Beyond the scanner: why beauty cannot be trapped by electrodes?

A commentary on the article "Why beauty generates completely different sensations in each person" (Infobae / Smithsonian Magazine, May 2026) 

 

Bernabé Mallo
Doctor en Filosofía por la Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU)
Investigador en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte. / PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
Researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origins of art.

The value of the experiment (and its necessary limits)

The recent experiment by the Laboratory of Neuroaesthetics at the Museo Galileo in Florence —reported by Smithsonian Magazine and covered by Infobae— represents a significant methodological step. For the first time, laboratory tools (32-channel EEG, heart rate, galvanic skin response) have been brought into a real museum environment, with actual historical objects, such as an astrolabe attributed to Galileo. Volunteers observe, feel, and then assign a numerical score to perceived beauty.

The goal is not to demonstrate universal beauty, but to describe what measurable changes occur when someone evaluates an object as beautiful, and how context, prior knowledge, or received information influence that judgment. This is a legitimate and necessary advance.

However, as the researchers themselves acknowledge —and as experts cited in the article emphasise— sensors capture physiological correlates, not subjective experience itself. They can measure activation, but they cannot precisely translate that into emotions such as pleasure, unease, surprise, or rejection. Neuroaesthetics, since its early work by Semir Zeki and Tomohiro Ishizu, has shown that certain regions (such as the medial orbitofrontal cortex) activate during beauty judgments. But that does not mean we have found a "beauty centre". It is only one piece of the puzzle.

Surgical Philosophy and neural tri-functionality: S, Y, C

From the Surgical Philosophy I have been developing, these experiments are valuable but insufficient if they remain at the level of mere correlate description. Surgical Philosophy proposes to intervene conceptually on poorly posed questions, cutting with precision where philosophical tradition has generated unnecessary confusion. In this case, the confusion would be to believe that measuring brain activation equates to explaining aesthetic experience.

In my work on the origin of art —which I am developing under the title "The Origin of Art in the Homo Species: from Makapansgat to MoMA, from Primate to Sapiens"— I begin with a fundamental principle: neuronal functioning is based on a single function which, for analytical purposes, can be divided into three concatenated subfunctions that operate as a single unit. I call them S, Y, C:

• S = Survival. The fundamental biological function. Every neuronal process ultimately serves the preservation of the organism. The perception of beauty is not a disinterested luxury: it has roots in mechanisms for detecting favourable environments, resources, or signals of safety.

• Y = Symbolon (symbol, representation, meaning). The capacity for a stimulus to evoke something beyond its physical presence. Art is, above all, a machine for producing symbolon. An astrolabe is not just metal: it is knowledge, history, wonder. That symbolic dimension is inseparable from the aesthetic response.

• C = Wholeness. The neural tendency toward closure, totality, and integrated coherence. Our brain seeks to reduce uncertainty and find patterns. Beauty, to a large extent, is the experience of an achieved coherence: a form that closes, a rhythm that resolves, a meaning that emerges as an organic whole.

These three do not function separately. There is no first survival, then symbolon, then wholeness. They operate in a concatenated manner, as a single function with three analytical dimensions. Aesthetic experience is the result of that functional unity.

The Law of Biological Coherence and the function of art

The Law of Biological Coherence, also developed within the framework of my research, holds that living systems tend to maintain a state of functional coherence across their different levels (genetic, neuronal, physiological, behavioural, social). Aesthetic experience would not be a cultural luxury, but a mechanism of adjustment: when we perceive something as beautiful, our brain and body are finding a configuration that reduces internal entropy and facilitates information integration.

In other words: beauty is not just pleasure. It is also a form of cognitive and emotional orientation that helps the organism distinguish the relevant from the irrelevant, the harmonious from the chaotic. That is why art has persisted for hundreds of thousands of years: not because it is pleasant, but because it is functional for survival and social cohesion.

The Museo Galileo experiment, perhaps unknowingly, provides indirect evidence for this hypothesis: the physiological correlates of beauty (autonomic nervous system activation, heart rate changes, etc.) are precisely the same as those activated when an organism is processing information relevant to its adaptation.

Beauty as an encounter between S, Y, and C

The Museo Galileo experiment indirectly illustrates this functional architecture:

• Physiological sensors capture S: autonomic nervous system activation, heart rate changes, skin conductance. This is the survival dimension detecting relevance.

• But two people may have similar physiological responses and assign different beauty scores. Why? Because the Y dimension (symbolon) —the symbolic charge each projects onto the object— differs. The same astrolabe evokes in one visitor a fascination with astronomy, and in another indifference or even rejection.

• And the C dimension (wholeness) operates when perception manages to close a pattern, integrating scattered information into a coherent totality. That feeling of "being before something beautiful" is, to a large extent, the subjective experience of an achieved wholeness.

Beauty generates different sensations in each person precisely because the concatenation of S, Y, and C is irreducibly singular. It is not that each person has a different combination of three separate factors. Rather, the single neuronal function underlying all experience unfolds uniquely in each brain, at each moment, in each context.

A final reflection

What is needed —and what I aim to develop in my research— is an integrative model that neither reduces aesthetic experience to physiological data nor dissolves it into pure subjectivism. Neuroaesthetics needs philosophy to ask what it means that an orbitofrontal cortex activates. And philosophy needs neuroscience to avoid getting lost in unfalsifiable speculation.

The challenge is to build a framework that respects both empirical data and the irreducibility of subjective experience. That framework is what I try to contribute with my work: the functional S/Y/C model, the Law of Biological Coherence, and Surgical Philosophy. They are not theoretical ornaments. They are tools to cut through false dilemmas —biology or culture? universal or relative?— and to understand art as an expression of the single function of the nervous system.

The Infobae article has the merit of clearly showing the limits of purely physiological approaches. My research attempts to go one step further: not only to measure correlates, but to explain why beauty matters for an organism that needs to survive, symbolise, and achieve wholeness.

And that is not a methodological problem. It is, perhaps, the most precise definition of what it means to be human.

 

Autor / Author

Bernabé Mallo
 Doctor en Filosofía – Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
 Investigador independiente en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte.
 

Bernabé Mallo
 PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
 Independent researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origin of art.

Enlaces / Links

Página de autor Amazon / Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9002-9728
Plataforma EHUenRed / Link EHUenRed:  https://www.ehu.eus/es/web/masterrak-eta-graduondokoak/red-latinoamericana-de-posgrados
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@neuroideas815
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBsf6OZ482NjST6QA-hvYtQ
Publicaciones y proyectos en desarrollo / Publications and projects: 
https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
https://ehuenred.theglocal.network/ideas/el-origen-del-arte-en-el-cerebro-de-makapansgat-al-moma-del-primate-al-sapiens

Link to the original article: Why beauty generates completely different sensations in each person (Infobae, May 2026)

Experiment reference: Smithsonian Magazine (May 2026). Laboratory of Neuroaesthetics – Museo Galileo, Florence.

To learn more about the S/Y/C model, the Law of Biological Coherence, and Surgical Philosophy: See my project The Origin of Art in the Homo Species: from Makapansgat to MoMA, from Primate to Sapiens.