Press release of the University of Jena, 16 October 2007

The aim of neuroesthetics, an emerging field of neuroscience, is to elucidate the biological basis of esthetic perception. The central idea of neuroesthetics is that an artist creates a work of art so that it reflects basic functional properties of the human visual system. For an overview of neuroesthetics, see our recent review (Redies, 2007).

Together with the group of Joachim Denzler, we have discovered that graphic art from the Western hemisphere and natural scenes share fractal-like (scale-invariant) statistical properties in the Fourier domain (Redies, Hasenstein and Denzler, 2007). A particularly striking example are human faces. Artists depict human faces in their artistic portraits with the statistics of complex natural scenes, although photographs of human faces are not scale-invariant (Redies, Hänisch, Blickhan and Denzler, 2007). Scale invariance, however, is not sufficient to induce esthetic perception because scale-invariant images can be generated that are not necessarily esthetic.

Based on the above results, we speculate that esthetic perception is closely linked to the sparse (efficient) coding of natural scenes in the nervous system (Redies, 2007). We are presently carrying out experiments to follow this hypothesis and to identify universal properties of art images that distinguish them from other image categories, like complex natural scenes or images of simple objects.

Supported by DFG (RE616/5-1).

Together with Lothar Spillmann, I studied the neon color effect in the Ehrenstein figure and other displays (Redies and Spillmann, 1981; Redies et al., 1984). Here is a display showing this visual illusion as well as modification that weaken or destroy it:

Colored crosses inserted into the gaps of the Ehrenstein figure (a) induce a colored "neon"-like glow around them (b). In addition, the inserted crosses appear less contrasted to the background than te same crosses presented in isolation (c). Rotation or lateral displacement of the colored lines destroys the illusion (d). A circle placed around the cross also abolishes the neon-like glow (e). For a brightness version of the neon effect, see (f).


In other work, we demonstrated, for the first time, that neurons in the primary visual cortex (area 17) respond to subjective contours:

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Letzte Aktualisierung: 2008-03-04 17:14:46