How Does the Brain Perceive Mountain Vistas or Passing Clouds as Beautiful?

In their study, the research team presented artistic landscape videos to 24 participants. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), they measured the participants’ brain activity as they viewed and rated the videos.

First author of the study, A. Ilkay Isik, encapsulates, “We would have expected the aesthetic signals to be limited to the brain’s reward systems, but surprisingly, we found them already present in visual areas of the brain while the participants were watching the videos.

“The activations occurred right next to brain regions deployed in recognizing physical features in movies, such as the layout of a scene or the presence of motion.”

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Senior author Edward Vessel suggests that these signals may reflect an early, elemental form of beauty perception, saying, “When we see something beyond our expectations, local patches of brain tissue generate small ‘atoms’ of positive affect.

“The combination of many such surprise signals across the visual system adds up to make for an aesthetically appealing experience.”

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With this new knowledge, the study—published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience—not only contributes to our understanding of beauty, but may also help clarify how interactions with the natural environment can affect our sense of well-being.

The results might have potential applications in a variety of fields where the link between perception and emotion is important, such as clinical health care and artificial intelligence.