The Aesthetic Brain summary

Most parts of the human body serve a basic, primitive function. We have mouths so we can consume energy in the form of food, opposable thumbs to help us grasp objects and legs to carry us through the world. Similarly, the human brain has distinct regions that maintain specific functions, like learning languages and making decisions.

Each of these developed because of the survival benefits they afforded our ancestors, which, in turn, helped them live long enough to pass these benefits on to their descendents. So the question is: what’s the survival benefit in finding something beautiful?

Looking at centuries-old baroque paintings, one thing is clear: the idealized women depicted in these pictures are much more curvaceous than the pencil-thin supermodels we see on magazine covers today. What changed?

While our sense of beauty is largely determined by our brain’s structure, the society we live in also influences what we consider beautiful. Scientists have found that the body styles men look for in partners are affected by the food supply of the community in which they live.

Art is everywhere you look, from the streets and alleyways of your city to the kindergarten classroom down the block, full of kids happily scribbling, singing, dancing and telling stories. Creativity seems to come naturally to children – but art is an essential aspect of human nature in general.

As a result, we can’t talk about human history without coming across some form of art. For instance, some cave paintings date back as far as 30,000 years, while the oldest man-made sculpture, the Venus of Tan-Tan, which was discovered in North Africa, is around 400,000 years old!

The human brain has fixed regions for certain abilities like linguistic acquisition and logical thinking. Art, on the other hand, has no such set location in the brain.

Instead, many different neural networks work together to create and process art. This is only logical, since our experience of art involves our senses, emotions and thinking, all in equal proportions.

What’s the biggest difference between a great painting and an ad for men’s underwear? Both are created with the utmost care and are made to be as visually appealing as possible. But while they’re both intended to please us, they trigger different responses in our brains.

There are two rather distinct reward systems in the human brain. One is responsible for liking and one is in charge of wanting. Since we usually want what we like and like what we want, these two networks tend to work together. But when it comes to aesthetic experiences, like the enjoyment of art, they can become uncoupled.

People have been pondering why humans created art for eons and, at this point, there are essentially two schools of thought on the matter.

The first considers art to be an instinct, which implies that it has an evolutionary purpose – that humans invented it because it helped them survive in some way or another. An underlying argument of this position holds that art enhanced human chances for survival by strengthening the social bonds in groups.

Although we might not always think of it this way, humans aren’t the only species on earth that sings. Birds are also magnificent vocalists, and the story of one singing bird in particular, the Bengalese finch, can show us how nature brought art into existence.

Over the course of human evolution, people rapidly developed mental capacities for art, but were only able to express them when in a secure environment. This development was parallel to the way the Bengalese finch began to sing.