897963

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PPSXXX10.1177/1745691619897963Skov, NadalAesthetics in Psychology and Neuroscience

ASSOCIATION FOR
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE

Perspectives on Psychological Science

A Farewell to Art: Aesthetics as a Topic 1­–13

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DOI: 10.1177/1745691619897963
https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691619897963
www.psychologicalscience.org/PPS

Martin Skov1,2 and Marcos Nadal3

1
Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance, Copenhagen University Hospital Hvidovre;
2
Decision Neuroscience Research Cluster, Copenhagen Business School; and 3Human Evolution
and Cognition Group, Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems, University
of the Balearic Islands/Spanish National Research Council

Abstract
Empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics study two main issues: the valuation of sensory objects and art experience.
These two issues are often treated as if they were intrinsically interrelated: Research on art experience focuses on
how art elicits aesthetic pleasure, and research on valuation focuses on special categories of objects or emotional
processes that determine the aesthetic experience. This entanglement hampers progress in empirical aesthetics and
neuroaesthetics and limits their relevance to other domains of psychology and neuroscience. Substantial progress in
these fields is possible only if research on aesthetics is disentangled from research on art. We define aesthetics as the
study of how and why sensory stimuli acquire hedonic value. Under this definition, aesthetics becomes a fundamental
topic for psychology and neuroscience because it links hedonics (the study of what hedonic valuation is in itself)
and neuroeconomics (the study of how hedonic values are integrated into decision making and behavioral control).
We also propose that this definition of aesthetics leads to concrete empirical questions, such as how perceptual
information comes to engage value signals in the reward circuit or why different psychological and neurobiological
factors elicit different appreciation events for identical sensory objects.

Keywords
art, aesthetics, aesthetic experience, sensory valuation, empirical aesthetics, neuroaesthetics

