>The scientists found that the more beautiful an equation was to the mathematician, the more activity his or her brain showed in an area called the A1 field of the medial orbitofrontal cortex.
From the sound of that, "beauty" evokes a reward response in the part of the brain (medial orbitofrontal cortex) responsible for processing reinforcement learning signals. This is pretty interesting, since it says that the brain can process a reward signal for a very abstract property that probably has very little correlation with direct sensory rewards.
From the sound of that, "beauty" evokes a reward response in the part of the brain (medial orbitofrontal cortex) responsible for processing reinforcement learning signals. This is pretty interesting, since it says that the brain can process a reward signal for a very abstract property that probably has very little correlation with direct sensory rewards.