Zeki, S;
Romaya, JP;
Benincasa, DM;
Atiyah, MF;
(2014)
The experience of mathematical beauty and its neural correlates.
Front Hum Neurosci
, 8
, Article 68. 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00068.
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Abstract
Many have written of the experience of mathematical beauty as being comparable to that derived from the greatest art. This makes it interesting to learn whether the experience of beauty derived from such a highly intellectual and abstract source as mathematics correlates with activity in the same part of the emotional brain as that derived from more sensory, perceptually based, sources. To determine this, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to image the activity in the brains of 15 mathematicians when they viewed mathematical formulae which they had individually rated as beautiful, indifferent or ugly. Results showed that the experience of mathematical beauty correlates parametrically with activity in the same part of the emotional brain, namely field A1 of the medial orbito-frontal cortex (mOFC), as the experience of beauty derived from other sources.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The experience of mathematical beauty and its neural correlates. |
| Location: | Switzerland |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00068 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00068 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2014 Zeki, Romaya, Benincasa and Atiyah. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.PMCID: PMC3923150 |
| Keywords: | beauty, fMRI, mathematics, mofc, neuroesthetics |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Cell and Developmental Biology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1422447 |
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