Activation of the prefrontal cortex in the human visual aesthetic perception

TLDR

Visual aesthetic perception is a uniquely human trait linked to prefrontal expansion, yet its neural basis remains unclear, with the visual system organized into parallel multistage processing streams. The study used magnetoencephalography to show selective activation of the prefrontal cortex when participants viewed objects they rated as beautiful. The results suggest that aesthetic perception relies on a distinct brain system, with the prefrontal cortex playing a key role. Citation: R.

Abstract

Visual aesthetic perception (“aesthetics”) or the capacity to visually perceive a particular attribute added to other features of objects, such as form, color, and movement, was fixed during human evolutionary lineage as a trait not shared with any great ape. Although prefrontal brain expansion is mentioned as responsible for the appearance of such human trait, no current knowledge exists on the role of prefrontal areas in the aesthetic perception. The visual brain consists of “several parallel multistage processing systems, each specialized in a given task such as, color or motion” [Bartels, A. & Zeki, S. (1999) Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. B 265, 2327–2332]. Here we report the results of an experiment carried out with magnetoencephalography which shows that the prefrontal area is selectively activated in humans during the perception of objects qualified as “beautiful” by the participants. Therefore, aesthetics can be hypothetically considered as an attribute perceived by means of a particular brain processing system, in which the prefrontal cortex seems to play a key role.