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Teaching is increasingly defined through the syntax of cognitive science, by retrieval practice, spaced learning, and interleaving, generating a computational rhythm for learning as a system of inputs and outputs that builds up an individual's memory over time. This, I argue, is at odds with the choreography of art and design education as an aesthetic, social, and material practice. An alternative mapping is required to fully understand the chronology of learning that takes place in and through the subject of art and design with human and nonhuman others. Drawing from a review of research in the field of Neuroaesthetics, I will seek to defend the unique temporality of art and design education and imagine different visualisations of learning in the subject beyond the computational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of neuroaesthetic research is to understand the neural mechanisms underpinning the perception and appreciation of art. The human brain has the remarkable ability to rapidly recognize different artistic styles. Using functional connectivity, this study investigates whether there are differences in connectivity networks formed during the processing of abstract and figurative paintings. Eighty paintings (forty abstract and forty figurative) were presented in a random order for eight seconds to each of the 29 participants. High-density EEG recordings were taken, from which functional connectivity networks were extracted at several time points (−300, 100, 300 and 500 ms). The debiased weighted phase lag index (dwPLI) was used to extract the connectivity networks for the abstract and figurative conditions across multiple frequency bands. Significant connectivity differences were detected for both conditions at each time point and in each frequency band: delta (p < 0.0273), theta (p < 0.0292), alpha (p < 0.0299), beta (p < 0.0275) and gamma (p < 0.0266). The topology of the connectivity networks also varied over time and frequency, indicating the multi-scale dynamics of art style perception. The method used in this study has the ability to identify not only brain regions but their interaction (communication) patterns and their dynamics at distinct time points, in contrast to average ERP waveforms and potential distributions. Our findings suggest that the early perception stage of visual art involves complex, distributed networks that vary with the style of the artwork. The difference between the abstract and figurative connectivity network patterns indicates the difference between the underlying style-related perceptual and cognitive processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have shown that the experience of beauty is dependent upon the co‐activity of field A1 of the medial frontal cortex and sensory areas. This leaves us with the question of ugliness; are the same neural mechanisms involved in this experience, including neural activity patterns, or are different mechanisms at play? This question arises because ugliness, although often regarded as the opposite of beauty, could possibly be a distinct aesthetic category. Subjects were asked to rate faces according to how ugly they found them to be while their brain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging. There was moderate agreement in the experience of ugliness of faces among subjects. Univariate parametric analyses did not reveal any brain regions with increasing activity as the declared intensity of the experience of ugliness increased. In contrast, increasing activity appeared in the striatum and posterior medial orbitofrontal cortex with decreasing levels of ugliness. As with studies on facial beauty, representational similarity analysis revealed distinct neural activity patterns with the experience of facial ugliness in sensory areas relevant for face processing and in the medial orbitofrontal cortex. Thus, similar neural mechanisms appear to be involved in the experience of facial beauty and ugliness, the difference being the level and distribution of activity within the neural network. This suggests that ugliness and beauty are on the same aesthetic continuum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Definition: Eye-tracking is a biometrics technique that has started to find applications in research related to our interaction with the built environment. Depending on the focus of a given study, the collection of valence and arousal measurements can also be conducted to acquire emotional, cognitive, and behavioral insights and correlate them with eye-tracking data. These measurements can give architects and designers a basis for data-driven decision-making throughout the design process. In instances involving existing structures, biometric data can also be utilized for post-occupancy analysis. This entry will discuss eye-tracking and eye-tracking simulation in the context of our current understanding of the importance of our interaction with the built environment for both physical and mental well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Art therapy has a long history of applications in cognitive and motor rehabilitation. More recently, a growing body of scientific literature has highlighted the potential of virtual reality in neurorehabilitation, though it has focused more on the technology itself than on the principles adopted in digital scenarios. Methods: This study is a single-blind randomized controlled trial conducted on 40 patients with stroke, comparing conventional therapy (physical therapy for the upper and lower limbs, for posture and balance, cognitive therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and specific therapy for swallowing, bowel, and bladder dysfunctions) to a protocol in which the upper limb physical therapy was substituted with art therapy administered by means of virtual reality exploiting the so-called Michelangelo effect. Results: After 12 sessions, patients in the virtual art therapy group showed a significantly greater improvement in independence in activities of daily living, as assessed by the Barthel Index (interaction of time and group: p = 0.001). Significant differences were also found in terms of upper limb muscle strength (Manual Muscle Test, p < 0.01) and reduction in spasticity (Ashworth scale, p = 0.007) in favor of the experimental group. In the virtual art therapy group, the effectiveness of the intervention was significantly correlated with patient participation (Pittsburgh Rehabilitation Participation Scale: R = 0.41), patient satisfaction (R = 0.60), and the perceived utility of the intervention by the therapist (R = 0.43). Conclusions: These findings support the efficacy of virtual art therapy leveraging the Michelangelo effect. Further studies should also focus on cognitive domains that could benefit from this type of approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Symmetry is a special kind of balance. This study aims to systematically explore and apply the role of balanced composition in aesthetic judgments by focusing on balanced composition features and employing research methods from computational aesthetics and neuroaesthetics. Methods: First, experimental materials were classified by quantifying balanced composition using several indices, including symmetry, center of gravity, and negative space. An EEG experiment was conducted with 18 participants, who were asked to respond dichotomously to the same stimuli under different judgment tasks (balance and aesthetics), with both behavioral and EEG data being recorded and analyzed. Subsequently, participants' data were combined with balanced composition indices to construct and analyze various SVM classification models. Results: Participants largely used balanced composition as a criterion for aesthetic evaluation. ERP data indicated that from 300–500 ms post-stimulus, brain activation was more significant in the aesthetic task, with unbeautiful and imbalanced stimuli eliciting larger frontal negative waves and occipital positive waves. From 600–1000 ms, beautiful stimuli caused smaller negative waves in the PZ channel. The results of the SVM models indicated that the model incorporating aesthetic subject data (ACC = 0.9989) outperforms the model using only balanced composition parameters of the aesthetic object (ACC = 0.7074). Conclusions: Balanced composition is a crucial indicator in aesthetics, with similar early processing stages in both balance and