An assessment of Neuroaesthetics, an exploration as to what part form and style holds in cognition. On the shape of thoughts.

1. Comenius University Bratislava
Dec 15th, 2015
Point and line to cognition
Grounded
Jeanna Nikolov-Ramirez
NeuroAesthetics?
http://webneel.com/daily/creative-mind-explosion?size=_original

2. • Is our perception grounded in shapes?
• How does representation and style influence cognition?

3. 1. Content vs. Style
2. Model of AESTHETIC APPRECIATION
3. Interplay Cognition & Emotion
4. Aesthetic Emotions
5. Neural Underpinnings
OUTLINE
• Appraisal of Images
• Visual Perception
• Eye Tracking
• Aesthetics and Constitution of Meaning
• Epistemological surplus of Form and Aesthetics
• Information Visualization as decision making tool
• Interplay between Cognition and Emotion
• Images vs Text/Type
Connection To My Research
Interests

5. WHAT IS STYLE?

7. HTTP://OLIVERLARIC.COM/VERSIONS.HTM
"VERSIONS," OLIVER LARIC

8. 8
CONTENT VS
STYLE
Correlation between style, depiction
and empathy promising field of study
for the future!
“There is some evidence that
brushstrokes elicit responses in
the perceiver, which correspond in
direction to motor activation in the
direction of the brush (Taylor, Witt,
& Grimaldi, 2012).”
Simultaneously performing hand
movements that resemble the artist’s
made while creating paintings can
enhance liking for paintings of
corresponding style.
Experts use art styles to classify
artworks according to similarity while
non-experts don’t.

9. PREMISES
• Ideal testing ground for theories of emotion, cognition and
perception
• Artists often depict the nature of mental representations
rather than of physical objects. Their renditions do not
adhere strictly to the physical properties of light and
shadow and color of objects.

10. THE PEAK SHIFT
PRINCIPLE
10
Ali Jabbar Duchamp, “Nude descending a staircase, No.2”
Boucher, “Nude on a Sofa”

11. GLOBAL, LOCAL PROCESSING

12. BRIEF HISTORICAL
OVERVIEW
1876: Gustav Theodor Fechner, Vorschule der Ästhetik
Early 1900: Gestalt theorists (Lipps, Stumpf, Bühler)
1970ies: Daniel Berlyne, Psychobiological aesthetics
• Early years of 21st century: technological progress
improved conditions under which art could be studied in
lab situations
• Possibility to study concurrently behavioral, physiological
and eye-movement data, neural data

13. WHAT MAKES AN
EXPERIENCE AESTHETIC?
3 major aspects:
(Shusterman 1997, Bergeron and Lopes 2012):
1. Has an evaluative dimension -
valuation of object
2. Phenomenological - affective
dimension
3. Semantic dimension -
meaningful
Aesthetic triad-proposal:
(Chatterjee and Vartanian 2014 review of neuropsychological
and neuroimaging studies)
1. Sensory-motor
2. Emotion-valuation
3. Meaning-knowledge neural
systems
No reason to believe that all three
dimensions required in every instance of
aesthetic experience.

14. FIVE MAIN
PROCESSING STAGES
1. Perception
2. Implicit memory integration
3. Explicit classification
4. Cognitive Mastering
5. Evaluation

15. LEDER ET AL.’S MODEL
OF AESTHETIC
APPRECIATION

16. NEURAL UNDERPINNINGS –
4 MAIN CONCLUSIONS
1. Aesthetic appreciation as a complex interaction among
perceptual, cognitive and affective processes.
2. No localized seat for art in the brain; our experience of art
emerges from the interaction among the nodes of a broadly
distributed network of cortical and subcortical brain regions
(Cela-Conde et al. , 2013; Chatterjee, 2014; Vessel et al. ,
2012).
3. None of the brain regions is specialized in responding to
art alone
4. Resilient to Alzheimer’s: Art can be appreciated in the
absence of explicit memory integration

17. CURRENT RESEARCH
STATUS
Four challenges faced today:
• Understanding the emotional component of the aesthetic episode
• Role of context
• Neural underpinnings of art and aesthetics
• Evolutionary origin

18. PENDING QUESTIONS
• Is the valuation of aesthetic objects computed in
sensory cortices?
• What is the relationship between aesthetic judgments
and approach–avoidance responses?
• How are different aesthetic emotions, including
negative ones such as horror and disgust, implemented
in the brain and how do these emotions give us
pleasure?
• How do aesthetic objects evoke moods in viewers that
persist after an encounter with an artwork?
• How does expertise in the visual arts alter neural
structures and functional responses to aesthetic
objects?
• Do brain regions that compute aesthetic judgments
overlap with regions that compute other socially and
culturally relevant values such as morality and justice?
• What are the evolutionary underpinnings of the ability
of the brain to experience aesthetic pleasure?

19. REFERENCES
Chatterjee, A. (2015). The neuropsychology of visual art. Art, Aesthetics, and the Brain, 341.
Chatterjee, A., & Vartanian, O. (2014). Neuroaesthetics. Trends in cognitive sciences, 18(7), 370-375.
Leder, H., & Nadal, M. (2014). Ten years of a model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments: The aesthetic
episode–Developments and challenges in empirical aesthetics. British Journal of Psychology, 105(4), 443-464.
Allesch, C. G. (2006). Einführung in die psychologische Ästhetik. Wien: WUV.
Ash, M. G. (1995). Gestalt Psychology in German culture, 1890-1967. Cambridge,University Press: Cambridge, MA.
Berlyne, D. E. (1974). Konflikt, Erregung, Neugier. Zur Psychologie der kognitiven Motivation. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
Bühler, K. (1913). Die Gestaltwahrnehmungen. Stuttgart: Spemann.
Fischer, K. R. & Stadler, F. (1997). Wahrnehmung und Gegenstandswelt. Zum Lebenswerk von Egon Brunswik
(1903-1955), (Hrsg.) Band 4 der Veröffentlichungen des Instituts Wiener Kreis. New York: Springer.
Gombrich, E., Hochberg, J. & Black, M. (1977). Kunst, Wahrnehmung, Wirklichkeit. Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.
Gombrich, E. H. (1986). Kunst und Illusion. Zur Psychologie der bildlichen Darstellung (1960). Stuttgart: Belser.
Leder, H. (2002). Explorationen in der Bildästhetik. Lengerich: Papst.
Leder, H. & Vitouch, O. (2006). Kunst- und Musikpsychologie. In: Kurt Pawlik (Hrsg.) Handbuch der Psychologie.
Heidelberg: Springer, 895-901.
Mandler, G. (2007). A history of modern experimental psychology: From Wundt and James to cognitive science.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Metzger, W. (1953). Gesetze des Sehens. Frankfurt/Main: Kramer.

20. 20
Jeanna Nikolov-Ramirez
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0wfyRgBze7c/UO8zTtj1QjI/AAAAAAAABl0/QTLYtMEbD88/s1600/2.jpg
@tendersubject