Researchers who study empirical aesthetics and neuro-
aesthetics seek to understand the psychological and
neurobiological processes involved in aesthetic creation
and appreciation. Empirical aesthetics was founded in
the 19th century. It was the second experimental field
of psychology, after psychophysics (Fechner, 1865,
1871, 1876; Nadal & Vartanian, 2019). Neuroaesthetics,
in turn, emerged as one of several subfields of human
cognitive neuroscience in the 1990s, when modern neu-
roimaging became available to researchers (Chatterjee
& Vartanian, 2014; Nadal, Gomila, & Gálvez-Pol, 2014;
Skov & Vartanian, 2009). Both fields continue to grow
fast and to contribute many and important empirical
findings that advance the understanding of the function
and biology of the human mind (Chatterjee, 2011; Nadal
& Pearce, 2011).
Although empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics
are both thriving enterprises, there is little agreement
as to what “aesthetics” actually is. Consequently, there
is little agreement as to what empirical aesthetics and
neuroaesthetics are sciences of. According to most
accounts, empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics
study two problems: (a) the problem of valuation, or
how the human mind appraises sensory objects, and
(b) the problem of art experience, or how the human
mind appreciates art. Chatterjee (2011), for instance,
formulated it like this: “The term aesthetics is used
broadly to encompass the perception, production, and
response to art, as well as interactions with objects and
scenes that evoke an intense feeling, often of pleasure”
(p. 53).
The problem of valuation and the problem of art expe-
rience, however, are often treated as two sides of the same
coin, as if art and aesthetics were intrinsically interrelated.
Corresponding Author:
Martin Skov, Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance,
Hvidovre Hospital, Section 714, Kettegaards Alle 30, DK-2650
Hvidovre, Denmark
E-mail: martins@drcmr.dk
2 Skov, Nadal
This leads to hypotheses that entangle the two problems:
The problem of art experience becomes focused on how
art elicits aesthetic pleasure, and the problem of valuation
becomes focused on special categories of objects—
artworks—or emotional processes—aesthetic emotions—
that determine the aesthetic experience.
The solution to this confusion and the way forward
for empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics as healthy
research paradigms with clearly delineated problems is
to separate the questions about sensory pleasure from
the questions about art experience. Pearce and col-
leagues (2016) argued that the best way to do so is to
distinguish between a cognitive science of aesthetics,
which studies how sensory valuation is formed (but is
not limited to art objects), and a cognitive science of
art, which studies the many neurobiological processes
associated with experiencing art (beyond the question
of how artworks elicit pleasure or beauty). By adopting
this distinction, a cognitive science of aesthetics would
deal with scientific questions related to how a stimulus
acquires hedonic value, and a cognitive science of art
would deal with scientific questions related to how the
brain represents and experiences a specific set of object
categories—visual art (Vartanian & Skov, 2014; Wiesmann
& Ishai, 2010), music (Ellison, Moisseinen, Fachner, &
Brattico, 2015; Koelsch & Siebel, 2005), dance (Calvo-
Merino, Glaser, Grèzes, Passingham, & Haggard, 2005;
Kirsch, Ugresi & Cross, 2016), literature ( Jacobs, 2015;
Jacobs & Willems, 2018), or film (Heimann et al., 2019;
Vodrahalli et al., 2018).
Pearce and colleagues’ (2016) suggestion, however,
has had little following among researchers in empirical
aesthetics and neuroaesthetics. Most researchers con-
tinue to treat the study of art experience and the study
of sensory pleasure as aspects of the same problem.
For example, in a recent introduction to aesthetics,
Brielmann and Pelli (2018) acknowledged that empiri-
cal aesthetics has two different research foci: “one
broad—research on beauty, aesthetic pleasure, and
preference—and one narrowly focused on art—research
on the perception, evaluation, and creation of art”
(p.  R859). Despite this explicit acknowledgment and
although Brielmann and Pelli wrote that they “take the
broader focus, and include art as one of many stimuli
that elicit aesthetic responses” (p. R858), they almost
exclusively reviewed literature on how art stimuli trig-
ger pleasure. They made no mention of research on
sensory pleasure that studies nonart objects, such as
food, money, or sex. Thus, although they conceded the
fundamental difference between art experience and
sensory pleasure, they continued to present “art plea-
sure” as distinct from nonart pleasures.
The idea that art experience and sensory valuation
are facets of the same problem has, at least, four con-
sequences that hinder progress in empirical aesthetics
and neuroaesthetics. First, it perpetuates notions of
aesthetic experience and art that emerged in Europe
during the 18th and 19th centuries because of the
expansion of the market economy and the rise of the
bourgeoisie, which found in art and good taste ways
to assert its social standing.
Second, by assuming that certain sensory objects are
special—that is to say, different from “normal” or “ordi-
nary” objects—and therefore able to elicit special
hedonic responses, the phenomenon of aesthetic
appreciation becomes severed from the concept of
hedonic appraisal in general. This separation is not only
evidently at odds with what is known about the neu-
robiology of hedonic valuation, but also treats “aes-
thetic” pleasure as special, distinct from “nonaesthetic”
pleasures experienced through the interaction with
“ordinary” sensory objects, isolating empirical aesthet-
ics and neuroaesthetics from other fields of psychology
and neuroscience (Skov, 2019a; Skov & Nadal, 2018,
2019).
Third, the ideas of “art” and “aesthetics” carry with
them a number of historical assumptions that are
imported into psychological and neuroscientific theo-
