Summary: New research suggests that what humans experience as visual beauty may actually be rooted in energy efficiency. Images that require fewer neurons and less metabolic work to process are consistently rated as more aesthetically pleasing.
Using computer modeling, human ratings, and brain imaging, scientists found that the visual system favors a balance between stimulation and low biological cost. The findings suggest that “beauty” may, in part, be the brain’s way of conserving energy while staying engaged.
Key Facts:
- Energy-Efficient Beauty: People consistently prefer images that require less neural energy to process.
- High Cost of Vision: The visual system alone consumes roughly 44% of the brain’s energy use.
- First-Impression Effect: The preference reflects fast, automatic visual judgments, not deeper emotional meaning.
Source: PNAS Nexus
Humans may find images that take less energy to process aesthetically pleasing, suggesting that our attraction to beauty is at least partially an energy conservation strategy.
Looking at something can feel effortless, but in energetic terms, it isn’t cheap.
The brain uses 20% of the body’s energy, and the visual system accounts for about 44% of that expenditure. Looking at very simple stimuli, like a blank white room, is energy-efficient but boring. Looking at very busy or unusual image can feel tiring and unpleasant.
Yikai Tang and colleagues presented 4,914 images of objects and scenes to an in-silico model of the visual system to estimate the number of neurons needed to look at them.
The authors compared these estimates to enjoyment ratings from 1,118 participants recruited using Amazon Mechanical Turk.
Next, the authors used blood oxygen level-dependent signal brain imaging to measure the energy costs of looking at images for 4 participants.
In both experiments, study participants found images that took less energy to process more attractive.
The authors asked for a quick response, meant to capture initial impressions, not the more complex pleasures that may arise from contemplating an image in a broader context by engaging with its meaning.
According to the authors, visual aesthetic appreciation may be a manifestation of an energy-conserving heuristic that creates a sweet spot between sufficient stimulation of the visual system and excessive metabolic cost—a finding giving new meaning to the idiom, “easy on the eyes.”
Key Questions Answered:
A: The brain prefers images that require less energy to process because they are more metabolically efficient.
A: Yes. Images that activate fewer neurons and require lower metabolic cost are rated as more visually pleasing.
A: This finding applies to rapid, instinctive visual judgments, not slow, reflective appreciation.
Editorial Notes:
- This article was edited by a Neuroscience News editor.
- Journal paper reviewed in full.
- Additional context added by our staff.
About this visual neuroscience research news
Author: Yikai Tang
Source: University of Toronto
Contact: Yikai Tang – University of Toronto
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Less is more: Aesthetic liking is inversely related to metabolic expense by the visual system” by Yikai Tang et al. PNAS Nexus
Abstract
Less is more: Aesthetic liking is inversely related to metabolic expense by the visual system
Energy efficiency is a major driving force in the evolution of organisms, and previous research implies that humans may have evolved pleasure-based signals to guide optimal actions. But could this energy-saving heuristic also apply to aesthetic pleasure?
We test this hypothesis using both an in silico model of the visual system (VGG19) and human observers, finding strong evidence in both.
First, we measure the proxy for metabolic cost incurred by VGG19—either pretrained for object and scene categorization or randomly initialized—as it processes 4,914 images of objects and scenes, revealing an inverse relationship between aesthetic preferences and metabolic cost, and only in the pretrained model.
Next, we compare aesthetic ratings of visual stimuli to metabolic activity in the human visual system, measured via the blood oxygen level-dependent signal during functional magnetic resonance imaging.
We observe the same inverse relationship between blood oxygen level dependent signals and aesthetic preferences in both early visual regions (V1, V2, and V4) and higher-level regions (fusiform face area, occipital place area, and parahippocampal place area).
These findings suggest that aesthetic preferences may at least partially arise from an affective heuristic favoring low-energy states, and they offer a unified framework linking empirical evidence on visual discomfort with theories of processing fluency, image complexity, and prototypicality, providing a straightforward model for understanding aesthetic judgments.