Distinct spatiotemporal representations of image beauty and image quality

Humans rapidly assess the beauty of natural scene images. Previous EEG work suggests neural representations of beauty emerge early and are temporally sustained. Complementary fMRI work pinpoints the neural correlates of beauty to visual, frontal, and default-mode network areas. An integrated view of the spatiotemporal dynamics that give rise to the perception of beauty, however, is lacking. Beyond the beauty of the depicted scene, the quality of the image itself influences its perceived beauty, and it is unknown how the brain separates these two factors. To address these questions, we recorded EEG (N = 52) and fMRI (N = 29) data while participants rated the beauty of 100 natural scene photographs. Another group of participants (N = 46) rated the image quality of the same photographs. Separate representational similarity analyses on the EEG and fMRI data revealed early and sustained beauty-related representations across widespread cortical areas. In contrast, representations of image quality emerged earlier, had markedly different representational dynamics, and were predominantly localized to visual cortex. In a model-based EEG-fMRI fusion analysis, we investigated how the correspondence between temporally resolved EEG signals and spatially resolved fMRI signals is explained by beauty ratings. Our results suggest that beauty-related representations emerge early (from around 165ms and peaking at 275ms post-onset), are long-lasting, and primarily originate from high-level visual cortex. This spatiotemporal signature persisted when controlling for image-quality ratings. Our findings emphasize the importance of perceptual processing for perceived beauty and suggest that the brain represents aesthetic appeal independently of image quality.