ries of aesthetic appreciation without much consider-
ation, even when their conceptual foundations are at
odds with our current understanding of how the brain
works (Hayn-Leichsenring & Chatterjee, 2019).
Finally, equating aesthetic appreciation with the
experience of art distorts how aesthetic values arise.
To see aesthetic appreciation mainly as a system for
assessing the aesthetic qualities of art objects separates
it from its evolutionary history and thus from a true
understanding of why it is equipped with the compu-
tational mechanisms it is. As a result, most current theo-
ries in empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics are
unable to explain why specific computational factors
influence aesthetic valuation.
We expand on these points below. By making these
fundamental issues explicit, we hope to convince other
researchers, both in empirical aesthetics/neuroaesthet-
ics and psychology/neuroscience more broadly, that it
is necessary to divorce the study of sensory valuation
from the study of art experience. Moreover, we suggest
that, henceforth, the term aesthetics should be restricted
to the study of sensory valuation. We also outline how
a science of aesthetics can be precisely defined, and
we describe how such a scientific study of aesthetic
appreciation can be fruitfully related to existing fields
of inquiry in contemporary neuroscience.
How and Why Did Art and Aesthetic
Valuation Become Entangled?
The idea that art and aesthetics fit together like hand
in glove has become so familiar that it is rarely
Aesthetics in Psychology and Neuroscience 3
questioned. But familiar does not mean right: The idea
that art and aesthetics are intrinsically bound together
does not hold up to historical facts: “The connection
between art and aesthetics is a matter of historical con-
tingency, and not part of the essence of art” (Danto,
1997, p. 25). Art and aesthetics were made to fit each
other. This was possible only because “art” was created
as a distinct category of activities and “aesthetic experi-
ence” became a special and proper way of engaging
with art. That art and aesthetics seem to fit each other
says little about art and aesthetics themselves. It does,
however, say a lot about how and why the Western
tradition of thought has conceived them and, ultimately,
entangled them.
The creation of art
Some activities we classify as sports, others as games.
Even the same activity can be a sport or a game,
depending on the circumstances. The distinction has
little to do with the nature of those activities, but it
helps make sense of our social reality. Sports, Olympic
sports, and games are not natural kinds: They do not
reflect significant natural boundaries that are indepen-
dent of culture and history. They are human kinds:
They reflect culturally meaningful boundaries. Art is
also a human kind. There is nothing in the nature of
art that sets it apart from nonartistic activities. Similar
to other human kinds, the category “art” helps us sim-
plify our complex social reality by organizing it into
manageable chunks. And similar to other human kinds,
it is the product of historical discourse: “Art as we have
generally understood it is a European invention barely
two hundred years old” (Shiner, 2001, p. 3).
The idea that the sort of activities referred to as art
constitutes a single class began taking shape during the
Renaissance (Tatarkiewicz, 1971). In the late 17th and
early 18th centuries, the classification of the arts had
become a hot topic in European intellectual circles.
Many proposals were circulated. Kant (1790/2007), for
instance, divided the arts into speaking arts (poetry and
eloquence), plastic arts (painting, sculpture, architec-
ture, and gardening), and arts of the beautiful play of
sentiments (music and the art of color). But the decisive
step toward the modern system of arts was Batteux’s
(1746/2015) treatise. Batteux separated what he called
the fine arts—music, poetry, painting, sculpture, and
dance—from the mechanical arts. He believed that the
fine arts sought to imitate nature, but only its beautiful
aspects, and that the fine arts’ sole purpose was to give
pleasure. Eloquence and architecture combined plea-
sure and usefulness, so they were placed in a separate
group (Kristeller, 1952).
The notion of a common essence to all arts that justi-
fies their inclusion in a common category has stayed
with us, but the awareness of the historical contingency
of the modern system of the arts has been lost. The
category “art” does not reflect a natural division of
human activities or capacities: “The branches of the arts
all have their rise and decline, and even their birth and
death, and the distinction between ‘major’ arts and their
subdivisions is arbitrary and subject to change”
(Kristeller, 1952, p. 45). There is nothing in the nature
of painting that makes it more an art than landscape
gardening or eloquence, just as there is nothing in the
nature of judo that makes it more an Olympic sport
than karate.
The creation of aesthetic appreciation
From the mid-18th century to the late 19th century, the
fine arts became associated with inspiration and genius
and were supposed to be appreciated in a refined fash-
ion. Crafts were considered merely to require skill and
knowledge of conventions and were relegated to an
inferior status (Shiner, 2001). Artworks became autono-
mous objects, devoid of functional purpose, to be fully
appreciated without reference to context (Carroll,
2008). This perspective was accompanied by a change
in what people expected from craft and art. Whereas
craft could produce only ordinary functional pleasure,
by being useful or amusing, art was expected to pro-
pitiate a refined and elevated contemplative pleasure,
an aesthetic pleasure (Shiner, 2001). The aesthetic con-
templation of art was thus stripped of the defining traits
of craft: purpose and common pleasure. In addition,
sight and hearing became privileged conducers of this
distinct form of aesthetic pleasure:
The shift from “taste” to the “aesthetic” came about
partly as a result of giving a more intellectual
