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Beauty and the brain: culture, history and individual differences in aesthetic appreciation
Author(s) -
Jacobsen Thomas
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal of anatomy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.932
H-Index - 118
eISSN - 1469-7580
pISSN - 0021-8782
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-7580.2009.01164.x
Subject(s) - beauty , harmony (color) , sensation , functional magnetic resonance imaging , cognitive science , cognition , aesthetics , psychology , neuroanatomy , cognitive psychology , evolutionary psychology , neuroscience , social psychology , art , visual arts
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.