Neuroaesthetics
I posted way back in the day about “the neuroscience of beauty,” and find this an ongoing fascinating topic.
I saw yesterday on the excellent BRAINETHICS blog that a new book has just been published on the topic, edited by Martin Skov and Oshin Vartanian, titled “Neuroaesthetics”.
According to my source for all knowledge semantic and syntactic, Dictionary.com, a Philistine is defined as:
a person who is lacking in or hostile or smugly indifferent to cultural values, intellectual pursuits, aesthetic refinement, etc., or is contentedly commonplace in ideas and tastes.
At the risk of being so-labeled, I will admit that my interest in this topic stems in part from my belief that common commercial objects like product packages can be more or less aesthetically pleasing, and our most tortured form of literature, the 30-second ad, can sometimes capture our attention and interest because it represents, in story or visuals or music, aesthetic standards that attract us.
One of the unsolved mysteries of the brain is why it is attracted to both the familiar and the novel, and how these two predispositions duke it out in bringing objects to our conscious attention. On the one hand, we find the familiar comforting, and often ascribe positive emotional valence to objects just because we have seen them before. On the other hand, we are attracted to novelty and originality, precisely because it is not familiar. Aesthetics, I think, is about this attraction to the novel and original, and neuroaesthetics is about what happens in our brains when this attention and attraction occur.
I’m looking forward to reading the articles in the new book, which includes chapters on visual art, music, literature and film. Unfortunately nothing on advertising! Here is an excerpt from Martin Skov’s post:
Research into the neurobiology of aesthetic behavior, one of the truly unique human traits, has undergone a revolution in the last ten years. In large part due to the possibility of imaging the human brain in various non-invasive ways it has become possible to investigate the neural mechanisms behind the perception of visual and auditive art, creative behavior, or aesthetic valuation of works of art. Quite a few psychologists and neuroscientists have heeded this call. The result is an ever-increasing number of research reports in peer-reviewed journals. Still, many of these results remain unknown, even overlooked.