“Neural Correlates of Beauty,” Hideaki Kawabata and Semir Zeki, Journal of Neurophysiology, vol. 91, 2004, pp. 1699–1705 (http://dx.doi.org/
10.1152
/jn.00696.2003).The researchers, at University College, London, report:
A comparison of ugly versus beautiful produced activity in the motor cortex bilaterally, whereas the contrast ugly versus neutral produced no activity. Thus the areas that are involved in these contrasts are the medial orbito-frontal cortex, the anterior cingulate, the parietal cortex, and the motor cortex.
(That’s an except from the article “Where in Your Head?,” Published in AIR 13:4.)