character to the pleasures of the “higher” senses
of the eye and ear in order to further distance them
from ordinary sensual enjoyments. (Shiner, 2001,
p. 141)
Whereas art had traditionally engaged people’s social,
moral, religious, or recreational interests, now disinter-
ested contemplation was regarded as the appropriate
response to objects classified as art.
The separation of art and craft, the elevation of the
fine arts, and the institution of a special form of aes-
thetic pleasure were all products of intellectual, cul-
tural, social, political, and economic factors. The most
important were the expansion of the market economy
and the desire for an improved social status of a grow-
ing middle class. Art became a commodity for the bour-
geoisie, and good taste became an important sign of
social standing (Carroll, 2008; Shiner, 2001). Once inter-
woven, art and its proper aesthetic contemplation
4 Skov, Nadal
became signs of refined taste and good social position.
This new way of understanding art and aesthetic experi-
ence was elaborated to fit the philosophical paradigms
and the social landscape that emerged throughout the
18th century:
The standard concept of aesthetic experience,
then, took hold in the eighteenth century for at
least two, inter-related reasons. There was the
intellectual or philosophical task of rationalizing
membership in the Modern System of the Arts in
terms of some criterion, on the one hand, and the
social pressure to arrive at a criterion that reflected
the emerging bourgeois practices of consuming
the fine arts, on the other hand. The aesthetic
theory of art appeared to fit the bill on both
counts. (Carroll, 2008, p. 153)
In sum, the notion of a special kind of aesthetic
experience in response to art is based on 18th-century
philosophical paradigms and socioeconomic changes.
It is not based on a systematic analysis of human behav-
ior or on an understanding of how the brain works.
The link between art and aesthetic experience does
not, therefore, reflect an understanding of human
nature. It is the lasting consequence of the elevation of
a particular set of activities—the beaux arts—above
others and of the elevation of a particular set of
people—the European bourgeois—above others.
The Problem With Art
Despite lacking any basis in a scientific understanding
of the human mind, the 19th-century notion linking an
arbitrary object category (“art”) with a supposedly spe-
cial phenomenological experience (“aesthetic”) remains
alive today. To a great number of researchers in modern
psychology and neuroscience, “aesthetic” continues to
mark out a special domain of human experience that
involves special perceptual, cognitive, and emotional
states being evoked through the encounter with special
objects (e.g., Carbon, 2018, 2019; Menninghaus et al.,
2019; Menninghaus et al., 2017; Pelowski, Forster, Tinio,
Scholl, & Leder, 2017; Pelowski, Markey, Forster, Gerger,
& Leder, 2017; Sherman & Morrissey, 2017; see also
Skov & Nadal, 2018, 2019). We present two specific
examples that serve to illustrate how the “aesthetic”
retains this peculiar 19th-century meaning.
The first example is taken from an article, “Stability
and Variability in Aesthetics Experience: A Review,” by
Jacobsen and Beudt (2017). The authors analyzed fac-
tors that help determine whether “aesthetic prefer-
ences” (p. 2) are universal or subjective. In doing so,
they presented the phenomenon of “aesthetic” prefer-
ences as a special kind of taste:
In aesthetics, we deal with a multitude of factors
influencing our preferences, judgments,
contemplation, appreciation, liking, and disliking.
While we are searching for laws of aesthetics
universal for mankind, there is also no accounting
for taste. While Homo sapiens appears to be the
only primate species capable of fully developed
aesthetic processing [emphasis added], there is also
no denying that evolution has an influence on our
aesthetic appreciation. ( Jacobsen & Beudt, 2017,
p. 1)
This special kind of aesthetic appreciation is defined
as “the evaluation of sensations and perceptions against
relevant concepts like the beautiful, the elegant, the
harmonious, the melodious, the rhythmical, and the
like” ( Jacobsen & Beudt, 2017, para. 2). The authors
furthermore stressed that “all episodes of aesthetic
appreciation for our concern” involve “episodes of men-
tal processing of art” ( Jacobsen & Beudt, 2017, para. 1)
and, accordingly, restricted their review of factors that
influence aesthetic preferences to studies of different
art forms: visual art, photography, music, literature,
dance, architecture, and design—what they collectively
referred to as “aesthetic domains” ( Jacobsen & Beudt,
2017). Thus, to Jacobsen and Beudt, the word aesthetics
functions as a qualifier: It marks out psychological pro-
cesses associated with evaluations of sensation that lead
to liking or disliking but only processes that are distinct
in nature—specifically, processes that are unique to
humans, involve specific appraisal “concepts,” and are
prompted by a particular class of sensory objects (art).
The second example, “The Role of Hedonics in the
Human Affectome” (Becker et  al., 2019), presented a
view of aesthetic pleasure from the point of view of
mainstream neuroscience. It is a comprehensive review
of literature pertaining to “Hedonics,” the core experi-
ence of pleasure and displeasure (Becker et al., 2019).
The authors explicitly compared research on the neu-
robiological mechanisms associated with pleasure and
displeasure conducted in animals and humans and sug-
gested a great overlap in how pleasure and displeasure
are generated across species. They also—in contrast to
Jacobsen and Beudt (2017)—assigned negative hedonic
responses, including pain, a prominent place in their
description of the hedonic system. Indeed, the authors
made a strong argument for the view that it is mislead-
ing to treat pleasure and displeasure as strictly separate
categories. The authors made no mention of aesthetics
until a subsection on “applied hedonics.” In their article,
aesthetic hedonics is again thought to encompass a
