Summary and Analysis:
Keywords
View support quotes and references at the bottom of the page.
Within cognitive neuroscience, there is a field known as neuroaesthetics, which explores how the brain responds to beauty, art, and other aesthetic experiences. It is a relatively new area of research, and its scope is still taking shape. Neuroaesthetics helps explain how perception, emotion, and pleasure are linked to our biological processes when we encounter artworks, environments, or designed spaces.
However, this approach has clear limits. By focusing on what happens in the brain, neuroaesthetics cannot fully account for the historical, social, cultural, or contextual factors that shape how aesthetic experiences are created and understood. For this reason, it is most valuable when combined with insights from the humanities and social sciences. Together, these perspectives allow for a more comprehensive understanding of aesthetics, one that recognises both our shared biology and the cultural worlds in which aesthetic meaning emerges.
Based on a review of scientific literature in the field, this paper proposes that aesthetic experience likely arises from the interaction between three neural systems: emotion–valuation (reward, emotion, desire, or liking), sensory–motor (sensation, perception, and the motor system), and meaning–knowledge (top-down processes such as expertise, context, and culture). These systems are activated on interactions with cultural objects, which includes the built environment.
1. The importance of aesthetic experience in physical spaces: beauty is the most important factor people consider in the desirability of a living environment. (1)
2. Visual perception and the visual-motor area contribute to the aesthetic experience in environments: seeing certain spaces or images of them, as well as perceiving a sense of movement within them, is associated with feelings of pleasure. (2-3)
3. The body´s first reaction (embodied simulation) in aesthetic experience: when the motor system (bodily movement, actions) and the mirror neuron system (feeling what is seen in others, such as emotions or sensations) are activated during the aesthetic evaluation of an object, a visceral embodied simulation is triggered (body´s first reaction). (4-8)
4. Knowledge and mental judgments can influence aesthetic experience: the meaning–knowledge system can affect how we experience aesthetics. For example, knowing whether an artwork is an original or a copy, understanding its compositional features, or whether it comes from a museum or was computer-generated (contextual value). (9-13)
5. Judging or interpreting versus feeling in aesthetic experience: these are two independent outcomes of an aesthetic experience. The first involves a more mental (e.g. judging or interpreting as a top-down process) while the second relates to how easily the object is processed on a visceral level (e.g feeling as a bottom-up process). This means aesthetic emotions can occur without interpretation or judgment, based solely on immediate interaction with the object. Likewise, an aesthetic experience can also arise solely from a mental judgment (a secondary, cognitive response), and both types of responses can influence each other. For example, an initial visceral reaction can be modified by mental processing, which is shaped by the viewer’s personal history—explaining why interpretations can vary widely. (14-22)
6. Architects and environmental stimuli: architects decode and detect environmental stimuli using fewer mental structures compared to non-architects, which affects how they evaluate those stimuli and how their reward system responds. (23-24)
7. Emotions as a trigger for physiological balance: feelings of pleasure serve as the psychological reward for achieving homeostasis. (25)
8. Relationship between perceptual and emotional effects: intentionally applying principles of perception can influence emotional impact. In art, form and color are processed through one pathway that helps us identify what an object is, while luminance, movement, and location are processed through another pathway that tells us where the object is. Some artists intentionally incorporate features that activate specific perceptual responses to shape the viewer’s emotional experience.(26-29)
Health & Wellbeing: Research shows that aesthetic experiences can improve people’s wellbeing, helping them feel more balanced and comfortable in their bodies (homeostatic regulation).
Place Attachment: The aesthetic qualities of a place play an important role in why people feel connected to certain environments and choose them over others.
Joy & Recreation: Aesthetic experiences can spark positive emotions, making spaces more enjoyable and uplifting for the people who inhabit them.
1. Designing for Aesthetic Experience: designers can intentionally integrate aesthetic experience into their projects by considering three interconnected dimensions throughout the design process:
+ Emotion–valuation, which relates to feelings such as pleasure, attraction, desire, and enjoyment;
+ Sensory–motor experience, which refers to how a space is sensed, perceived, and how the body moves and acts within it; and
+ Meaning–knowledge, which includes prior experience, context, memory, and cultural background.