aesthetic judgments. Multi-modal data models validated the advantage of including human factors in aesthetic evaluation systems. This interdisciplinary approach not only enhances our understanding of the cognitive and emotional processes involved in aesthetic judgments but also enables the construction of more reasonable machine learning models to simulate and predict human aesthetic preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A visual stimulus that is divided in harmonic proportions is often judged as more pleasant than others. This is well known by artists that often used two main types of geometric harmonic patterns: symmetry and the golden ratio. Symmetry refers to the property of an object to have two similar halves, whereas the golden ratio consists of dividing an object in a major and a minor part so that their proportion is the same as that between the whole object and its major part. Here we investigated looking behaviour and explicit preferences for different regularities including symmetry and golden ratio. We selected four Mark Rothko's paintings, a famous abstract expressionism artist, characterized by two main areas depicted by different colours: one symmetric (ratio between areas: 50–50%), one in golden ratio (38–62%), one in an intermediate ratio (46–54%), and one in a ratio exceeding the golden ratio (32–68%). Thirty-six healthy participants (24.75 ± 3.71 years old) completed three tasks: observation task (OT), pleasantness task (PT), and harmony task (HT). Findings for explicit ratings of pleasantness and harmony were very similar and were not significantly correlated with patterns of looking behaviour. Eye Dwell Time mainly depended on stimuli orientation (p < 0.001), but for the harmony task also by ratio and their interaction. Our results showed that the visual scanning behaviour of abstract arts primarily depends on the orientation of internal components, whereas their proportion is more important for the pleasantness and harmony explicit judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aesthetic experiences, emerging saliently in the arts, play a pivotal role in transformative learning and creative processes that elicit physiological, affective, and cognitive responses associated with mental health indices. Interactions between subjects and aesthetic objects (e.g., visual artwork, music, and moving bodies) often entail elements of surprise and uncertainty that drive the inference of the hidden causes in the subject's internal and external environment. These generate dynamics that align with the action-oriented Predictive Processing framework of brain function. Creative Arts Therapies (CATs) harness these dynamics by cultivating relational engagement using the arts modalities, prompting affective and cognitive processing. In this manuscript, we offer a review and conceptual analysis of recent empirical findings and theoretical premises that underpin aesthetic experiences and their relation to the psychotherapeutic use of the arts with a broad spectrum of populations and mental health conditions. We present a neuroscience-based approach to aesthetic intra- and inter-personal experiences, integrating therapeutic change factors of externalization-concretization, embodiment, and symbolization with functional network configurations, and interpersonal brain-to-brain coupling, to support predictive processing, learning, and creativity. Present and future interdisciplinary collaborations are underlined to elucidate the neurodynamic mechanisms driving psychological transformations, bridging neuroaesthetics and CATs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supernormal stimuli were first defined in ethology as exaggerated forms of natural or artificial stimuli able to elicit amplified responses in animals. After the characterisation of supernormal stimuli in ethology, many scholars have explored the idea of supernormality also with reference to human cultures, resulting in the assignment of this attribute to several categories of stimuli, from pornography to fast-food. In the last decades, also art has been proposed to act as a supernormal stimulus for human beings. After reviewing the major contributions in this field, here we explore this hypothesis by highlighting experimental evidence from studies in neuroaesthetics and art history cases that corroborate this view in an attempt to show the potential that this framework can bring to the aesthetic debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an age where the worlds of art and science continuously collide, scholars and storytellers alike are increasingly using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to analyze and represent their internal worlds. As AI becomes further enmeshed in the everyday experience of humans and other sentiences across the planet, questions begin to arise concerning ethical representation of the self and other, technological anthropomorphism, and artistic expression. Our dialogue contains several modalities: text, poetry, artistic thought experiments, speculative compositions and images. Our aim is not to provide answers to these ever-accelerating questions about AI, but to open up and expose the grooves of various narratives surrounding AI by engaging with experimentation, dialogue, and speculation as modes of discovery. Each section of the text begins with a poetic provocation by S. J. Abiodun, and continues on with an exchange between the two authors, fluidly leaping between our individual and collective knowledge as researchers, artists, and interdisciplinarians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Performing dance is an intrinsically social art form where at least one person moves while another person watches. Dancing in groups promotes social bonding, but how does group dance affect the people watching? A group of dancers and dance novices watched a 30 min dance video individually in an fMRI scanner. In a follow-up behavioural study, the same people watched the video again and provided continuous enjoyment ratings. Firstly, we computed cross-recurrence of continuous enjoyment ratings and inter-subject correlations (ISCs) in fMRI separately for both groups, and with the choreographer of the dance work. At both behavioural and neural levels, dancers responded more similarly to each other than novices. ISCs among dancers extended beyond brain areas involved in audio-visual integration and sensory areas of human movement perception into motor areas, suggesting greater sensorimotor familiarity with the observed dance movements in the expert group. Secondly, we show that dancers’ brain activations and continuous ratings are more similar to the choreographer’s ratings in keeping with sharing an aesthetic and artistic perspective when viewing the dance. Thirdly, we show that movement synchrony among performers is the best predictor of brain synchrony among both expert and novice spectators. This is consistent with the idea that changes in emergent movement synchrony are a key aesthetic feature of performing dance. Finally, ISCs across perceptual and motor brain areas were primarily driven by movement acceleration and synchrony, whereas ISCs in orbital and pre-frontal brain areas were overall weaker and better explained by the continuous enjoyment ratings of each group. Our findings provide strong evidence that the aesthetic appreciation of dance involves a common experience between dance spectators and the choreographer. Moreover, the similarity of brain activations and of enjoyment increases with shared knowledge of - and practice in - the artform that is being experienced, in this case contemporary performing dance.

Eye-tracking is a biometrics technique that has started to find applications in research related to our interaction with the built environment. Depending on the focus of a given study, the collection of valence and arousal measurements can also be conducted to acquire emotional, cognitive, and behavioral insights and correlate them with eye-tracking data. These measurements can give architects and designers a basis for data-driven decision-making throughout the design process. In instances involving existing structures, biometric data can also be utilized for post-occupancy analysis. This entry will discuss eye-tracking and eye-tracking simulation in the context of our current understanding of the importance of our interaction with the built environment for both physical and mental well-being.

