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

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

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

WHAT IS STYLE?

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

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.

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.

THE PEAK SHIFT PRINCIPLE

10

Ali Jabbar Duchamp, “Nude descending a staircase, No.2”

Boucher, “Nude on a Sofa”

GLOBAL, LOCAL PROCESSING

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

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.

FIVE MAIN PROCESSING STAGES 1.  Perception

2.  Implicit memory integration

3.  Explicit classification

4.  Cognitive Mastering

5.  Evaluation

LEDER ET AL.’S MODEL OF AESTHETIC APPRECIATION

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

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

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?

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

Jeanna Nikolov-Ramirez

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0wfyRgBze7c/UO8zTtj1QjI/AAAAAAAABl0/QTLYtMEbD88/s1600/2.jpg

@tendersubject