The module comprises a set of interdisciplinary lectures designed to enquire into the brain systems that are engaged during the experience of subjective mental states such as those of beauty, desire and love. It consists of two one-hour lectures per week as well as discussion sessions. Most of the lectures will be given by Professor Zeki, but there will be up to four lectures from invited speakers. Assessment is by one two-hour hour examination (requiring the answering of three out of approximately seven questions).

The module will begin by enquiring into how the brain is organized to acquire knowledge about the world and how secure it is in the knowledge that it acquires. This part of the module will concentrate primarily on the visual brain and will explore how this acquires knowledge about the visual world, including knowledge about colours, forms, visual motion, faces and so on.

The module will then consider the brain mechanisms that are engaged during the experience of beauty, desire and love. This part of the module will be divided equally between discussions of recent findings from neurobiological studies of the brain mechanisms engaged during these affective states and the literary, humanistic and philosophical sources that have guided these experiments.

Specifically, it will address the question of beauty as discussed in the philosophies of aesthetics (for example Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Schopenhauer, Burke, Clive Bell and others) and as approached by experimental brain imaging studies. The lectures will also address the question of mathematical beauty in similar terms.

Similarly, the module will delve into the concepts of love derived from world literature – including Plato’s Symposium, Nizami’s Layla and Majnun, Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, and Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde (among other iconic works). This will be balanced by a consideration of neurobiological studies of the brain systems engaged during the experience of romantic love, as well as a description of the results of the pair-bonding system in voles.

There will be lectures on form, colour and motion with an emphasis on how these art forms raise questions for studying the visual brain – examples being studies of the unfinished sculptures of Michelangelo and the “unfinished” paintings of Cézanne and others, Fauvist art, kinetic art, Cubist art as well as other forms of art.

The module will end with a discussion of the neurobiological basis of creativity.

At the end of the module students will have acquired the ability to address complex questions of human behaviour in a highly interdisciplinary way that includes neurobiology and the humanities.

Indicative lectures (based on 2021/22):

Introduction to neuroesthetics, its scope and its aims.
	An overview of the brain and its subdivisions; the structure of the cerebral cortex. The acquisition of knowledge by the brain; specialization and abstraction as prerequisites for a knowledge-acquiring system.
	
	Imaging brain activity in space and time – functional magnetic resonance imaging, magneto-encephalography, electro-encephalography, tractography and other methods.
	
	Methods for studying the brain – myeloarchitecture, cytoarchitecture, methods for studying connections of the brain, recording from brain cells.
	Imaging brain activity in space and time – functional magnetic resonance imaging, magneto-encephalography, electro-encephalography and other methods.
	Acquisition of knowledge by the brain; acquiring knowledge in a changing world and the problems this generates; the reflection of this in Western and Eastern philosophies. Functional specialization in acquiring knowledge; the problem of binding.
	Stabiliizing the world of colour; brain programs for stabilizing colours; the problem of constant colour categories; the relationship of colour categories to shades of colour (hues); the fauvist approach in painting to “liberating” colours.
	Theories of aesthetics.
	Phenomenology and neuroesthetics.
	The neurobiology of kinetic art.
	The neurobiology of face and body perception and the art of portrait and nude painting. The approach of Polykelitos, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Francis Bacon and the Cubists, among others.
	The neurobiology of beauty.
	The neurobiology of the experience of the sublime and the beautiful.
	The Bayesian brain and updating of beliefs related to inherited and acquired concepts – from colour vision to beauty.
	Visual physiology and abstract art – Cubism, Suprematism, abstract expressionism, etc.
	The neurobiology of desire and love.
	Concepts of love derived from the world literature of love.
	Mathematical beauty and knowledge of the Universe acquired through the brain’s logical deductive system.