The introduction discusses the role of art in society. Art is one of the ways of learning and describing the world, and its role in the development of an integral personality is enormous. The theoretical analysis presents some research within the framework of neuroaesthetics. The choice of stimulus material for the study is discussed – paintings from five art movements: Realism, Impressionism, Modernism, Cubism, and Surrealism. It is suggested that in the process of viewing works of art from different movements, oculomotor activity (OMA) will be different. Empirical analysis showed differences in OMA parameters: blinking, fixations, and saccades, among students when they were presented with pictures of different art movements. It was found that the subjects showed emotional excitement while perceiving paintings from the Impressionist movement. Paintings of Modernism and Impressionism presented the least concentration of attention but the greatest interest. A high concentration of attention was observed during visual perception of realism pictures. The greatest cognitive load was detected at the time of presentation of cubist paintings. Rational perception and memory resources are more involved in the processing of Surreal pictures. In conclusion, the characteristic patterns of OMA in the perception of various art movements are noted. Research results may be useful in the practice of passive art therapy as part of psychoprophylaxis programs.

Background: In recent years, computational aesthetics and neuroaesthetics have provided novel insights into understanding beauty. Building upon the findings of traditional aesthetics, this study aims to combine these two research methods to explore an interdisciplinary approach to studying aesthetics. Method: Abstract artworks were used as experimental materials. Based on traditional aesthetics and in combination, features of composition, tone, and texture were selected. Computational aesthetic methods were then employed to correspond these features to physical quantities: blank space, gray histogram, Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM), Local Binary Pattern (LBP), and Gabor filters. An electroencephalogram (EEG) experiment was carried out, in which participants conducted aesthetic evaluations of the experimental materials in different contexts (genuine, fake), and their EEG data were recorded to analyze the impact of various feature classes in the aesthetic evaluation process. Finally, a Support Vector Machines (SVMs) was utilized to model the feature data, Event-Related Potentials (ERPs), context data, and subjective aesthetic evaluation data. Result: Behavioral data revealed higher aesthetic ratings in the genuine context. ERP data indicated that genuine contexts elicited more negative deflections in the prefrontal lobes between 200 and 1000 ms. Class II compositions demonstrated more positive deflections in the parietal lobes at 50–120 ms, while Class I tones evoked more positive amplitudes in the occipital lobes at 200–300 ms. Gabor features showed significant variations in the parieto-occipital area at an early stage. Class II LBP elicited a prefrontal negative wave with a larger amplitude. The results of the SVM models indicated that the model incorporating aesthetic subject and context data (ACC = 0.76866) outperforms the model using only parameters of the aesthetic object (ACC = 0.68657). Conclusion: A positive context tends to provide participants with a more positive aesthetic experience, but abstract artworks may not respond to this positivity. During aesthetic evaluation, the ERP data activated by different features show a trend from global to local. The SVM model based on multimodal data fusion effectively predicts aesthetics, further demonstrating the feasibility of the combined research approach of computational aesthetics and neuroaesthetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether in performing arts, sporting, or everyday contexts, when we watch others move, we tend to enjoy bodies moving in synchrony. Our enjoyment of body movements is further enhanced by our own prior experience with performing those movements, or our 'embodied experience'. The relationships between movement synchrony and enjoyment, as well as embodied experience and movement enjoyment, are well known. The interaction between enjoyment of movements, synchrony, and embodiment is less well understood, and may be central for developing new approaches for enriching social interaction. To examine the interplay between movement enjoyment, synchrony, and embodiment, we asked participants to copy another person's movements as accurately as possible, thereby gaining embodied experience of movement sequences. Participants then viewed other dyads performing the same or different sequences synchronously, and we assessed participants' recognition of having performed these sequences, as well as their enjoyment of each movement sequence. We used functional near‐infrared spectroscopy to measure cortical activation over frontotemporal sensorimotor regions while participants performed and viewed movements. We found that enjoyment was greatest when participants had mirrored the sequence and recognised it, suggesting that awareness of embodiment may be central to enjoyment of synchronous movements. Exploratory analyses of relationships between cortical activation and enjoyment and recognition implicated the sensorimotor cortices, which subserve action observation and aesthetic processing. These findings hold implications for clinical research and therapies seeking to foster successful social interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aesthetic concept of the sublime has long been a part of Western landscape architectural discourse and design. Both the sublime and this distinct practice of landscape design and planning emerged as entwined forms of experimentation with the world in 18th-and 19th-century Europe. The sublime came to be understood as an encounter that produced a pleasurable yet intense sense of disturbance, terror, or difference. It made clear how we, as living beings, are connected to something greater than ourselves. Alongside the beautiful and later the picturesque, the sublime was a central topic of societal discussion within a landscape context and beyond. Many designers in the 18th and 19th centuries took up the challenge of designing with and for the sublime, seeing it as a definitively practical challenge. Since then, it has fallen by the wayside within landscape discourse due to philosophical arguments over its definition and operation; the term now tends to be used as a descriptor for scale, magnitude, and rugged form. This article argues that the sublime is worth returning to as a designerly concept for landscape architecture because it can reveal our interconnectedness to the world. The sublime is reconceptualized here as being a physiological event that occurs between one's body and the landscape, as opposed to the commonly held psychological or subjective understanding. By returning to the work of Edmund Burke, Thomas Whately, Uvedale Price, and Frederick Law Olmsted, we can see that the original thinkers considered the sublime to be remarkably concrete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Aesthetic emotions are a class of emotions aroused by evaluating aesthetically appealing objects or events. While evolutionary aesthetics suggests the adaptive roles of these emotions, empirical assessments are lacking. Previous neuroscientific studies have demonstrated that visual stimuli carrying evolutionarily important information induce neural responses even when presented non-consciously. To examine the evolutionary importance of aesthetic emotions, we conducted a neuroscientific study using magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure induced neural responses to non-consciously presented portrait paintings categorised as biological and non-biological and examined associations between the induced responses and aesthetic ratings. Methods: MEG and pre-rating data were collected from 23 participants. The pre-rating included visual analogue scales for object saliency, facial saliency, liking, and beauty scores, in addition to 'biologi-ness,' which was used for subcategorising stimuli into biological and non-biological. The stimuli were presented non-consciously using a continuous flash suppression paradigm or consciously using binocular presentation without flashing masks, while dichotomic behavioural responses were obtained (beauty or non-beauty). Timefrequency decomposed MEG data were used for correlation analysis with pre-rating scores for each category. Results: Behavioural data revealed that saliency scores of non-consciously presented stimuli influenced dichotomic responses (beauty or non-beauty). MEG data showed