By working with these dimensions, design moves beyond a purely multisensory approach and becomes a tool to shape how spaces are felt, emotionally experienced, and understood by inhabitants, as well as the psychosocial meanings they convey.
2. Integrate handcrafted or artisanal materials and furnishings: using original or handcrafted elements can positively influence how people perceive and value the qualities of a space.
3. Include art in buildings: incorporating emotionally expressive artworks in architectural spaces can trigger empathetic responses in occupants, thereby enhancing their overall experience.
4. Consider the perspectives of future occupants when evaluating design elements: involving inhabitants in aesthetic design decisions allows for their personal valuation of proposed stimuli to be taken into account.
1. “For example, the beauty assigned to a physical space is the most important factor driving one’s desire to live in that space” (Ritterfeld & Cupchik, 1996, as cited in Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 172) “ validating widespread attention given to design aesthetics in contemporary culture” (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016 , p. 172).
2. “Along similar lines, it is important to note that structures involved in visual perception can also contribute to the computation of value and preferences. For example, not only is the parahippocampal gyrus (PPA) involved in scene perception, but its activity while viewing scenes is correlated with pleasure (Yue, X., E.A. Vessel & I. Biederman. 2007, as cited in Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 175)
3. “The role of the visual cortex in aesthetic experience is further supported by activation in visual motion area MT+ when subjects view dynamic paintings that evoke a subjective sense of movement, such as Van Gogh’s work (Thakral, P.P. et al. 2012 as cited in Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 176)
4. “Activating regions of the brain that underlie sensations and perceptions, viewing paintings that depict actions can also engage the motor system.” (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 176)
5. “Freederg and Gallese have argued that our understanding of aesthetic experiences would be incomplete without seriously taking into consideration the role of the mirror neuron system in the process” ( Gallese, V. & D. Friedberg. 2007, as cited in Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 176)
6. “Empathetic responses to paintings engage our emotional circuitry, mirroring the emotions expressed in artwork.” (Freedberg, D. & V. Gallese. 2007, as cited in Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 176)
7. “Interestingly, to the extent that artists are consciously or unconsciously aware of viewers’ body-induced emotional and felt motoric responses to artworks, this knowledge can in turn be used to produce viscerally engaging art.” (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 176)
8. “Embodied simulation is defined as a property of the human brain whereby the actions, emotions, and sensations of others are mapped onto one’s own sensory–motor and visceromotor neural representations. As a result, the observation of an action/emotion/sensation can trigger the activation of the same neural mechanisms involved in their execution in the observer.” (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 183)
9. “There is growing evidence that top-down processes in the form of meaning and knowledge exert strong influences on aesthetic experience. For example, original artworks are valued more than copies” (Newman, G.E. & P. Bloom. 2012, as cited in Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 177) “consistent with our intuitive dislike for forgeries.This observation suggests that our experience of art is influenced by factors beyond its perceptual qualities and involves the context within which it is processed” (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 177)
10. “Subjects rated the images as aesthetically more pleasing if they were thought to be from the museum than if they thought they were computer generated.” (Chatterjee y Vartanian, 2016, p. 177)
11. “This suggests that contextual information can activate memories that in turn modulate levels of visual pleasure.” (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 177)
12. “These studies suggest that what we attend to in the course of aesthetic interactions with artworks is strongly affected by our knowledge of compositional strategies, stylistic conventions, and practices. (Seeley, W.P. 2013, as cited in Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 177)
13. “In other words, the extent to which we are able to distill the semantic properties of artworks beyond merely their sensory qualities affects the engagement of neural systems in the service of aesthetic experiences” (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 177)
14. “…consistent with the model of aesthetic experience proposed by Leder and colleagues, which also distinguishes between aesthetic judgments and aesthetic emotions as two independent outputs of a system that underlies aesthetic experience: whereas aesthetic judgments arise from the evaluation of one’s interpretation of an object (i.e., understanding), aesthetic emotions reflect the subjective ease with which an object was processed (Leder, H. et al. 2004, as cited in Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 178)
15 “This explains why it is possible to have an aesthetic experience in the absence of explicit evaluation. Specifically, aesthetic emotions, as byproducts of how we interact with objects, can lead to aesthetic experiences without the necessity of explicit judgment” (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 178).
