Study of the Brain Proves There is Beauty in Math

Mathematicians are the same emotional and beauty-loving romantics as the rest of us, just with a slightly different taste for aesthetics, according to new research out from the United Kingdom. A new study provides evidence that the human brain acknowledges mathematical beauty just like it does with art and music.

The study, which was published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, set out to see what happens in the brain when passionate mathematicians viewed complex mathematical formulae. To accomplish this, researchers presented 15 mathematicians with 60 various mathematical formulae that they were then asked to rate as "beautiful," "ugly," or "indifferent." Two weeks later, same formulas were presented to the mathematical scholars while the activity of their brains were observed by the research team using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine.

What researchers found was that when seeing a "beautiful" mathematical formula, the emotional part of the medial orbito-forntal cortex -- the same part of the brain that activates when appreciating beautiful music or art -- was lit up like a Christmas tree in the fMRI scans.

What does this mean? It may imply that our emotional response to things we perceive as "beautiful" is hardwired into our brain. Does this mean that we are predestined to appreciate only certain kinds of art or music -- or even math -- at birth? Certainly not; it may be just as likely that our brain and its emotional reactions develop with our tastes.

Of course, the study itself only found the correlation between an emotional brain response and perceived beauty in math. Still, the study does make the minds of intensely passionate mathematicians like in 2001 blockbuster "Beautiful Mind," a little more beautiful.

The study was published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience on February 13.

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