that non-consciously presented portrait paintings induced spatiotemporally distributed low-frequency brain activities associated with aesthetic ratings, which were distinct between the biological and non-biological categories and conscious and non-conscious conditions. Conclusion: Aesthetic emotion holds evolutionary significance for humans. Neural pathways are sensitive to visual images that arouse aesthetic emotion in distinct ways for biological and non-biological categories, which are further influenced by consciousness. These differences likely reflect the diversity in mechanisms of aesthetic processing, such as processing fluency, active elaboration, and predictive processing. The aesthetic processing of non-conscious stimuli appears to be characterised by fluency-driven affective processing, while top-down regulatory processes are suppressed. This study provides the first empirical evidence supporting the evolutionary significance of aesthetic processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionEating disorders (ED) are characterized by serious and persistent disturbances with eating, weightcontrol, and body image. Symptoms impact physical health, psychosocial functioning, and can be life-threatening. Individuals diagnosed with an ED experience numerous medical and psychiatric comorbidities due to issues caused by or underlying the ED. Therefore, it is vital to address the complex nature of an ED, as well as the comorbid and underlying issues. This necessitates a psychotherapeutic approach that can help to uncover, explore, and support working through unresolved emotions and experiences. Guided Imagery and Music (GIM) is an in-depth music psychotherapy approach utilizing therapist-programmed music to support the client in uncovering and examining underlying and unresolved issues. The literature surrounding the use of GIM with clients in ED treatment is anecdotal and comprised primarily of clinical case studies.MethodThis secondary analysis, based on a descriptive feasibility study that integrated GIM sessions into the client’s regular ED treatment and examined 116 transcripts from a series of sessions of eight clients.ResultsThematic analysis of the transcripts identified nine subthemes and three themes that emerged. These themes include emotional landscape (feeling stuck, acknowledging emotions, and working through unresolved emotions), relationships (self, others, and eating disorders), and transformation and growth (finding strength, change, and empowerment). A short series of GIM sessions helped ED clients identify and address issues underlying the ED and to gain or reclaim a sense of self that enabled them to make choices for their life that support their recovery and sense of empowerment. Intertextual analysis revealed imagery indicative of the Hero’s Journey.DiscussionFurther, how engagement in this embodied aesthetic experience stimulates perceptual, cognitive, and affective brain functions which are key in fostering behavioural and psychological change is explicated as it relates to ED treatment and recovery.

We assessed the aesthetic experience of patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) to understand their ability to experience feelings of the sublime and to be moved when viewing paintings. We exposed patients with bvFTD and control participants to concrete and abstract paintings and asked them how moved they were by these paintings and whether the latter were beautiful or ugly. Patients with bvFTD declared being less moved than control participants by both abstract and concrete paintings. No significant differences were observed between abstract and concrete paintings in both patients with bvFTD and control participants. Patients with bvFTD provided fewer "beautiful" and more "ugly" responses than controls for both abstract and concrete paintings. No significant differences in terms of "beautiful" and "ugly" responses were observed between abstract and concrete paintings in both patients with bvFTD and control participants. These findings suggest disturbances in the basic affective experience of patients with bvFTD when they are exposed to paintings, as well as a bias in their ability to judge the aesthetic quality of paintings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the ongoing architectural debate surrounding styles for American government buildings. It tests the results of the 2020 National Civic Art Society survey that found 72% of Americans prefer traditional federal buildings over modern designs. To gain a neuro-biological perspective on these results, eye-tracking emulation software is used to evaluate the relationship between architectural design, visual attention, and human preferences. The hypothesis that traditional buildings would capture and retain pre-attentive visual processing more than modern styles was confirmed in several experiments. The research offers valuable insights for architects, urban planners, and policymakers considering design decisions about federal buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Art appreciation is a remarkable human activity that begins the moment someone first perceives a work of art until they have fully contemplated the art, including purposefully discovering resources to enhance perceptions, reflections, and memorization. In this paper, the author first presents personal conjectures about the origins of the perception of beauty and art. He then explores three ways in which the art appreciation phenomenon has been researched and understood: the traditional art history approach; the opposite scientific neuroaesthetic stream; and a third and often controversial approach, art appreciation assisted by psychoanalytical theory and praxis. Finally, he suggests a method to foster, develop, and refine art appreciation based on personal analysis and his experience with students in immersion courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dance has entered mainstream empirical research: dance as an experimental stimulus, and dancers as movement experts. Informed by several sources, including primary sources (original, historical documents, and oral reports, such as interviews with practitioners and academic scholars of Iranian dance genres) and secondary sources (research literature), we describe what we label "Iranian classical dance" within this paper as an important resource for empirical research, not only in humanities scholarship but also, and importantly, for empirical aesthetics, emotion psychology, cross‐cultural psychology, and affective neuroscience. For this purpose, we (1) describe the aesthetics, characteristics, and history of Iranian classical dance; (2) outline issues of definition and systematization; and (3) give an overview of the cultural complexities and sociopolitical issues regarding Iranian classical dance in the past 40 years, which have shaped its current form. After the political revolution of 1979 (Iranian solar calendar year: 1358), dance in Iran—both as everyday practice and as a cultural heritage—was first forbidden, and now remains heavily restricted. International, interdisciplinary research teams can contribute to safeguarding Iranian classical dance in the future by firmly enshrining it into empirical research on human dance. We outline empirical research perspectives on Iranian classical dance, dataset resources, and expert communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes initial steps towards developing a theoretical framework of contemplative neuroaesthetics through sensorimotor dynamics. We first argue that this new area has been largely omitted from the contemporary research agenda in neuroaesthetics and thus remains a domain of untapped potential. We seek to define this domain to foster a clear and focused investigation of the capacity of the arts and architecture to induce phenomenological states of a contemplative kind. By proposing a sensorimotor account of the experience of architecture, we operationalize how being attuned to architecture can lead to contemplative states. In contrasting the externally-induced methods with internally-induced methods for eliciting a contemplative state of mind, we argue that architecture may spontaneously and effortlessly lead to such states as certain built features naturally resonate with our sensorimotor system. We suggest that becoming sensible of the resonance and attunement process between internal and external states is what creates an occasion for an externally-induced contemplative state. Finally, we review neuroscientific studies of architecture, elaborate on the brain regions involved in such aesthetic contemplative responses, provide architectural examples, and point at the contributions that this new area of inquiry may have in fields such as the evidence-based design movement in architecture.

