Sex-related similarities and differences in the neural correlates of beauty
- Camilo J. Cela-Condea,1,
- Francisco J. Ayalab,1,
- Enric Munara,
- Fernando Maestúc,
- Marcos Nadala,
- Miguel A. Capóa,
- David del Ríoc,
- Juan J. López-Ibord,
- Tomás Ortizc,
- Claudio Mirassoe and
- Gisèle Martya
- aLaboratory of Human Systematics, Universidad de las Islas Baleares, 07122 Palma de Mallorca, Spain;
- bDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697;
- cCentro de Magnetoencefalografía Dr. Pérez Modrego, Universidad Complutense, 28040 Madrid, Spain;
- dInstitute of Psychiatry and Mental Health, San Carlos Clinical Hospital, Universidad Complutense, 28040 Madrid, Spain; and
- eInstituto de Física Interdisciplinar y Sistemas Complejos, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), 07122 Palma de Mallorca, Spain
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Contributed by Francisco J. Ayala, January 12, 2009 (sent for review January 9, 2008)
Abstract
The capacity to appreciate beauty is one of our species' most remarkable traits. Although knowledge about its neural correlates is growing, little is known about any gender-related differences. We have explored possible differences between men and women's neural correlates of aesthetic preference. We have used magnetoencephalography to record the brain activity of 10 male and 10 female participants while they decided whether or not they considered examples of artistic and natural visual stimuli to be beautiful. Our results reveal significantly different activity between the sexes in parietal regions when participants judged the stimuli as beautiful. Activity in this region was bilateral in women, whereas it was lateralized to the right hemisphere in men. It is known that the dorsal visual processing stream, which encompasses the superior parietal areas, has been significantly modified throughout human evolution. We posit that the observed gender-related differences are the result of evolutionary processes that occurred after the splitting of the human and chimpanzee lineages. In view of previous results on gender differences with respect to the neural correlates of coordinate and categorical spatial strategies, we infer that the different strategies used by men and women in assessing aesthetic preference may reflect differences in the strategies associated with the division of labor between our male and female hunter-gatherer hominin ancestors.
Footnotes
- 1To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: cjcela{at}atlas.com.es or fjayala{at}uci.edu
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Author contributions: C.J.C.-C., E.M., F.M., M.N., M.A.C., T.O., and G.M. designed research; C.J.C.-C., E.M., F.M., M.N., M.A.C., D.d.R., and G.M. performed research; J.J.L.-I., T.O., C.M., and G.M. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; C.J.C.-C., F.J.A., E.M., F.M., M.N., M.A.C., D.d.R., T.O., and G.M. analyzed data; and C.J.C.-C., F.J.A., E.M., F.M., M.N., and G.M. wrote the paper.
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The authors declare no conflict of interest.
