Neuroculture: art, aesthetics, and the brain

A theory of the neurobiological foundations of aesthetics and art is described. This has its roots in emotion, in which what is pleasant or unpleasant, a reward or punisher, is the result of an evolutionary process in which genes define the (pleasant or unpleasant) goals for action. To this is added the operation of the reasoning, syntactic, brain system which evolved to help solve difficult, multistep, problems, and the use of which is encouraged by pleasant feelings when elegant, simple, and hence aesthetic solutions are found that are advantageous because they are parsimonious and follow Occam’s razor. The combination of these two systems and the interactions between them provide an approach to understanding aesthetics that is rooted in evolution and its effects on brain design and function.