What are the neural mechanisms underlying beauty based on objective parameters and beauty based on subjective social construction? This study scanned participants with fMRI while they performed aesthetic judgments on concrete pictographs and abstract oracle bone scripts. Behavioral results showed both pictographs and oracle bone scripts were judged to be more beautiful when they referred to beautiful objects and positive social meanings, respectively. Imaging results revealed regions associated with perceptual, cognitive, emotional and reward processing were commonly activated both in beautiful judgments of pictographs and oracle bone scripts. Moreover, stronger activations of orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and motor-related areas were found in beautiful judgments of pictographs, whereas beautiful judgments of oracle bone scripts were associated with putamen activity, implying stronger aesthetic experience and embodied approaching for beauty were elicited by the pictographs. In contrast, only visual processing areas were activated in the judgments of ugly pictographs and negative oracle bone scripts. Results provide evidence that the sense of beauty is triggered by two processes: one based on the objective parameters of stimuli (embodied natural beauty) and the other based on the subjective social construction (social endowed beauty).

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Temporal concepts could be represented horizontally(X-axis) or vertically (Y-axis). However, whether the spatial representation of time exists in the whole plane remains unclear. In this study, we investigated whether processing temporal concepts would automatically activate spatial representations in a whole plane without any guidance or cue. Participants first indicated whether a word was past-related or future-related, then, they identified a target in different visual fields. In Experiment 1, the results demonstrated that past time mapped onto the left and top in a plane or axis, while future time mapped onto the right and bottom, with the horizontal effect being stronger than the vertical effect. In Experiment 2, an index of eye movement showed a similar data pattern. Thinking about temporal concepts activates spatial schema automatically without guidance or cue, and the time-space metaphor is represented not only as an axis but also as a whole plane. The results were discussed in terms of the possible cultural differences that made the Chinese participants tend to be more flexible in spatial representation of time because of their comprehensive thinking.

How is beauty embodied? According to the viewpoint of embodied cognition, the aesthetic processing of words or pictographs has roots in their referential archetypes. Four experiments tested whether the beauty of referential archetypes was routinely activated during the explicit and implicit aesthetic evaluations of the font structures of concrete Chinese words and pictographs in congruent or incongruent font colour. Results showed font structures of simplified Chinese words and pictographs were judged to be more beautiful when they referred to beautiful archetypes; and this pattern was reversed when they referred to ugly archetypes. Moreover, judgement was facilitated when font colour was congruent for Chinese words and pictographs referred to beautiful archetypes. For those referred to ugly archetypes, judgement was inhibited in congruent font colour but facilitated in incongruent font colour, suggesting aesthetic perceptions of the font structures of Chinese words and pictographs were derived from their referential natural objects. The spontaneous generation hypothesis of beauty is proposed to account for these findings.

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