In A Nutshell

• Your brain prefers images that require less energy to process. Researchers found that photos people rated as more aesthetically pleasing triggered less neural activity in visual processing regions, suggesting beauty might be partly an energy-saving signal.
• Both AI and human brains showed the same pattern. When scientists fed nearly 5,000 images into a computer vision system and then scanned human brains viewing the same photos, both revealed an inverse relationship between processing cost and aesthetic appeal.
• There’s a sweet spot between boring and exhausting. Extremely simple images like blank walls don’t rank highest despite being easy to process because they fail to engage the visual system, while overly complex images drain neural resources and feel uncomfortable.
• This explains why average faces seem more attractive and familiar scenes feel pleasant. The brain may have evolved shortcuts for common visual patterns, making typical examples of categories require less metabolic expense than unusual ones.