specific “applied context” in which interaction with aes-
thetic objects such as interior design or architecture
may modulate the hedonic system and induce positive
hedonic feelings in a special way. In a short section
Aesthetics in Psychology and Neuroscience 5
called “Neuroaesthetics,” the authors described how
neuroaesthetics research linked the aesthetic experi-
ence to basic reward processes yet kept open the ques-
tion of whether “aesthetic emotions are distinct from
adaptive emotions” (Becker et al., 2019, p. 230). Thus,
to the degree aesthetics is seen as playing a role in the
neuroscientific study of hedonics, it is relegated to its
periphery; it designates a specific use of the more gen-
eral system of pleasure and displeasure. This use is
viewed as related to interactions with certain objects—
buildings, rooms, music—that afford us a way of modu-
lating the hedonic system, especially by inducing states
of positive hedonic values. The nature of this “aesthetic”
engagement of the hedonic system may or may not be
different from other, “adaptive” uses.
Both of these examples illustrate how in contempo-
rary psychology and neuroscience, the study of aesthet-
ics is primarily framed as a specialty study, with an
uneasy connection to other fields of inquiry. It is viewed
as concerned with a specific subset of hedonic taste
responses (i.e., those that involve evaluation of objects
belonging to so-called aesthetic domains: mainly works
of art). Thus, distinct from cases of “adaptive” apprecia-
tion, “aesthetic” appreciation is seen as designating a
separate category of preference judgments that involves
the appraisal of aesthetic objects (i.e., art). The notion
of aesthetic appreciation is primarily, if not exclusively,
associated with positive hedonics responses, perhaps
even distinct emotional states. It is widely assumed that
this special kind of taste response is unique to the
human mind and not observed in other species.
Defining aesthetics in this restricted way has two
consequences for empirical aesthetics and neuroaes-
thetics. First, limiting what counts as aesthetics to a
special variant of sensory taste responses, demarcated
by the kind of sensory objects and hedonic responses
involved, is to detach aesthetics from other branches
of psychology and neuroscience that investigate sen-
sory valuation. As a result, research conducted in
empirical aesthetics or neuroaesthetics becomes
divorced from research on, say, gustatory and olfactory
taste responses, or valuation events that involve sex,
social interactions, or money. Consequently, insights
gained in these branches of psychology and neurosci-
ence may be deemed irrelevant to aesthetics and vice
versa. A bibliometric analysis of research papers pub-
lished in English since 1972 suggests that in fact, what
is published under the auspices of aesthetics has little
or no contact to other fields studying hedonic taste in
humans and animals (Anglada-Tort & Skov, 2019). For
instance, an analysis of the distribution of keywords
associated with publications tagged as aesthetics
revealed five clusters of research communities, centered
on art and culture, philosophy, empirical aesthetics,
environmental aesthetics, and reconstructive surgery
(Fig. 1). In contrast, research centered on food con-
sumption, sexual selection, or economic behavior did
not come up at all as a part of the study of aesthetics,
suggesting that these forms of sensory valuation are
not considered aesthetic in nature and that knowledge
gained from their study play no part in how research
unfolds in self-defined aesthetic research clusters.
The second consequence is that empirical aesthetics
and neuroaesthetics come to posit the existence of
special, distinctive, psychological, and neuroscientific
states and mechanisms associated with instances of
“nonordinary” hedonic appreciation (Nadal & Skov,
2018; Skov, 2019a; Skov & Nadal, 2018, 2019). What
does this purported specialness amount to? It appears
to be defined by two main components: (a) “Aesthetic”
hedonic values are believed to be elicited by certain
specific object categories, hedonic responses that (b)
in contrast to “adaptive” or “ordinary” hedonic responses
are thought to consist of distinct patterns of engage-
ment of the reward circuit, characterized by predomi-
nantly positively valenced affective states. When these
putative “aesthetic” responses occur, prompted by “aes-
thetic” objects, we have an instance of “aesthetic”
appreciation and an “aesthetic” experience. The impli-
cation, of course, is that many objects do not qualify
as “aesthetic,” stimuli that are not considered capable
of prompting the proper kind of “aesthetic” response
believed to exist. This idea separates “aesthetic” hedon-
ics from “nonaesthetic” hedonics (as illustrated by our
examples above). Consequently, the bulk of what we
have learned about the function of the reward circuit’s
value signals is dismissed as irrelevant to the study of
aesthetics. For example, negative hedonic values are
neglected or directly rejected as irrelevant to aesthetics.
(Do pain or disgust qualify as aesthetic hedonic states?)
Instead, researchers in empirical aesthetics and neuro-
aesthetics hold untested assumptions about the sup-
posed nature of the positive affective states that
“aesthetic” events are thought to elicit and characterize
them as especially intense or moving (Makin, 2017;
Menninghaus et al., 2019), able to afford pleasure, but
without negative addictive consequences (Christensen,
2017), or “disinterested” in that they lack a motivational
component (Chatterjee, 2013, 2014).
Obviously, none of these consequences would con-
stitute a problem if it were true that aesthetic experi-
ences designate a distinct psychological phenomenon
in which objects with special attributes conjure special
states of hedonic affect—responses that can be distin-
guished from other forms of adaptive sensory valuation.
However, little evidence supports this claim (Nadal &
6
ecosystem services
landscape aesthetics
physical activity
knowledge built environment

