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If you feel deeply touched by Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, a painting about depressed people having dinner in an urban restaurant, but unmoved passing by a real-world diner late at night, it may be because of what’s happening inside your body. New research suggests that bodily sensations (感觉) aren’t just a by-product of art’s emotional impact but a key pathway for experiencing something as “art” in the first place.

In a study involving 1,186 participants and 336 visual art pieces, researchers found that the strength of emotional experience caused by an artwork was connected with the strength of bodily sensations reported while viewing it. Emotions were measured using subjective reports, and viewers separately marked on a virtual human figure where and how they felt physical sensations. Eye tracking and participant surveys, meanwhile, evaluated viewers’ interest in the paintings and whether they considered them to be art. Bodily feelings’ scale was connected with both the strength of emotional experience and the evaluation of a piece as art. Sensations were most noticeable when participants said they felt empathy (the most commonly reported positive emotion) and when they cited “touching” and “moving” emotional experiences.

Negative emotions were uncommon, but reports of “sadness” were also linked to “touching” and “moving” experiences — and to a participant categorizing a work as art. Even the excitement from a haunted house (鬼屋) are ultimately experienced as positive, as we experience our hearts racing while we know we are safe,” says study lead author Lauri Nummenmaa, a researcher at the University of Turku in Finland. “Art likely employed similar mechanisms for making us feel good. It activates our autonomic nervous system, and in the peace and quiet of an art gallery this increased bodily activity feels good to us.”

Although the study used only subjective reports and didn’t measure objective physiological changes in the body, the data suggest that art perception (感知) involves awareness of the body’s internal state. Art may get under our skin to shift perception. Art may be in the whole body — not just the eye of the viewer.