SynthesisCognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience2020
Seeking the "Beauty Center" in the Brain: A Meta-Analysis of fMRI Studies of Beautiful Human Faces and Visual Art.
Synthesis in Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 41 citations in OpenAlex.
- A neuroimaging meta-analysis on social impression formation of stable characteristics.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2026Pooled it
- Neural correlates of negative aesthetic evaluations in visual art: a neuroimaging meta-analysis.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Pooled it
- Aesthetic evaluation underpinning brand love relationship development: an activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis and multivariate analysis.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2024Pooled it
- Latent neural architecture organising shared aesthetic evaluations of visual artworks.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Neural substrates of ambiguity and beauty in haiku poetry: an fMRI study.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- The aesthetic triad and traditional Chinese art symbols: a theoretical framework.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Mapping the brain networks underlying creativity enhancement via aesthetic experience.European journal of medical research · 2025Review
- A Narrative Scoping Review of Neuroaesthetics and Objective Understanding of Human Appearance.Plastic and reconstructive surgery. Global open · 2025Article
- Brain's geometries for movements and beauty judgments. A contribution of topos geometries.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Understanding the Changes in Brain Activation When Viewing Products with Differences in Attractiveness.Neurology international · 2024Article
- Ecological decoding of visual aesthetic preference with oscillatory electroencephalogram features-A mini-review.Frontiers in neuroergonomics · 2024Review
- Binocularly suppressed stimuli induce brain activities related to aesthetic emotions.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2024Article
- On the connection between creativity and aesthetics.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Unveiling the Interplay Between Depressive Symptoms' Alleviation and Quality of Life Improvement in Major Depressive Disorder: A Network Analysis Based on Longitudinal Data.Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment · 2024Article
- Investigating the role of working memory resources across aesthetic and non-aesthetic judgements.Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) · 2023Article
- The reciprocal relationship between openness and creativity: from neurobiology to multicultural environments.Frontiers in neurology · 2023Review
- Testing the Reproducibility of the Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation: Failure to Modulate Beauty Perception by Brain Stimulation.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
- Article
- The Cerebellum and Beauty: The Impact of the Cerebellum in Art Experience and Creativity.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2022Article
- Does Amount of Information Support Aesthetic Values?Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
During the past two decades, cognitive neuroscientists have sought to elucidate the common neural basis of the experience of beauty. Still, empirical evidence for such common neural basis of different forms of beauty is not conclusive. To address this question, we performed an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis on the existing neuroimaging studies of beauty appreciation of faces and visual art by nonexpert adults (49 studies, 982 participants, meta-data are available at https://osf.io/s9xds/ ). We observed that perceiving these two forms of beauty activated distinct brain regions: While the beauty of faces convergently activated the left ventral striatum, the beauty of visual art convergently activated the anterior medial prefrontal cortex (aMPFC). However, a conjunction analysis failed to reveal any common brain regions for the beauty of visual art and faces. The implications of these results are discussed.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.