For Publishers
DiscoveryMetadataPeer reviewHostingPublishing
For Researchers
JoinPublishReviewCollect
Register
Blog
About
Search
Advanced search
My ScienceOpen
Search
For Publishers
For Researchers
Blog
About
196
views
Article has an altmetric score of 970
28
references
 Top references
cited by
46
    
0 reviews
 Review
0
comments
 Comment
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      336
      similar
       All similar
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      The experience of mathematical beauty and its neural correlates

      research-article

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPMC
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Many have written of the experience of mathematical beauty as being comparable to that derived from the greatest art. This makes it interesting to learn whether the experience of beauty derived from such a highly intellectual and abstract source as mathematics correlates with activity in the same part of the emotional brain as that derived from more sensory, perceptually based, sources. To determine this, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to image the activity in the brains of 15 mathematicians when they viewed mathematical formulae which they had individually rated as beautiful, indifferent or ugly. Results showed that the experience of mathematical beauty correlates parametrically with activity in the same part of the emotional brain, namely field A1 of the medial orbito-frontal cortex (mOFC), as the experience of beauty derived from other sources.

          Related collections

          Most cited references28

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Abstract reward and punishment representations in the human orbitofrontal cortex.

          J. O'Doherty, M Kringelbach, E Rolls … (2001)
          The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is implicated in emotion and emotion-related learning. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we measured brain activation in human subjects doing an emotion-related visual reversal-learning task in which choice of the correct stimulus led to a probabilistically determined 'monetary' reward and choice of the incorrect stimulus led to a monetary loss. Distinct areas of the OFC were activated by monetary rewards and punishments. Moreover, in these areas, we found a correlation between the magnitude of the brain activation and the magnitude of the rewards and punishments received. These findings indicate that one emotional involvement of the human orbitofrontal cortex is its representation of the magnitudes of abstract rewards and punishments, such as receiving or losing money.
          Article 0 comments Cited 391 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
          Article has an altmetric score of 18
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            Is 2+2=4? Meta-analyses of brain areas needed for numbers and calculations.

            Marie Arsalidou, Margot Taylor (2011)
            Most of us use numbers daily for counting, estimating quantities or formal mathematics, yet despite their importance our understanding of the brain correlates of these processes is still evolving. A neurofunctional model of mental arithmetic, proposed more than a decade ago, stimulated a substantial body of research in this area. Using quantitative meta-analyses of fMRI studies we identified brain regions concordant among studies that used number and calculation tasks. These tasks elicited activity in a set of common regions such as the inferior parietal lobule; however, the regions in which they differed were most notable, such as distinct areas of prefrontal cortices for specific arithmetic operations. Given the current knowledge, we propose an updated topographical brain atlas of mental arithmetic with improved interpretative power. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
            Article 0 comments Cited 267 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
            Article has an altmetric score of 33
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Sources of mathematical thinking: behavioral and brain-imaging evidence.

              S Dehaene, E Spelke, P Pinel … (1999)
              Does the human capacity for mathematical intuition depend on linguistic competence or on visuo-spatial representations? A series of behavioral and brain-imaging experiments provides evidence for both sources. Exact arithmetic is acquired in a language-specific format, transfers poorly to a different language or to novel facts, and recruits networks involved in word-association processes. In contrast, approximate arithmetic shows language independence, relies on a sense of numerical magnitudes, and recruits bilateral areas of the parietal lobes involved in visuo-spatial processing. Mathematical intuition may emerge from the interplay of these brain systems.
              Article 0 comments Cited 249 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
              Article has an altmetric score of 33
                Bookmark
                All references

                Author and article information

                Journal
                Journal ID (nlm-ta): Front Hum Neurosci
                Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Front Hum Neurosci
                Journal ID (publisher-id): Front. Hum. Neurosci.
                Title: Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
                Publisher: Frontiers Media S.A.
                ISSN (Electronic): 1662-5161
                Publication date (Electronic): 13 February 2014
                Publication date Collection: 2014
                Volume: 8
                Electronic Location Identifier: 68
                Affiliations
                [1] 1Wellcome Laboratory of Neurobiology, University College London London, UK
                [2] 2Department of Physics, Imperial College London London, UK
                [3] 3School of Mathematics, University of Edinburgh Edinburgh, UK
                Author notes

                Edited by: Josef Parvizi, Stanford University, USA

                Reviewed by: Miriam Rosenberg-Lee, Stanford University, USA; Marie Arsalidou, The Hospital for Sick Children, Canada

                *Correspondence: Semir Zeki, Wellcome Department of Neurobiology, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK e-mail: s.zeki@ 123456ucl.ac.uk

                This article was submitted to the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

                Article
                DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00068
                PMC ID: 3923150
                PubMed ID: 24592230
                SO-VID: 3bbbd8d8-4688-45d8-93f5-ae2c2f3cfe38
                Copyright © Copyright © 2014 Zeki, Romaya, Benincasa and Atiyah.
                License:

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

                History
                Date received : 11 November 2013
                Date accepted : 28 January 2014
                Page count
                Figures: 5, Tables: 3, Equations: 2, References: 47, Pages: 12, Words: 9886
                Categories
                Subject: Neuroscience
                Subject: Original Research Article

                ScienceOpen disciplines: Neurosciences
                Keywords: fmri,mathematics,beauty,mofc,neuroesthetics
                Data availability:
                ScienceOpen disciplines: Neurosciences
                Keywords: fmri, mathematics, beauty, mofc, neuroesthetics

                Comments

                Comment on this article

                scite_
                0
                0
                0
                0
                Smart Citations
                0
                0
                0
                0
                Citing PublicationsSupportingMentioningContrasting
                View Citations

                See how this article has been cited at scite.ai

                scite shows how a scientific paper has been cited by providing the context of the citation, a classification describing whether it supports, mentions, or contrasts the cited claim, and a label indicating in which section the citation was made.

                Similar content336

                See all similar

                Cited by44

                See all cited by

                Most referenced authors303

                See all reference authors