{
  "id": 10808413,
  "title": "Early EEG responses indicate liking for artworks presented in rapid visual streams",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/29/early-eeg-responses-indicate-liking-for-artworks-presented-in-rapid",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-09-29T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.24.754091v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Researchers have discovered that our enjoyment of visual art may be determined by our brain's initial, automatic responses, even before we consciously evaluate the piece. This study, conducted on 999 artworks from the Vienna Art Picture System (VAPS), revealed that the brain's reactions to these pieces can predict our liking for them. The experiments involved exposing participants to the artworks for brief periods, with stimulus-onset-asynchrony (SOA) times ranging from 150ms to 50ms. The researchers then used a technique called representational similarity analysis to connect the brain's neural representations to the artwork's ratings by a different group of observers. Crucially, they found that the neural responses occurring within the first 150ms were strongly linked to the participants' liking, regardless of whether any liking judgments were actually made in the task. This early neural indication of liking was even observed in a second experiment where the artworks were presented at an ultra-fast SOA of 50ms. The findings suggest that while fully appreciating an artwork might require more time and deliberate engagement, our initial like or dislike for it seems to be established within a split second of viewing.",
  "summary": "When we appreciate visual art, we often take our time: We visit museums or galleries and deliberately engage with artworks and their meaning. Yet, our liking might at least partly be shaped by incidental encoding of the artworks' visual features, a process initially independent from sustained engagement. Here, we show that liking for visual art can be predicted from rapid and automatic responses…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}