The goal of neuroaesthetic research is to understand the neural mechanisms underpinning the perception and appreciation of art. The human brain has the remarkable ability to rapidly recognize different artistic styles. Using functional connectivity, this study investigates whether there are differences in connectivity networks formed during the processing of abstract and figurative paintings. Eighty paintings (forty abstract and forty figurative) were presented in a random order for eight seconds to each of the 29 participants. High-density EEG recordings were taken, from which functional connectivity networks were extracted at several time points (−300, 100, 300 and 500 ms). The debiased weighted phase lag index (dwPLI) was used to extract the connectivity networks for the abstract and figurative conditions across multiple frequency bands. Significant connectivity differences were detected for both conditions at each time point and in each frequency band: delta (p < 0.0273), theta (p < 0.0292), alpha (p < 0.0299), beta (p < 0.0275) and gamma (p < 0.0266). The topology of the connectivity networks also varied over time and frequency, indicating the multi-scale dynamics of art style perception. The method used in this study has the ability to identify not only brain regions but their interaction (communication) patterns and their dynamics at distinct time points, in contrast to average ERP waveforms and potential distributions. Our findings suggest that the early perception stage of visual art involves complex, distributed networks that vary with the style of the artwork. The difference between the abstract and figurative connectivity network patterns indicates the difference between the underlying style-related perceptual and cognitive processes.

A visual stimulus that is divided in harmonic proportions is often judged as more pleasant than others. This is well known by artists that often used two main types of geometric harmonic patterns: symmetry and the golden ratio. Symmetry refers to the property of an object to have two similar halves, whereas the golden ratio consists of dividing an object in a major and a minor part so that their proportion is the same as that between the whole object and its major part. Here we investigated looking behaviour and explicit preferences for different regularities including symmetry and golden ratio. We selected four Mark Rothko’s paintings, a famous abstract expressionism artist, characterized by two main areas depicted by different colours: one symmetric (ratio between areas: 50–50%), one in golden ratio (38–62%), one in an intermediate ratio (46–54%), and one in a ratio exceeding the golden ratio (32–68%). Thirty-six healthy participants (24.75 ± 3.71 years old) completed three tasks: observation task (OT), pleasantness task (PT), and harmony task (HT). Findings for explicit ratings of pleasantness and harmony were very similar and were not significantly correlated with patterns of looking behaviour. Eye Dwell Time mainly depended on stimuli orientation (p < 0.001), but for the harmony task also by ratio and their interaction. Our results showed that the visual scanning behaviour of abstract arts primarily depends on the orientation of internal components, whereas their proportion is more important for the pleasantness and harmony explicit judgments.

Background: Symmetry is a special kind of balance. This study aims to systematically explore and apply the role of balanced composition in aesthetic judgments by focusing on balanced composition features and employing research methods from computational aesthetics and neuroaesthetics. Methods: First, experimental materials were classified by quantifying balanced composition using several indices, including symmetry, center of gravity, and negative space. An EEG experiment was conducted with 18 participants, who were asked to respond dichotomously to the same stimuli under different judgment tasks (balance and aesthetics), with both behavioral and EEG data being recorded and analyzed. Subsequently, participants’ data were combined with balanced composition indices to construct and analyze various SVM classification models. Results: Participants largely used balanced composition as a criterion for aesthetic evaluation. ERP data indicated that from 300–500 ms post-stimulus, brain activation was more significant in the aesthetic task, with unbeautiful and imbalanced stimuli eliciting larger frontal negative waves and occipital positive waves. From 600–1000 ms, beautiful stimuli caused smaller negative waves in the PZ channel. The results of the SVM models indicated that the model incorporating aesthetic subject data (ACC = 0.9989) outperforms the model using only balanced composition parameters of the aesthetic object (ACC = 0.7074). Conclusions: Balanced composition is a crucial indicator in aesthetics, with similar early processing stages in both balance and aesthetic judgments. Multi-modal data models validated the advantage of including human factors in aesthetic evaluation systems. This interdisciplinary approach not only enhances our understanding of the cognitive and emotional processes involved in aesthetic judgments but also enables the construction of more reasonable machine learning models to simulate and predict human aesthetic preferences.

Aesthetic experiences have the potential to promote learning and creativity by enhancing the ability to understand complexity and to integrate novel or disparate information. Offering a theoretical framework for understanding the cognitive benefits of aesthetic experiences, this paper argues they are the necessary outcome of human learning, in which natural objects or artworks are evaluated in a multi-dimensional preference space shaped by Bayesian prediction. In addition, it contends that the brain-states underlying aesthetic experiences harness configurations of the apex three transmodal neural systems--the default mode network, the central executive network, and the salience network--that may offer information-processing advantages by recruiting the brain's high-power communication hubs, thus enhancing potential for learning gain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literary reception is a special case of language processing. The judgment of literature reveals deep social patterns with embodied cognition. In this study, we investigate how differences in literary quality resonate in the human brain. Modifying a series of stimuli previously used in studies of the emotional potential of Harry Potter, we alternate passages fromthe original novels with passages from imitative and intentionally poorly written fanfiction. EEG data shows how the three text types are processed differently by the brain. Comparing the brain activity of the readers for the various text types, we see a difference in the absolute power but not in the relative power of the frequency bands. Reading badfiction evokes the lowest activity. However, the functionality of this activity is the same for all texts since the relative power of the frequency bands does not differ. When comparing the participant groups, we observe the opposite situation. Here, different relative powers of the frequency bands reflect different judgments and reading habits of participants. For example, fans of Harry Potter, regular readers of fantasy texts, and generally frequent readers read the texts more attentively, which is reflected in a pronounced relative activity of the theta and alpha frequency bands. Non-frequent readers and readers who are not devoted to Harry Potter and fantasy in general have increased activity in the delta frequency band. This suggests their saliency detection is more prominent because they are less familiar with reading or the subject matter. To support our findings, we use the EEG data without averaging over stimuli and participants, capturing the participants' responses on the level of individual stimuli. A Kohonen self-organizing map trained on this more extensive data finds reliably detectable differences in the responses to passages from the original Harry Potter novels and fan- and badfiction. Our study allows for an interpretation of an adaptive brain response. Readers who enjoy Harry Potter or have experience with the fantasy genre show different reactions from those who do not. Thus, badfiction appears to be processed differently by the human brain, but not for all readers in the same way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes initial steps towards developing a theoretical framework of contemplative neuroaesthetics through sensorimotor dynamics. We first argue that this new area has been largely omitted from the contemporary research agenda in neuroaesthetics and thus remains a domain of untapped potential. We seek