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Neuroesthetics (or neuroaesthetics) is a relatively recent subdiscipline of empirical aesthetics. Empirical aesthetics takes a scientific approach to the study of aesthetic perceptions of art and music. Neuroaesthetics received its formal definition in 2002 as the scientific study of the neural bases for the contemplation and creation of a work of art. Neuroesthetics uses the techniques of neuroscience in order to explain and understand the esthetic experiences at the neurological level. However, the topic attacts scholars from many disciplines including aestheticians, art historians, and psychologists.

Overview
1. Defining the field - Neuroesthetics is an attempt to combine neurological research with aesthetics by investigating the experience of beauty and appreciation of art on the level of brain functions and mental states.

2. History of Neuroesthetics and art - Where did it get its name? / What is art? - What led researchers to the subject?

Major Themes of Research
1. Summary

- Researchers who have been prominent in the field combine principles from perceptual psychology, evolutionary biology, neurological deficits and functional brain anatomy inorder to address the evolutionary meaning of beauty that may be the essence of art.

2. Approaches of Study

a. Observation of subjects viewing art samples and inspection of mechanism of vision, with the aim of inducing general rules about esthetics

b. Establishing a link between certain brain areas and artistic activity

c. Investigating the aesthetic enjoyment through brain-imaging experiments on subjects looking at pictures

3. Theories regarding responses to different types of art (i.e. impressionism, abstraction)

=== Ramachandran's Eight Laws of Artistic Experience ===

1. Peak Shift Principle

2. Isolation

3. Grouping

4. Contrast

5. Perceptual Problem Solving

6. Unique Vantage Points

7. Visual Puns or Metaphors

8. Symmetry

Semir Zeki's Laws of the Visual Brain
1. Constancy

2. Abstraction

Areas of the Brain Linked to the Processing of Visual Aesthetics
1. Brief overview of visual processing circuitry

2. Specific locations found to be involved directly with aesthetics

a. Prefrontal dorsalateral node: neural network intrinsically related to conscious aesthetic experience.

b. Bilateral insula: aesthetic perception to subjective experience of emotion.

c. Fusiform gyrus: pragmatic perception to the identification of meaningful objects

d. Left lateral prefrontal cortex: top down control of internally oriented and self-referential goals to the domain of aesthetic perception

e. Left superior parietal lobule : active image construction

f. Frontal lobe and parietal lobe : working memory and the maintenance of attention.

3. Role of Imaging to determine areas of the brain responsible for aesthetic appreciation

- MEC

- fMRI

- EEG

4. Tests to determine if a subject is perceiving something as aesthetically pleasing - skin conductance

Note: Sections 3 and 4 may be integrated into other sections where experiments are described

Criticism
1. Judgment associated with beauty: the verbal response of a person who is asked to say how they feel is often filtered, edited, and censored.

2. Researchers attempts to reduce aesthetic experience to a set of physical or neurobiological laws

3. Lack of significant testing to date

4. Lack of proportion between the narrow approach to art taken by researchers versus the grand claims they make for their theories.

Future Directions
1. New experimental designs are necessary to take into account different manifestations of aesthetic experience.

2. Neural basis of artistic creativity and achievement

Related Fields of Research
1. Visual Processing disorders effecting perception of aesthetics

2. Aesthetic appreciation in other creative fields (i.e. literature, music)