epistemology environment
symbolism
landscape
architecture product design
hermeneutics experience painting
science
ontology sustainability
technology creativity design usability
poetry nature perception
imagination
emotions user experience
phenomenology children
metaphor ethics ecology
philosophy education virtual reality
literature cinema culture evaluation cleft palate
face orthodontics
realism image art materiality aesthetic experience beauty psychology rehabilitation
religion
quality of life
emotion visual aesthetics satisfaction
Heidegger modernity aesthetics orthognathic surgery
poeticssemiotics time form aesthetic computational aesthetics dental esthetics
narrative color gingival recession
Kant modernism photography
style esthetics
preference rhinoplasty
space history China
Adorno sublime language implant
dental implants
representation memory fashion reconstruction gingiva
empirical aesthetics
avant-gardesubjectivity contemporary art performance translation zirconia immediate loading
relational aesthetics film trauma
ideology dental implant
politics affect
body neuroaesthetics
identity
ranciere globalization media gender
race embodiment dance
neoliberalism
taste violence
performativity

Fig. 1.  Map showing the connection between the most frequent keywords associated with self-designated aesthetics research, 1970–2018. Clustering of keywords
suggests that published research on aesthetics coalesce around five main “branches.” Data from Anglada-Tort and Skov (2019).
Aesthetics in Psychology and Neuroscience 7
Skov, 2017, 2018; Nadal, Vartanian, & Skov, 2017; Skov,
2019a, 2019b; Skov & Nadal, 2017, 2018, 2019). Rather,
empirical evidence shows (a) that the neurobiological
processes engaged when people form pleasure and
displeasure responses for works of art overlap with
those engaged by nonart stimuli (Bartra, McGuire, &
Kable, 2013; Brown, Gao, Tisdelle, Eickhoff, & Liotti,
2011; Sescousse, Caldú, Segura, & Dreher, 2013; Skov,
2019a, 2019b) and (b) that most of the computational
principles that determine how “ordinary” or “adaptive”
hedonic appreciation unfolds also apply to “aesthetic”
hedonic appreciation. No convincing evidence has yet
emerged that art produces unique hedonic states that
differ from hedonic states produced by nonart stimuli
because art can elicit especially moving or intense
states of pleasure or elicit pleasure that is not accom-
panied by the activation of motivational drive.
Indeed, researchers examining highly intense pleasure
states elicited by music, characterized by elevated neural
activity in nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and orbitofrontal
cortex (OFC; Salimpoor, Benovoy, Larcher, Dagher, &
Zatorre, 2011; Salimpoor et  al., 2013) and markedly
increased autonomic states (Grewe, Kopiez, & Altenmüller,
2009; Grewe, Nagel, Kopiez, & Altenmüller, 2007;
Salimpoor, Benovoy, Longo, Cooperstock, & Zatorre,
2009), found comparable patterns of activity when states
of intense pleasure are triggered by visual, gustatory, and
tactile nonartistic stimuli (Grewe, Katzur, Kopiez, & Alten-
müller, 2010). Likewise, there is robust evidence that
works of art elicit reward predictions (Gold, Mas-Herrero,
Zeighami, Benovoy, & Dagher Al Zatorre,2019; Hansen,
Dietz, & Vuust, 2017; Salimpoor et  al., 2013; Steinbeis,
Koelsch, & Sloboda, 2006), lead to prediction errors when
expectations are not met (Kobayashi & Schultz, 2014;
Salimpoor, Zald, Zatorre, Dagher, & McIntosh, 2015),
modulate saliency of perceptual objects, influence deci-
sion making and behavior (K. Kim, Ko, & Lee, 2012), and
in many other ways engage processes associated with
implementing the motivational impact of hedonic valua-
tion (Vartanian et al., 2013).
In sum, no evidence supports the notion that “aes-
thetic” experiences—aesthetic pleasure, aesthetic emo-
tions, aesthetic objects—exist in the 19th-century sense
of the word. In fact, the argument for accepting aesthet-
ics as a specialty study of a particular kind of hedonic
appreciation, distinguishable from other, “ordinary”
kinds of hedonic appreciation, is entirely circular: It is
assumed that such a phenomenon exists, and because
it is assumed that “aesthetic” appreciation exists as a sui
genesis phenomenon, it is rarely considered necessary
to concretely define exactly what is meant by this notion
or to explain how a concept of “aesthetic” appreciation
fits with a broader concept of hedonic appreciation.
A Place for Aesthetics in Psychology
and Neuroscience
If the 19th-century-based notions of art and aesthetic
experience prove at odds with a modern understanding
of how the human brain works, does the concept of
aesthetics have a place in contemporary behavioral and
brain sciences? We believe that it does. Aesthetics can
be used to describe a precisely defined topic in psy-
chology and neuroscience, with a productive relation
to other contemporary fields of inquiry.
In modern neuroscience, hedonic liking is conceived
of as a process in which sensory information is imbued
with hedonic value. Evidence from both animal and
human studies supports the idea that hedonic value is
computed by a distributed system of nuclei in the meso-
corticolimbic reward circuit (Bartra et al., 2013; Becker
et al., 2019; Berridge & Kringelbach, 2015; Brown et al.,
2011; Sescousse et al., 2013; Skov, 2019b). The process
of assigning a hedonic value to a sensory stimulus is
highly flexible and varies both between individuals and,
over time, within the same person. It is determined not
only by the object’s perceptual properties but also by
several endogenous and contextual factors (Skov,
2019b; Skov & Nadal, 2019; Fig. 2).
Together, these findings suggest that hedonic appre-
ciation—determining if the sensory object is liked or
Reward
Circuit
Executive Task Demands
Control
Reward
Object
Circuit
Interoception
Homeostasis
Fig. 2.  A graphic depiction of neurobiological systems involved in
computing hedonic liking for sensory objects. Hedonic values are
generated by distributed nuclei in the reward circuit when percep-
tual information gains access to them. The response of these value
signals to projections from sensory systems is modulated by input to
the reward circuit from interoceptive and executive systems, which
signal homeostatic states and ongoing task demands of relevance to
the specific valuation event. Figure reprinted from Skov, M. (2019).
Aesthetic appreciation: The view from neuroimaging. Empirical Stud-
ies of the Arts, 37, 220–248. Used with permission.
8 Skov, Nadal

