology. however, zeki proposes an interesting question of whether there is a significant difference in the pattern of brain activity when viewing abstract art as opposed to representational art. ramachandran's eight laws of artistic experience vilayanur s. ramachandran and his fellow researchers including william hirstein, developed a highly speculative theory of human artistic experience and the neural mechanisms that mediate it. these "laws" combine to develop underlying high order concepts of the human artistic experience. although not all encompassing as there are undoubtedly many other principles of artistic experience, the theorists claim that they provide a framework for understanding aspects of visual art, aesthetics and design. although testing of these principles quantitatively may provide future evidence for specific areas of the brain responsible for one kind of aesthetic appeal, the theory faces substantial philosophical and historical objections. peak shift principle this psychological phenomenon is typically known for its application in animal discrimination learning. in the peak shift effect, animals sometimes respond more strongly to exaggerated versions of the training stimuli. for instance, a rat is trained to discriminate a square from a rectangle by being rewarded for recognizing the rectangle. the rat will respond more frequently to the object for which it is being rewarded to the point that a rat will respond to a rectangle that is longer and more narrow with a higher frequency than the original with which it was trained. this is called a supernormal stimulus.