The Global Wellness Summit is bringing three experts on the neuroscience of beauty to its annual conference, held this year at The Breakers Palm Beach in Florida from 9-11 October.

Dr Anjan Chatterjee is the Elliott professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of The Aesthetic Brain: How we Evolved to Desire Beauty and Enjoy Art, in which he explores the reasons why we find people, places and even numbers beautiful.

Dr Chatterjee will present findings from a new two-part research project entitled ‘Beauty2Wellness,’ undertaken in conjunction with the Global Wellness Institute. One focus of the study uses natural language processing and cognitive science experiments.

Nancy Etcoff is assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School and author of the book Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty, which is the subject of a Discovery Channel documentary. Her work on beauty and the brain has been wide-ranging, including being involved in Dove’s groundbreaking ‘Real Beauty’ campaign.

Dr Lisa Ishii is the chief quality officer for clinical best practices for the Johns Hopkins Health System, and the senior medical director for clinical integration in the Office of Johns Hopkins Physicians. A practicing plastic surgeon, her research interests focus on the science of how people perceive beauty, and specifically, on how faces serve as the portal for how we communicate with the world – and how the world identifies us.

“Given the massive size of the beauty market and the fact that studies show that people respond automatically at a deep neural level to beauty, it’s time to pay attention to the emerging scientific research on why we pursue beauty so fervently, rather than to continue to dismiss it as a somehow misguided or superficial quest,” said Susie Ellis, GWS chair and CEO. “And these thinkers’ insights will help us forge disruptive and evidence-based connections between beauty and human wellness for the very first time. It will be groundbreaking.”