16. “Importantly, the three systems need not necessarily contribute to aesthetic experiences in equal measure. Some aesthetic phenomena can be explained without any reference to emotion,74 “Martindale, C. 2001, as cited in Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 178) “and aesthetic responses to mathematics would appear to be devoid of sensations.” (Chatterjee, A. 2013, as cited in Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 178)
17. “…it appears that under certain conditions even seemingly highly intellectual and abstract stimuli can engage the brain’s reward system. For example, Zeki and colleagues have recently shown that, among mathematicians, the experience of mathematical beauty correlates parametrically with activity in the medial OFC, a region activated by other sources of beauty.”(Zeki, S. et al. 2014, as cited in Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 178)
18. “bottom-up and stimulus-driven, giving rise to aesthetic evaluations of pleasure or displeasure. In turn, assuming that the stimulus affords it and there is sufficient processing motivation on the part of the perceiver, more elaborate top-down processing can emerge, giving rise to fluency-based aesthetic evaluations (e.g., interest, boredom, confusion).” (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 179)
19. “The results from these studies suggest that, within the context of viewing art, an internal focus has two distinct connotations—one that includes self-referential processing of autobiographical and narrative information and another that represents more visceral feeling states (i.e., interoception)” (Craig, A.D. 2001, as cited in Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 180)
20. “The authors argued that, whereas the early phase of aesthetic evaluation involves rapid judgment of a stimulus as “beautiful” or “not beautiful,” it is the delayed phase that engages a deeper level of processing in terms of why we find a stimulus beautiful. In this sense, the delayed MEG response may reflect the effects of cognitive appraisals on emotional experiences with artworks (i.e., controlled top-down processes)” (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 180)
21. This interpretation is consistent with the appraisal theory of emotions, according to which subjective goals and desires influence emotional reactions to objects and events in the world.” (Roseman, I.J. & C.A. Smith. 2001, as cited in Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 180)
22. “This can also help explain why the same works of art can evoke radically different responses in viewers in terms of the top-down appraisals that are applied to initial judgments.” (Silvia, P.J. 2012, as cited in Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 180)
23. “Additional research with fMRI in the domain of architecture has shown that, compared to non-architecture students, architecture students recruit fewer brain structures for encoding and detecting building stimuli.” (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 182)
24. “The results demonstrated greater activation among experts in the subcallosal cingulate gyrus and medial OFC when making aesthetic judgments of buildings, but no difference was detected while making similar judgments of faces. This suggests that expertise in architecture modulates the neural representation of value in the reward network only for domain-relevant stimuli (i.e., buildings).” (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 182)
25. “Homeostasis refers to the process of maintaining internal conditions within a range that promotes optimal functioning, well-being, and survival. Within this view, emotions are considered mechanisms evolved to reestablish homeostatic equilibrium, and feelings of pleasure constitute the psychological reward for having achieved homeostasis.” (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 183)
26. “Specifically, artists intentionally incorporate features that activate these shortcuts to facilitate desired perceptual and emotional effects in viewers” (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 185)
27. “In doing so, they intentionally violate the physical laws that characterize shadows, reflections, colors, and contours. In this sense artists, in experimenting with various forms of depiction, discovered what psychologists and neuroscientists are now identifying as principles of perception.” (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 185)
28. “Form and color are processed in one stream and tell us the “what” of an object.” (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 185)
29. “Luminance, motion, and location are processed in another and tell us the “where” of an object. The shimmering quality of water or the glow of the sun on the horizon seen in some impressionist paintings” (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016, p. 185)
Join and experience more as a Member
Access all our publications
Attend our events and access recordings
Offers from Partners in our network
Support the Conscious Cities movement!
Receive updates on new content and events
Cancel any time