to define this domain to foster a clear and focused investigation of the capacity of the arts and architecture to induce phenomenological states of a contemplative kind. By proposing a sensorimotor account of the experience of architecture, we operationalize how being attuned to architecture can lead to contemplative states. In contrasting the externally-induced methods with internally-induced methods for eliciting a contemplative state of mind, we argue that architecture may spontaneously and effortlessly lead to such states as certain built features naturally resonate with our sensorimotor system. We suggest that becoming sensible of the resonance and attunement process between internal and external states is what creates an occasion for an externally-induced contemplative state. Finally, we review neuroscientific studies of architecture, elaborate on the brain regions involved in such aesthetic contemplative responses, provide architectural examples, and point at the contributions that this new area of inquiry may have in fields such as the evidence-based design movement in architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neuroaesthetic research has focused on neural predictive processes involved in the encounter with art stimuli or the related evaluative judgements, and it has been mainly conducted unimodally. Here, with electroencephalography, magnetoencephalography and an affective priming protocol, we investigated whether and how the neural responses to non-representational aesthetic stimuli are top-down modulated by affective representational (i.e. semantically meaningful) predictions between audition and vision. Also, the neural chronometry of affect processing of these aesthetic stimuli was investigated. We hypothesized that the early affective components of crossmodal aesthetic responses are dependent on the affective and representational predictions formed in another sensory modality resulting in differentiated brain responses, and that audition and vision indicate different processing latencies for affect. The target stimuli were aesthetic visual patterns and musical chords, and they were preceded by a prime from the opposing sensory modality. We found that early auditory-cortex responses to chords were more affected by valence than the corresponding visual-cortex ones. Furthermore, the assessments of visual targets were more facilitated by affective congruency of crossmodal primes than the acoustic targets. These results indicate, first, that the brain uses early affective information for predictively guiding aesthetic responses; second, that an affective transfer of information takes place crossmodally, mainly from audition to vision, impacting the aesthetic assessment. This article is part of the theme issue 'Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pursuing new knowledge in the entropic environment is pivotal for survival. However, dealing with uncertainty is a costly challenge for the agent surrounded by the stochastic sensory world, giving rise to different epistemic emotions, such as curiosity and anxiety. We recently proposed that aesthetic appreciation may have the role of associating pleasant feedback with the update of predictive representations. According to this idea, aesthetic appreciation and its associated rewarding feeling could drive people to seek new knowledge over anxiety. However, the relationship between aesthetic appreciation, curiosity, and anxiety has been still under-examined in the literature. Here, we explore the relationship between these epistemic emotions in a series of three experiments. In study 1, we examined whether music-induced aesthetic appreciation would influence curiosity in a gambling task. In studies 2a and 2b, we explore the relationship between music-induced aesthetic appreciation and anxiety state. Overall, aesthetic appreciation promoted curiosity-driven behaviour while it was negatively associated with anxiety. These results were consistent with the idea that aesthetic appreciation could act as a 'valve', prompting the individual to perceive curiosity (i.e. to consider novelty as a valuable opportunity to acquire new knowledge) rather than anxiety (i.e. to consider novelty as a risk to be avoided). This article is part of the theme issue 'Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How to account for the power that art holds over us? Why do artworks touch us deeply, consoling, transforming or invigorating us in the process? In this paper, we argue that an answer to this question might emerge from a fecund framework in cognitive science known as predictive processing (a.k.a. active inference). We unpack how this approach connects sense-making and aesthetic experiences through the idea of an 'epistemic arc', consisting of three parts (curiosity, epistemic action and aha experiences), which we cast as aspects of active inference. We then show how epistemic arcs are built and sustained by artworks to provide us with those satisfying experiences that we tend to call 'aesthetic'. Next, we defuse two key objections to this approach; namely, that it places undue emphasis on the cognitive component of our aesthetic encounters—at the expense of affective aspects—and on closure and uncertainty minimization (order)—at the expense of openness and lingering uncertainty (change). We show that the approach offers crucial resources to account for the open-ended, free and playful behaviour inherent in aesthetic experiences. The upshot is a promising but deflationary approach, both philosophically informed and psychologically sound, that opens new empirical avenues for understanding our aesthetic encounters. This article is part of the theme issue 'Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document explores the emotional associations and perceptions of different colors. It highlights that green is often associated with feelings of freshness, while blue is seen as colder. However, studies have also linked green to feelings of tiredness and guilt. Purple is described as relaxing and passive, while brown is perceived as having no emotional qualities. The document also explores the emotional connotations of black and white, with black being associated with negative emotions but also power and mystery, while white is seen as positive and symbolizes light. The research on color-emotion associations is noted to have limitations, such as the lack of control over color components and the use of subjective measures. The document suggests that further research could explore variables like education level and cultural background. Overall, colors that are lighter and brighter are associated with positive emotions, and warm colors are considered more stimulating than cool colors. [Extracted from the article]

It is generally agreed that literary metaphors are produced and interpreted by using the same strategies as more conventional, ordinary metaphorical expressions (George Lakoff & Mark Turner 1989; Zoltán Kövecses 2010). However, the aesthetic experience of reading metaphors in literature is a complex phenomenon that remains only partially explained. This paper aims at contributing to the study of the cognitive mechanisms that allow the aesthetic experience when reading poetic metaphors. For this purpose, after a short review of previous research on literary metaphors in the Cognitive Linguistic framework, the main tenets of Neuroaesthetics (Semir Zeki 2001; Vilayanur Ramachandran 2003), an emerging empirical discipline, are presented as referred to the study of visual art. Then, the insights from both fields are compared and applied to the study of metaphors. Results show significant coincidences as empirical research in neuroscience seem to confirm the theories and hypotheses posed by cognitive linguists, as for the way in which the emotional response to poetic metaphors is elicited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attempt is made to comprehend the latest developments in such a field of neuroscience as neuroethics, music through the perception of the human brain. Yes, for example, the key ideas of neuroethics are generally in line with the spirit of Kantian apriorism, reinterpreted in the current terms of cognitive neuroscience. Today, more and more arguments are found that "music excites such internal physiological programs that contribute to the restoration of the homeostatic equilibrium of the organism .... This means that music plays a role in human evolution. The article proposes the concept of a musical module, which correlates with a cognitive neurostructure. The theoretical and methodological features of the formation of today's classical music are investigated. The methods of analysis, synthesis, explanatory, research and scientific methods have been applied