360 GRADI MAGAZINE January/February 2021

evaluating Neuroesthetics as an undue
interference or, at best, as an approach
with little or no heuristic value. I
believe that this reaction is premature
and fundamentally wrong, deriving on
the one hand from a lack of knowledge
of the potential and limits of the
neuroscientific approach, sometimes
combined with a corporate defense of
one’s own disciplinary fields. On the
other hand, the excessive
neurodeterminism often shown by the
neuroscientific approach to aesthetics
and art, ready to flatten and reduce the
concepts of beauty or aesthetic
pleasure exclusively to the
functionality of neurons contained in
specific brain regions, did not help. the
dialogue. Unfortunately, among many
lovers of the human sciences there
remains, as a sort of conditioned reflex,
the tendency to connect everything
that has to do with naturalization to a
mechanistic and innatistic perspective.
This is not the case. Epigenetics shows
not only how the environment is able
to condition the expression of genes,
but also how this modified gene
expression can be transmitted to
offspring. This demonstrates how the
various social constructions are in any
case attributable to biological
perspectives of naturalization. We
should get out of this dichotomous
perspective and finally accept the idea
already supported in the past, for
example by Helmuth Plessner, that man
is both naturally artificial and
artificially natural.
Neuroesthetics is
studied above all
through brain imaging techniques,
mainly through Functional Magnetic
Resonance Imaging (fMRI), to
understand how the brain responds to
beauty. Particular sensory sequences
can be applied through which it is
possible to see which areas of the brain
are particularly stressed while the
subject is subjected to stimulation
(tactile, visual and acoustic stimuli are
presented or subjected to a specific
task). When the person performs these
tasks, his brain uses certain areas in a
particular way and we, through the
metabolic consumption that requires
an increase in oxygen, we can see what
these areas are. Resonance is a
frequently used technique because it
allows us to observe the brain and its
functions in vivo; it is not invasive, so
much so that it is also used regularly in
the clinic. In a typical experimental
setting, the subject is placed on the
resonance couch, he is made to wear
headphones to isolate him from the
resonance noise and
to transmit acoustic
stimuli and he is
made to wear a
viewer to send him,
through optical fiber
cables, of images
with specific timings. In most cases, the
subject is equipped with a button panel
that allows him to express a judgment
or perform a task, when he is inside the
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