Beauty and the brain: culture, history and individual differences in aesthetic appreciation.
Human aesthetic processing entails the sensation-based evaluation of an entity with respect to concepts like beauty, harmony or well-formedness. Aesthetic appreciation has many determinants ranging from evolutionary, anatomical or physiological constraints to influences of culture, history and individual differences. There are a vast number of dynamically configured neural networks underlying these multifaceted processes of aesthetic appreciation. In the current challenge of successfully bridging art and science, aesthetics and neuroanatomy, the neuro-cognitive psychology of aesthetics can approach this complex topic using a framework that postulates several perspectives, which are not mutually exclusive. In this empirical approach, objective physiological data from event-related brain potentials and functional magnetic resonance imaging are combined with subjective, individual self-reports.
Jacobsen
Thomas
T
Experimental Psychology Unit, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Helmut Schmidt University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany. jacobsen@hsu-hh.de
D001154:Art / Q000266:history*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003405:Creativity; D003469:Culture; D004954:Esthetics / Q000266:history / Q000523:psychology*; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D006801:Humans; D009484:Neuropsychology / Q000266:history; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*