to conduct an effective research. Priority directions of modern music development in the context of neurophysiological development have been determined. Formed the results of the study, which were the basis for determining aspects of prospective musical development. Scientific research in the field of music and the field of psychology is investigated, which is the basis for the development of neuroscience. The relevance of the article is determined by the need to adapt music to the challenges of information and communication society and to determine the prospects for further development of today's classical music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Neuroscientific approaches have historically triggered changes in the conception of creativity and artistic experience, which can be revealed by noting the intersection of these fields of study in terms of variables such as global trends, methodologies, objects of study, or application of new technologies; however, these neuroscientific approaches are still often considered as disciplines detached from the arts and humanities. In this light, the question arises as to what evidence the history of neurotechnologies provides at the intersection of creativity and aesthetic experience. Methods We conducted a century-long bibliometric analysis of key parameters in multidisciplinary studies published in the Scopus database. Screening techniques based on the PRISMA method and advanced data analysis techniques were applied to 3612 documents metadata from the years 1922 to 2022. We made graphical representations of the results applying algorithmic and clusterization processes to keywords and authors relationships. Results From the analyses, we found a) a shift from a personality-focus quantitative analysis to a field-focus qualitative approach, considering topics such as art, perception, aesthetics and beauty; b) The locus of interest in fMRI-supported neuroanatomy has been shifting toward EEG technologies and models based on machine learning and deep learning in recent years; c) four main clusters were identified in the study approaches: humanistic, creative, neuroaesthetic and medical; d) the neuroaesthetics cluster is the most central and relevant, mediating between creativity and neuroscience; e) neuroaesthetics and neuroethics are two of the neologism that better characterizes the challenges that this convergence of studies will have in the next years. Conclusions Through a longitudinal analysis, we evidenced the great influence that neuroscience is having on the thematic direction of the arts and humanities. The perspective presented shows how this field is being consolidated and helps to define it as a new opportunity of great potential for future researchers.

Background: Art therapy has a long history of applications in cognitive and motor rehabilitation. More recently, a growing body of scientific literature has highlighted the potential of virtual reality in neurorehabilitation, though it has focused more on the technology itself than on the principles adopted in digital scenarios. Methods: This study is a single-blind randomized controlled trial conducted on 40 patients with stroke, comparing conventional therapy (physical therapy for the upper and lower limbs, for posture and balance, cognitive therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and specific therapy for swallowing, bowel, and bladder dysfunctions) to a protocol in which the upper limb physical therapy was substituted with art therapy administered by means of virtual reality exploiting the so-called Michelangelo effect. Results: After 12 sessions, patients in the virtual art therapy group showed a significantly greater improvement in independence in activities of daily living, as assessed by the Barthel Index (interaction of time and group: p = 0.001). Significant differences were also found in terms of upper limb muscle strength (Manual Muscle Test, p < 0.01) and reduction in spasticity (Ashworth scale, p = 0.007) in favor of the experimental group. In the virtual art therapy group, the effectiveness of the intervention was significantly correlated with patient participation (Pittsburgh Rehabilitation Participation Scale: R = 0.41), patient satisfaction (R = 0.60), and the perceived utility of the intervention by the therapist (R = 0.43). Conclusions: These findings support the efficacy of virtual art therapy leveraging the Michelangelo effect. Further studies should also focus on cognitive domains that could benefit from this type of approach.

Background: In recent years, computational aesthetics and neuroaesthetics have provided novel insights into understanding beauty. Building upon the findings of traditional aesthetics, this study aims to combine these two research methods to explore an interdisciplinary approach to studying aesthetics. Method: Abstract artworks were used as experimental materials. Based on traditional aesthetics and in combination, features of composition, tone, and texture were selected. Computational aesthetic methods were then employed to correspond these features to physical quantities: blank space, gray histogram, Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM), Local Binary Pattern (LBP), and Gabor filters. An electroencephalogram (EEG) experiment was carried out, in which participants conducted aesthetic evaluations of the experimental materials in different contexts (genuine, fake), and their EEG data were recorded to analyze the impact of various feature classes in the aesthetic evaluation process. Finally, a Support Vector Machines (SVMs) was utilized to model the feature data, Event-Related Potentials (ERPs), context data, and subjective aesthetic evaluation data. Result: Behavioral data revealed higher aesthetic ratings in the genuine context. ERP data indicated that genuine contexts elicited more negative deflections in the prefrontal lobes between 200 and 1000 ms. Class II compositions demonstrated more positive deflections in the parietal lobes at 50–120 ms, while Class I tones evoked more positive amplitudes in the occipital lobes at 200–300 ms. Gabor features showed significant variations in the parieto-occipital area at an early stage. Class II LBP elicited a prefrontal negative wave with a larger amplitude. The results of the SVM models indicated that the model incorporating aesthetic subject and context data (ACC = 0.76866) outperforms the model using only parameters of the aesthetic object (ACC = 0.68657). Conclusion: A positive context tends to provide participants with a more positive aesthetic experience, but abstract artworks may not respond to this positivity. During aesthetic evaluation, the ERP data activated by different features show a trend from global to local. The SVM model based on multimodal data fusion effectively predicts aesthetics, further demonstrating the feasibility of the combined research approach of computational aesthetics and neuroaesthetics.

In today's digital information age, human exposure to visual artifacts has reached an unprecedented quasi-omnipresence. Some of these cultural artifacts are elevated to the status of artworks which indicates a special appreciation of these objects. For many persons, the perception of such artworks coincides with aesthetic experiences (AE) that can positively affect health and wellbeing. AEs are composed of complex cognitive and affective mental and physiological states. More profound scientific understanding of the neural dynamics behind AEs would allow the development of passive Brain-Computer-Interfaces (BCI) that offer personalized art presentation to improve AE without the necessity of explicit user feedback. However, previous empirical research in visual neuroaesthetics predominantly investigated functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Event-Related-Potentials correlates of AE in unnaturalistic laboratory conditions which might not be the best features for practical neuroaesthetic BCIs. Furthermore, AE has, until recently, largely been framed as the experience of beauty or pleasantness. Yet, these concepts do not encompass all types of AE. Thus, the scope of these concepts is too narrow to allow personalized and optimal art experience across individuals and cultures. This narrative mini-review summarizes the state-of-the-art in oscillatory Electroencephalography (EEG) based visual neuroaesthetics and paints a road map toward the development of ecologically valid neuroaesthetic passive BCI systems that could optimize AEs, as well as their beneficial consequences. We detail reported oscillatory EEG correlates of AEs, as well as machine learning approaches to classify AE. We also highlight current limitations in neuroaesthetics and suggest future directions to improve EEG decoding of AE.

