This week’s Better You, Backed by Science is about beauty and the science of neuroaesthetics.
My partner and I have been on holiday this past week. It’s why this post is a couple of days later than usual.😊 My experience, in fact, inspired the subject.
We stayed in a beautiful Italian town called Locorotondo, in the Puglia region. It’s incredibly beautiful and picturesque.
The buildings in the old town are white and the narrow streets are adorned with plants, colourful flowers, pictures, decorations, lights.
The residents take such great pride in how they present their town, how they care for it. They make ordinary streets look like picture postcard.
The beauty everywhere you look reminded me that the brain actually thrives on beauty.
Whether it’s something like those streets.
Or sunlight filtering through the trees.
Or a piece of music.
The colours of a sunset.
The smile of someone you love.
Or maybe something much smaller – a flower growing through a crack in the pavement, rain on a window, or the way your dog or cat looked at you for just a moment.
Beauty and the Brain
Neuroaesthetics is the science that studies how beauty impacts the brain.
Beauty reduces activation of stress centres in the brain. It also moves us into a state of parasympathetic dominance. That’s where the nervous system feels rested.
It can also reduce pain and promote an overall sense of greater wellbeing.
Researchers have found that beautiful experiences generally evoke positive emotions and gently broaden our attention. That was my experience in Locorotondo.
And beauty can be individual and subjective. So if you perceive something as beautiful, even if someone else doesn’t see it that way or misses it entirely, it still activates your brain regions associated with reward and positive emotional experiences – like the medial orbitofrontal cortex.
Why does beauty have these effects? Researchers believe it’s because it signals safety in the brain. When our ancient ancestors met lush landscapes, growing fruit and flowers, it meant food and safety for them.
The Invitation of Beauty
Beauty invites us to look up at the world, to look into it, to look around us and become more aware of the world beyond ourselves.
This quickly counters stress, expands our perception and alters how we see problems – helping to change them from threats to something easier to handle.
It might be one reason people instinctively seek beauty when life feels difficult.
We walk in nature.
Listen to music.
Visit the coast or somewhere picturesque.
Stand on a hilltop.
Watch the sun setting.
It’s not because beauty solves our problems.
But because, for a few moments, it changes our relationship with them.
Beauty in the Ordinary
And here’s something I think is important to understand.
Beauty doesn’t have to be spectacular.
It doesn’t have to involve travelling to somewhere exotic or standing in front of a famous painting.
Some of the most beautiful moments happen in ordinary places. It’s what you, personally, find beautiful.
-Like the steam rising from a morning cup of coffee.
-Freshly fallen snow.
-A child’s laughter.
-The pattern the rain leaves on a window.
-A familiar face – human or animal.
-A smile.
-An act of kindness.
We often think of beauty as a luxury.
Something that’s nice when we have time to go admire it.
But beauty is actually something we need. It’s built into the human condition.
Life doesn’t necessarily become perfect when we notice beauty.
But noticing beauty reminds us that life is more than our worries.
Try This
Here’s something to try this week.
Take one photograph each day of something you find beautiful.
Not for Instagram.
Not to impress anyone.
Just for yourself.
You may discover something surprising.
Once you begin looking for beauty, you start finding it everywhere.
Perhaps it was there all along.
It was simply waiting for your attention.
Because beauty doesn’t always appear when we find it. Sometimes it appears when we start looking for it.
References
1) A couple of short plain-language pieces about neuroaesthetics. Link. Link.
2) The broaden and build theory of positive emotions. Link.
3) Link between natural beauty, mental wellbeing, and attention restoration. Link.
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