Aesthetics Neuroeconomics
Sex
Olfactory
Feeding
Visual
Hedonic Social Interaction
Auditory
Value Economic Transactions
Somatosensory
Art
Gustatory
Environmental Location

Fig. 3.  The place of aesthetics in psychology and neuroscience. Aesthetics as a

scientific problem can be defined as the aspect of sensory valuation that refers
specifically to understanding how and why perceptual representation of a sensory
stimulus leads to a given hedonic value. By defining aesthetics in this sense,
empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics have a meaningful place in the context
of modern psychology and neuroscience.

disliked—can be described as a process by which infor-
mation gains access to and is assessed by the reward
circuit. A recent body of research that exemplifies this
principle is the work on specific musical anhedonia
(SMA). People who experience no pleasure from
music—people with SMA—have reduced activity in
NAcc despite being fully able to represent music per-
ceptually (Martínez-Molina, Mas-Herrero, Rodríguez-
Fornells, Zatorre, & Marco-Pallares, 2016; Mas-Herrero,
Karhulati Marcos-Pallares, Zatorre, & Rodriguez-Fornells,
2018; Mas-Herrero, Zatorre, Rodriguez-Fornells, &
Marco-Pallaes, 2014). This diminished capacity for musi-
cal pleasure contrasts with their intact ability to experi-
ence pleasure induced by visual art and money, both
of which do engage NAcc in people with SMA (Martínez-
Molina, 2016; Mas-Herrero et  al., 2018; Mas-Herrero
et al., 2014). This dissociation suggests that stimuli that
fail to engage nuclei in the reward circuit cannot acquire
a positive hedonic value. Recent tractography studies
confirmed this principle. Thus, Sachs, Ellis, Schlaug, and
Loui (2016) used diffusion tensor imaging to show that
people with SMA have diminished white matter con-
nectivity between auditory areas and NAcc. Even in peo-
ple with no SMA, individual sensitivity to musical pleasure
correlated with differences in connectivity between
auditory cortex and the reward circuit (Loui et al., 2017;
Martínez-Molina, Mas-Herrero, Rodríguez-Fornells,
Zatorre, & Marco-Pallarés, 2019).
Thus, hedonic appreciation unfolds as a neurobio-
logical process in which sensory information is pro-
jected to nuclei in the reward circuit, which generates
levels of pleasure or displeasure. An important conse-
quence of this computational setup is that although the
perceptual representation of an object is obviously
important to how it is appreciated, its hedonic impact
is not inherent to this perceptual representation. Rather,
hedonic values must be understood as a “gloss” that is
applied onto sensation by the mesocorticolimbic system
(Ellingsen, Leknes, & Kringelbach, 2015). This insight
is important because the way the reward system
responds to sensory input is not just determined by the
input it receives from perceptual systems but also by
projections from other systems (Fig. 2). For instance,
interoceptive signals project to nuclei in the striatum
via brainstem structures and the hypothalamus, which
modulates activity relative to the homeostatic state of
the organism (Morville et al., 2018). Likewise, prefrontal
structures project to several nuclei in the reward circuit,
including the orbitofrontal cortex, which allows the
executive system to influence valuation according to
behavioral task demands and goals (Aydogan et  al.,
2018). As a result, hedonic appreciation events always
unfold in a contextually flexible manner; the experi-
enced hedonic impact is determined not just by stimu-
lus properties but also by ongoing regulatory processes
(Skov, 2019b; Skov & Nadal, 2019).
How can we define the study of aesthetics within
this framework of modern neuroscience? From the per-
spective of psychology and neuroscience, aesthetics
can be viewed as the study of why a specific sensory
stimulus results in a specific hedonic value. This defini-
tion assigns all questions related to the understanding
of how hedonic values are computed for sensory
objects to the cognitive neuroscience of aesthetics and
distinguishes this problem from that of understanding
what hedonic valuation is in itself (hedonics) and how
hedonic values are integrated into decision making and
behavioral control (neuroeconomics; Fig. 3). Of course,
these distinctions are mainly for convenience given that
they aim to distinguish neurobiological mechanisms
and computational components that almost always
function together: Organisms assess the hedonic value
of sensory objects with the functional goal of motivat-
ing behavioral interaction with them. Nonetheless, from
Aesthetics in Psychology and Neuroscience 9
the point of view of scientific disciplines, there is some
sense in these distinctions. Research on hedonics is
usually concerned with understanding the neural
underpinnings of pleasure and displeasure regardless
of why a given stimulus elicits either. Neuroeconomics,
in contrast, focuses on determining the computational
factors that determine value-based decision making,
with little regard for what a hedonic value is per se or
why perceptual information triggers a given hedonic
response. By charting and understanding the specific
psychological and neurobiological mechanisms by
which hedonic values are computed for sensory objects,
aesthetics becomes the study of a well-defined scientific
problem and also gains a well-defined position with
respect to other psychological and neuroscientific
subdisciplines.
Furthermore, a cognitive science of aesthetics,
defined in this precise way, allows us to spell out what
would count as specific aesthetic problems in psycho-
logical and neuroscientific research. We suggest that
three sets of problems will constitute the core concerns
of a scientific study of aesthetics.
Question 1
What are the factors that determine individual outcomes
of an aesthetic appreciation event? By factor, we broadly
mean any kind of behavioral, psychological, or neuro-
biological feature or process that modulates how a
stimulus comes to acquire a specific hedonic value.
Experiments have revealed numerous such factors,
across all the sensory modalities, including factors that
derive from (a) the physical properties of sensory
objects, such as the symmetry or regularity of objects
(Friedenberg, 2018) or how “sweet” a gustatory object
is (Peng et  al., 2015); (b) the way object features are
represented by perceptual-cognitive systems (e.g., pre-
dictability, Egermann et al., 2013; or familiarity, Mastandrea
& Crano, 2019); and (c) the contextual circumstances,
including the external context (Grüner, Specker, &
Leder, 2019), the internal homeostatic states (Zimmerman
et  al., 2016), and top-down expectations (Kirk, Skov,
Hulme, Christensen, & Zeki, 2009). However, neurosci-
ence is far from being able to explain how these factors
work and why they influence a given appreciation
event in the manner they do. What has proved espe-
cially challenging to the study of aesthetics is coming
up with actual computational models that predict how
information flow will be affected by any individual fac-
tor. Furthermore, much work is still required to explain
why such factors modulate appreciation events differ-