Literary reception is a special case of language processing. The judgment of literature reveals deep social patterns with embodied cognition. In this study, we investigate how differences in literary quality resonate in the human brain. Modifying a series of stimuli previously used in studies of the emotional potential of Harry Potter, we alternate passages from the original novels with passages from imitative and intentionally poorly written fanfiction. EEG data shows how the three text types are processed differently by the brain. Comparing the brain activity of the readers for the various text types, we see a difference in the absolute power but not in the relative power of the frequency bands. Reading badfiction evokes the lowest activity. However, the functionality of this activity is the same for all texts since the relative power of the frequency bands does not differ. When comparing the participant groups, we observe the opposite situation. Here, different relative powers of the frequency bands reflect different judgments and reading habits of participants. For example, fans of Harry Potter, regular readers of fantasy texts, and generally frequent readers read the texts more attentively, which is reflected in a pronounced relative activity of the theta and alpha frequency bands. Non-frequent readers and readers who are not devoted to Harry Potter and fantasy in general have increased activity in the delta frequency band. This suggests their saliency detection is more prominent because they are less familiar with reading or the subject matter. To support our findings, we use the EEG data without averaging over stimuli and participants, capturing the participants' responses on the level of individual stimuli. A Kohonen self-organizing map trained on this more extensive data finds reliably detectable differences in the responses to passages from the original Harry Potter novels and fan- and badfiction. Our study allows for an interpretation of an adaptive brain response. Readers who enjoy Harry Potter or have experience with the fantasy genre show different reactions from those who do not. Thus, badfiction appears to be processed differently by the human brain, but not for all readers in the same way.

Background: Neuroscientific approaches have historically triggered changes in the conception of creativity and artistic experience, which can be revealed by noting the intersection of these fields of study in terms of variables such as global trends, methodologies, objects of study, or application of new technologies; however, these neuroscientific approaches are still often considered as disciplines detached from the arts and humanities. In this light, the question arises as to what evidence the history of neurotechnologies provides at the intersection of creativity and aesthetic experience. Methods: We conducted a century-long bibliometric analysis of key parameters in multidisciplinary studies published in the Scopus database. Screening techniques based on the PRISMA method and advanced data analysis techniques were applied to 3612 documents metadata from the years 1922 to 2022. We made graphical representations of the results applying algorithmic and clusterization processes to keywords and authors relationships. Results: From the analyses, we found a) a shift from a personality-focus quantitative analysis to a field-focus qualitative approach, considering topics such as art, perception, aesthetics and beauty; b) The locus of interest in fMRI-supported neuroanatomy has been shifting toward EEG technologies and models based on machine learning and deep learning in recent years; c) four main clusters were identified in the study approaches: humanistic, creative, neuroaesthetic and medical; d) the neuroaesthetics cluster is the most central and relevant, mediating between creativity and neuroscience; e) neuroaesthetics and neuroethics are two of the neologism that better characterizes the challenges that this convergence of studies will have in the next years. Conclusions: Through a longitudinal analysis, we evidenced the great influence that neuroscience is having on the thematic direction of the arts and humanities. The perspective presented shows how this field is being consolidated and helps to define it as a new opportunity of great potential for future researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within this third part of our mini-series, searching for the best and worst automotive in-vehicle lighting settings, we aim to extend our previous finding about white light illumination preferences by adding local cortical area activity as one key indicator. Frontal electrical potential asymmetry, measured using an electroencephalogram (EEG), is a highly correlated index for identifying positive and negative emotional behavior, primarily in the alpha band. It is rarely understood to what extent this observation can be applied to the evaluation of subjective preference or dislike based on luminaire variations in hue, chroma, and lightness. Within a controlled laboratory study, we investigated eight study participants who answered this question after they were shown highly immersive 360° image renderings. By so doing, we first subjectively defined, based on four di_erent external driving scenes varying in location and time settings, the best and worst luminaire settings by changing six unlabeled luminaire sliders. Emotional feedback was collected based on semantic di_erentials and an emotion wheel. Furthermore, we recorded 120Hz gaze data to identify the most important in-vehicle area of interest during the luminaire adaptation process. In the second study session, we recorded EEG data during a binocular observation task of repeated images arbitrarily paired by previously defined best and worst lighting settings and separated between all four driving scenes. Results from gaze data showed that the central vehicle windows with the left-side orientated colorful in-vehicle fruit table were both significantly longer fixed than other image areas. Furthermore, the previously identified cortical EEG feature describing the maximum power spectral density could successfully separate positive and negative luminaire settings based only on cortical activity. Within the four driving scenes, two external monotonous scenes followed trendlines defined by highly emotionally correlated images. More interesting external scenes contradicted this trend, suggesting an external emotional bias stronger than the emotional changes created by luminaires. Therefore, we successfully extended our model to define the best and worst in-vehicle lighting with cortical features by touching the field of neuroaesthetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this practice-based case study, we investigate the subjective aesthetic and affective responses to a shift from 2D stereo-based modelling to 3D object-based Dolby Atmos in an audio installation artwork. Dolby Atmos is an infinite object-based audio format released in 2012 but only recently incorporated into more public-facing formats. Our analysis focuses on the artist Sadia Sadia's 30-channel audio installation 'Notes to an Unknown Lover', based on her book of free verse poetry of the same title, which was rebuilt and reformatted in a Dolby Atmos specified studio. We examine what effect altered spatiality with an infinite number of 'placements' has on the psychoacoustic and neuroaesthetic response to the text. The effectiveness of three-dimensional (3D) object-based audio is interrogated against more traditional stereo and two-dimensional (2D) formats regarding the expression and communication of emotion and what effect altered spatiality with an infinite number of placements has on the psychoacoustic and neuroaesthetic response to the text. We provide a unique examination of the consequences of a shift from 2D to wholly encompassing object-based audio in a text-based artist's audio installation work. These findings may also have promising applications for health and well-being issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]