Beauty Requires Thought, Neuroscientists Find (IMAGE)

New York University

Beauty Requires Thought, Neuroscientists Find

Caption

Experiencing beauty requires thought, a team of neuroscientists has found in a study that confirms an 18th-century claim by the philosopher Immanuel Kant. The study, by NYU doctoral candidate Aenne Brielmann, left, and NYU Professor Denis Pelli, right, included experiments to determine how beauty and sensuous pleasures are processed. In them, subjects were shown "beautiful" and ordinary images; to measure how we process sensuous pleasures, participants tasted fruit-flavored candy or touched teddy bears with various wool textures.

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Zach Gross

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