01/01/2025
To help tilt ourselves into a positive direction for 2025, here's something to wrap your brains around. Literally.
We've been reading about Neuroaesthetics. As a field of research emerging primarily from University College London, it sits at the intersection of applied aesthetics and cognitive neuroscience. Sounds very lab coat and complex, but we've pushed through to try and understand what it's all about and it's really quite interesting.
Essentially, activity in the medial orbito-frontal cortex (mOFC) of our brains increases when we experience beauty.
So what?
The mOFC seems to be associated with our understanding of available choices and subsequent implications of our actions. Here's the thing though, beauty truly is what you choose it to be - it might be musical, mathematical, natural, physical or even moral beauty.
In short, when we experience what we consider to be beautiful, we relax, observe more choices and perceive outcomes more positively. That feeling of watching the sunrise over a beautiful landscape isn't just a fleeting emotion, it's an actual thing which changes the way your brain guides our decisions.
The lesson is that we should think about what we find beautiful and make sure to better bake them into our habits and plans because the more we expose ourselves to beauty in whatever form it presents to us, the better we live.
That feels like a great way to welcome in 2025. We hope you've had joyful holidays, Happy New Year from all of us at Pura Aventura - here's to another year of fabulous travel!
