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Statistical parametric maps rendered onto averaged anatomical sections (average of 21 subjects) showing the T statistic for the contrasts (A) Visually Beautiful > Visually Ugly, (B) Musically Beautiful > Musically Ugly and (C) the results of a conjunction analysis for Visually Beautiful > Visually Ugly and Musically Beautiful > and Musically Ugly. Upper row shows activity in mid-saggital sections and the middle row in horizontal sections of the brain. (D) shows the overlap in zones within the medial orbito-frontal cortex (mOFC) activated by visually beautiful (red), musically beautiful (green) stimuli, and the overlap between the two activations (yellow). Random effects analysis with 21 subjects. Display threshold p

To check for the possibility that it may take longer to comprehend or experience beauty derived from one source compared to the other, we analyzed the data from one representative subject further with respect to different times within the viewing period. The data from this subject was divided into 4 periods, corresponding to 4, 8, 12, and 16 s after stimulus onset. Analyzing data from each time segment separately using boxcar functions, we found activity in mOFC with musical stimuli in the first 3 segments while with visual stimuli the activity in mOFC was detected with the last three segments (p

It is interesting to note in this context that the judgments that we speak of above relate to positive judgments, strongly linked to reward and pleasure. We did not find activity in A1 of mOFC that correlates positively with the experience of ugly stimuli, although ugliness, too, involves a judgment. Instead, the parametrically modulated activity with the experience of ugliness was confined to the amygdala and left somato-motor cortex. This implies that there may be a functional specialization within the brain for at least two different kinds of judgment, those related to positive, rewarding, experiences and those related to negative ones. Future studies may yet reveal further specializations for judgments in different domains.

One of the more interesting activations was in the caudate nucleus, which was also activated in previous studies charting the neural correlates of emotional states [23], [24]. The caudate activations reported here have two features: (a) their location is similar to the location of the activity observed in previous studies of beauty [3] and in studies of the neural correlates of romantic love [10], [24], [25], and (b) the activation in it is proportional to the intensity of the declared experience of beauty. This close juxtaposition constitutes an interesting neural commentary on the traditional emphasis made in world literature on the relationship between love and beauty. Another interesting point about caudate activity is that it is evident only during the experience of visual beauty, with no parallel activation during the experience of musical beauty. We have no current explanation for this.

Confirming previous studies from this and other laboratories [2], [3], [18], the activity in the mOFC was parametrically modulated, the BOLD signal being higher for stimuli rated as beautiful than those rated neutral or ugly. This was also true for the caudate nucleus, though only during the experience of visual beauty. A conjunction analysis using results derived from both auditory and visual scans once again showed that the same region (A1) of mOFC was parametrically modulated by both visual and musical stimuli, thus adding further to the conclusion that activity in one and the same brain area correlates in the same way with the experience of beauty derived from these two different sources. The experience of visual stimuli as ugly, on the other hand, correlated with activity in the amygdala and (with the application of an SVC) in left somato-motor cortex, among other areas (see Table 4). This activity, too, was proportional to the declared intensity of the experience. When we searched for quadratic modulation, we could not find increased activity in amygdala during the experience of both beauty and ugliness. Indeed, we could not detect any areas that had a quadratic relationship with the stimuli (i.e. were active during the experience of beautiful and ugly, but not indifferent, stimuli). In this, our results differ from those of Winston et al. (2007) who found that attractive and unattractive faces, but not ones judged to be neutral, lead to amygdala activation [26]. The reason for this difference is not known.

Taking the two principal results of this study, namely that activity in a single region (field A1) of mOFC correlates with experience of both visual and musical beauty and that there is a linear relationship in it between the BOLD signal and the declared intensity of the experience of beauty, leads us towards the formulation of a brain based definition of beauty.

Our definition thus not only distinguishes sharply between artistic merit and aesthetic value but is also indifferent to what is art and what is not art. Almost anything can be considered to be art, but only creations whose experience has, as a correlate, activity in mOFC would fall into the classification of beautiful art. That the activity in the mOFC is proportional to the intensity of beauty experienced gives added strength to our theory, since the strength of activation is related to the intensity of the experience alone, regardless of the extent to which the work can be classified as a work of art or not. A painting by Francis Bacon may be executed in a painterly style and have great artistic merit but may not qualify as beautiful to a subject, because the experience of viewing it does not correlate with activity in his or her mOFC. The definition we propose takes aesthetics very much into the subjective, though quantifiable, arena: it applies only to an individual at a specific time and place since what is judged and experienced as beautiful at one moment and in one context by one subject may not be so experienced by another in a different context. Put differently, for an individual who experiences beauty in a Francis Bacon painting, with a concomitant change in activity within mOFC, the work can be qualified as beautiful to that individual. Our definition thus makes it un-necessary to consider other factors such as up-bringing, culture, context, connoisseurship and monetary value in the definition of what constitutes the aesthetic appeal of a work of art, although all these factors may contribute to the experience of beauty. Indeed, it is for this very reason that we included people from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds in our pool of subjects. There are of course many iconic works of art, such as the music of Beethoven or the Pietà of Michelangelo, which are experienced as beautiful by those who belong to different cultures, backgrounds and ethnic groups. This may be accounted for, as Immanuel Kant did in his Critique of Judgment [28], by supposing the existence of a sensus communis, that is to say a brain organization that is similar across individuals and cultures, which such works stimulate. We are currently addressing this in greater detail.

It is interesting to note that, contrary to the experience of beauty, we could not locate, through our conjunction analyses, a common area in which activity correlated with the experience of musical and visual ugliness, a negative finding for which we have no current explanation.

One objection to our hypothesis is that, currently, activity in mOFC may be related to other experiences, such as judgment, evaluation, decision-making and reward in other domains, ones that are not directly related exclusively to beauty. For the sake of clarity and because of the complex architectonic configuration of mOFC, we designate the area that was active in this study as division A1 of mOFC. Activation of mOFC in other reward-related tasks, such as monetary reward, involves a different overall pattern of brain activation than the one we report here. Moreover, such reward tasks may or may not activate field A1 of mOFC. A recent study [33] reported overlapping activation with juice and monetary rewards in a region corresponding to A1 of mOFC, although the results of that study, being based on either uncorrected statistics at p

In fact a specialization within mOFC may be conferred on it by the cortical route taken to it. In our study, although only activity in one cortical area, A1 of mOFC, correlated with the experience of musical and visual beauty, the path to mOFC through the two domains was different. With musical experience of beauty, auditory areas of the brain were co-active with A1 of mOFC while we could not detect any activity in the caudate nucleus. With experience of visual beauty, the caudate nucleus was very much co-active with A1 of mOFC as were the visual areas (we use the term co-active because the temporal limitations of the fMRI method do not allow us to isolate the sequence of activity in these areas). Hence, basing ourselves more on Burke's definition of beauty given above, as one mediated by the senses, we consider that it is not activation of mOFC alone that is a determinant of beauty; it is rather the co-activation of field A1 of mOFC with the specialized sensory and perceptive area, or areas, and possibly (in the case of visual stimuli) with the caudate nucleus as well. Hence we broaden our neurobiological definition of beauty given above to include not only activation of mOFC but also its co-activation with sensory areas that feed it. The interaction between these sensory areas, and other regions such as the caudate, and A1 of mOFC, and how activity in the latter is modulated by activity in the former remains a very interesting puzzle for the future.

We emphasize that our theory is tentative; there are many other experiences that may be deemed to be beautiful besides the visual and musical. Our theory will stand or fall depending upon whether future studies of the experience of beauty in other domains show that, in these too, the experience correlates with activity in field A1 of mOFC. 2b1af7f3a8