Beauty is about an individual basis, which will give pleasure, confidence, and good thoughts. It is associated with our psychology. Elegance, Attitude, Intelligence, Inner peace, Natural beauty (natural skin) and physical appearance are people’s opinions about beauty.
What happens to brain when we see beautiful people?
Attractive faces activate the part of our visual cortex that resides in the back of the brain. That area is called the Fusiform gyrus, and adjacent to the place is called the lateral occipital complex. These are processing the faces and processing the objects, respectively. The attraction also causes activation in our reward and pleasure centres in the front and deep of the brain. The centre names are ventral striatum, orbitofrontal cortex & the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. The visual cortex processes the faces and interacts with the pleasure centre to strengthen the experience of beauty.
How do we define attraction?
We categorize this in three ways,
1.Averaging
2.Symmetry
3.Effects of hormones
Averaging:
The averaging face is a hybrid of the group of faces, which means that one face represents the group and that group’s average. These Average faces are believed to be more attractive, and they have genetic diversity & adaptability to the environment.
Symmetry:
Facial symmetry is more attractive than asymmetric faces. Symmetry is ubiquitous in our brain. e.g., flora and fauna are symmetric. Take one leaf; imagine one vertical centre line in that leaf; both leaf halves have the same shape and structure. From Ancient days to now, our brain stores the concept of symmetry from nature unknowingly. It is also an indicator of health. People will look different when they see asymmetric faces, and these are not recognized as attractive. In movies, people look at asymmetry as negative characters.
Effects of hormones:
Estrogen and testosterone produce features in women and men’s bodies, respectively, that attract the opposite gender.
Colours play a significant role in our society. Here we see the pigmentation process. Let us peer inside the skin. It has hair, sweat and oil glands. The skin has three layers: Epidermis, Dermis and Hypodermis.
The epidermis has two cell types:
Keratinocytes:
They reside in the top of the epidermis and make skin surface and face the outer environment.
Melanocytes:
It resides deep down the layer. Melanocytes are star-shaped cells that produce melanin, and it looks like a sphere. Melanin is responsible for our skin colour. Melanosome in the melanocytes has the chemical reaction that converts amino acid tryptophan into melanin. The proportion of two primary forms of melanin are reddish-yellow type and black-brown type.
Several melanosomes vary from person to person. Melanosome is the melanin factory in melanocytes, and it is transported to keratinocytes. Inside the keratinocytes, the melanosome forms a cap around the nucleus of the cell. Melanin in the melanocytes absorbs UV rays from the sunlight. It reduces the UV rays that reach the core, particularly the DNA. UV-A goes to the DNA, so the melanin controls the UV-A. UV rays cause cancer to our body, so melanin protects our body. UV-b causes inflammation in the skin. UV rays and melanin are dependent. If UV rays increase, melanin production also increases (causes tanning).
“Beauty is reflexively associated with our brain”, and these reflections may be a biological trigger for the social effects of beauty. Attractive people receive more advantages in life. They are to be trusted as more intelligent, trustworthy, higher pay and lesser punishments. These are the ugly sides of beauty!
Beauty lies everywhere, every thought, every action and every moment. It depends on how the individual sees beauty. Thus the beauty lies inside you!