ently in different individuals, which leads to consider-
able variation in aesthetic sensitivity (Corradi, Belman,
et al., 2019; Corradi, Chuquichambi, Barrada, Clemente,
& Nadal, 2019).
Question 2
How does sensory information come to activate pro-
cesses in the reward circuit? As explained above, sen-
sory objects are imbued with positive or negative
hedonic values when perceptual information is relayed
to the mesocorticolimbic reward circuit. But how does
this happen precisely? What are the concrete compu-
tational principles that lead a pattern of activity in a
perceptual-cognitive system to engage valuation mech-
anisms in the reward circuit? Although some headway
has been made in describing such computational prin-
ciples for some sensory systems, especially the gusta-
tory system (Rossi & Stuber, 2018), there are very few
answers to this fundamental question for other systems.
For example, visual studies showed that objects with a
symmetrical organization of stimulus properties have a
strong—albeit not universal (Leder et  al., 2019)—
tendency to elicit pleasurable responses. Experiments
suggested that degree of visual symmetry is perceptu-
ally represented by a distributed network of neurons
in extrastriate cortex that include the areas V3A, V4d/v,
V7, and the lateral occipital complex (Bertamini &
Makin, 2014; Sasaki, Vanduffel, Knutsen, Tyler, &
Tootell, 2005). To this day, however, it remains unclear
precisely what kind of perceptual activity excites the
reward neurons that generate pleasure. Neuroaesthetics
is still far from describing such computational interac-
tions between sensory systems and the reward circuit,
although a current thrust to give connectivity studies a
greater prominence in aesthetic research will likely
change this situation.
Question 3
Finally, what are the computational mechanisms that
make up the reward circuit? Work in the adjacent fields
of hedonics and neuroeconomics revealed that the
reward circuit contains several different subsystems
involved in different functions. For example, although
nuclei distributed across the ventral striatum, pallidum,
and ventral prefrontal cortex appear specialized for the
generation of pleasure or displeasure per se (Becker
et  al., 2019; Berridge, 2018; Smith, Mahler, Peciña, &
Berridge, 2010), dissociable populations of neurons in
other parts of the reward circuit seem dedicated to the
production of motivational drive, which facilitates
approach and avoidance behavior. Strong evidence sug-
gested that neurons in NAcc are critical to conditioned
learning, which associates specific sensory cues with a
predicted hedonic response (Talmi, Dayan, Kiebel,
Frith, & Dolan, 2009). A central component of this sub-
system is the computation of prediction errors, carried
out by neurons that signal that an expected reward did
not materialize or that a reward did unexpectedly occur
10 Skov, Nadal
(Kobayashi & Schultz, 2014; Schultz, 2016). In contrast,
neurons located in ventromedial prefrontal cortex,
especially the orbitofrontal cortex, appear to integrate
information from different sources and calculate
hedonic outcomes that reflect the specific current
appreciation context (Knutson & Genevsky, 2018).
These findings suggest that during appreciation
events, sensory information engages processes in the
reward circuit in a multitude of different functional
ways. In some circumstances, hedonic liking is deter-
mined by stored cue-reward associations, in others by
consideration of novel information. Appreciation events
vary in how they unfold, depending on whether they
are explicit or implicit to a behavioral task. For instance,
the explicit assessment of a face for its attractiveness
recruits value signals in the OFC that are not taken into
account when the same face is inspected with respect
to other task demands (Chatterjee, Thomas, Smith, &
Aguirre, 2009; H. Kim, Adolphs, O’Doherty, & Shimojo,
2007). One of the most crucial undertakings of aesthet-
ics is to map the different ways the reward circuit’s
value mechanisms can be triggered by projections from
the brain’s sensory systems, which creates different
types of appreciation events.
Conclusion: Exorcising Art From the
Study of Aesthetics
Much research in empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthet-
ics rests on ideas about art and aesthetic experience
that were developed more than two centuries ago.
These ideas linger today in the form of assumptions,
such as that art designates ontologically special objects,
the experience of which entails special mental states.
By adopting this view, current work in empirical aesthet-
ics and neuroaesthetics envisions “aesthetic” psychologi-
cal and neurobiological processes and mechanisms as
distinct mental phenomena, entirely separate from and
uninformed by phenomena studied by other branches
in psychology and neuroscience.
Progress in empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics
requires separating art from the study of aesthetics.
Aesthetics must be clearly set out as a general study of
how sensory information acquires hedonic value; art
objects are only one small subset of sensory stimuli that
falls under its purview. This is not to say that art does
not merit scientific research or that it should be beyond
the scope of the behavioral and brain sciences. The
creation and appreciation of art are important topics of
scientific research, and we expect they will also thrive
at a greater pace once they are disentangled from the
topic of sensory valuation.
Only by divorcing scientific aesthetics from the spe-
cial assumptions associated with art will it be possible
to define aesthetics in a precise way that turns it into
a central topic in psychology and neuroscience. As we
suggested, when viewed in this general way, aesthetics
can be defined as the study of how and why a specific
sensory stimulus acquires a specific hedonic value. Fur-
thermore, by adhering to this definition, it also becomes
possible to assign aesthetics a precise and integrated
place within the broader scope of psychology and neu-
roscience. Indeed, aesthetics has the potential to link
studies of hedonics and neuroeconomics by specifically
investigating how the neural systems underlying percep-
tion and hedonics combine to form appreciation events,
such as situations in which stimuli are attributed with a
degree of pleasure or displeasure. As we noted, this over-
arching problem can be further subdivided into concrete
empirical questions, such as how perceptual information
comes to engage value signals in the reward circuit or
why different psychological and neurobiological factors
elicit different appreciation events for identical sensory
objects. By adopting this approach, aesthetics gains a
well-defined and central place in the broader enterprise
of contemporary psychology and neuroscience.
Transparency
Action Editor: Laura A. King
Editor: Laura A. King
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of
interest with respect to the authorship or the publication
of this article.
ORCID iD
Martin Skov https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4895-4802
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