This year’s Global Wellness Summit will parse the links between beauty, wellness and neuroscience, which form an emerging area of research.

The conference is to feature three leading experts on how the brain responds to beauty – Dr. Anjan Chatterjee, professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “The Aesthetic Brain: How We Evolved to Desire Beauty and Enjoy Art;” Nancy Etcoff, assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School and author of “Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty;” and Dr. Lisa Ishii, chief qualified officer for Clinical Best Practices at Johns Hopkins Health System.

“Given the massive size of the beauty market and the fact that studies show that people respond at a deep neural level to beauty, it’s time to pay attention to the mounting scientific research on why we pursue beauty so fervently, rather than continue to dismiss it as a somehow misguided or superficial quest,” said Susie Ellis, GWS chairman and CEO, in a press statement. “And these three 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.”

Dr. Chatterjee will present the initial findings of a two-part research project – “Beauty2Wellness” – that focuses on beauty concepts and biases and draws conclusions for fields like marketing, facial reconstruction and neuroscience.

Etcoff, who took part in Dove’s groundbreaking “real beauty” campaign, is to expound on her research into the science of happiness and her inquiry into why and what people find beautiful.

Dr. Ishii, who is a practicing plastic surgeon, is to elaborate on how our faces guide our communications.

The Global Wellness Summit is to take place at The Breakers, Palm Beach, Florida from Oct. 9 – 11.