“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; or is it?” 

Yasuyuki Taki 

Field: Nuclear Medicine and Radiology
Hometown: Hokkaido
Hobbies: Ski, piano and studying butterflies.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; or is it? To find out what makes something beautiful, we must first understand the human brain. ”

It’s been said that humans create beautiful things. However, if we think deeper, it is really the mind that controls the body. So, to understand “how” beauty is created, we must first understand the brain.

I love beautiful things, and although beauty is a subjective concept as individuals perceive it differently, I think there are things called “universal beauty” in the world that are shared by many. For example: Johannes Vermeer’s “Woman with a Pearl Necklace”, Diego Velázquez’ “Las Meninas”, Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies”, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Paganini Rhapsody”, Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, and so forth. All these examples may be considered as “human made”, but the act that created these beautiful things started in the brain.

So how does the brain know what is beautiful? I think that this is a very interesting question for brain science researchers to think about. Also, whatever nature has created will always have some form of meaning, such as the structure and function of the brain, including various brain diseases. With this in mind, I want to find out the meaning of why nature creates these “beautiful things” and carry out my brain research everyday.