“Stepping back from all these studies, what have we learned so far? Five principles underlie our sense of beauty in people and places. First, similar to faces and bodies, our preferences for places are partly hard-wired. We prefer vistas that resemble savannas even if we have never visited such a place. These preferences are then modified by later personal experiences. Second, our Pleistocene ancestors who were drawn to places that also happened to improve their chances of survival passed on these tastes in what we now regard as beautiful. Natural selection rather than sexual selection played the dominant role in the evolution of place preferences. Third, the brain’s responses to beautiful landscapes involve neuronal ensembles in the visual cortex that classify environments, and these areas fire together with neurons in reward systems. It is too early to be sure, but the evidence suggests that our visual brain not only classifies things, it also evaluates them. Fourth, we respond to fitness indicators. In faces, these could be big eyes, full lips, or square jaws. In landscapes these are trees that indicate a bountiful environment or flowers that promise rich sources of nutrition. Fifth is the role of enhancements. We[…]”

Excerpt From: Anjan Chatterjee,. “The Aesthetic Brain”. Apple Books.