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We present a theory of human artistic experience and the neural mechanisms that mediate it. Any theory of art (or, indeed, any aspect of human nature) has to ideally have three components. (a) The logic of art: whether there are universal rules or principles; (b) The evolutionary rationale: why did these rules evolve and why do they have the form t...
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... many such codelets have run, a highly structured representation of the situation emerges, which might, for instance, see the string as a sequence of four chunks of two letters each, with the "alphabetic successor" relation connecting each chunk with its right neighbor. Figure 2 gives an stripped-down example of Copycat's perceptual struc- turing. ...
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... (c) Imprint Academic 2005 For personal use only --not for reproduction or Dalmatian dog photo (Fig. 2). This is seen initially as a random jumble of splotches. The number of potential groupings of these splotches is infinite but once the dog is seen your visual system links only a subset of these splotches together and it is impossible not to 'hold on' to this group of linked splotches. Indeed the discovery of the dog and the linking of ...
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... -and this might be easier to accomplish if a limbic 'reinforcement' signal is not only fed back to early vision once an object has been completely identified, but is evoked at each and every stage in processing as soon as a partial 'consistency' and binding is achieved. This would explain why we say 'aha' when the Dalmatian is finally seen in Fig. 2 -and why it is difficult to revert back to seeing merely splotches once the dog is seen as a whole: that particular percept is powerfully reinforced (Ramachandran and Blakeslee, 1998). In other words, even though the grouping may be initially based on autonomous process in each module (Marr, 1981), once a cluster of features becomes ...
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... second basic principle suggested by Ramachandran is "grouping" (or binding). The way this works can be illustrated by the Dalmatian dog picture shown in Fig. 2. This is seen initially as a random jumble of splotches. The number of potential groupings of these splotches is infinite, but once the dog is seen, your visual system links only a subset of these splotches together and it is impossible not to "hold on" to this group of linked splotches. Indeed, the discovery of the dog and the linking ...
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... dramatic demonstration of this phe- nomenon is the following: if you show someone a donut shape so that the donut is 'around' the blind spot, say a yellow donut, and if the inner diameter of the donut is 434 V.S. RAMACHANDRAN AND W. HIRSTEIN slightly smaller than the blind spot, the donut will look like a complete, homogeneous disk. In fact, the size of the donut can be such that you're actually seeing three times as much yellow now as you did before (see Figure 2a), which in turn means that your brain actually 'filled in' your blind spot with qualia. The reason we emphasize this is that there are some who have argued you simply ignore the blind spot and don't notice what's going on (Dennett, 1991), so that there really is no filling in. ...
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... reason we emphasize this is that there are some who have argued you simply ignore the blind spot and don't notice what's going on (Dennett, 1991), so that there really is no filling in. But this can't be right, because if you show someone several rings, one of which alone is concentric with the blind spot, that single one will look like a disc and will actually 'pop out' per- ceptually (see Figure 2b). How can something you are ignoring pop out at you? ...
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... is difficult to see how the different attributes of a scene that are analysed in specialized areas would otherwise be integrated into a visual image, a feature of the visual system often referred to as the 'binding problem', a 'problem' since its workings are still largely unknown (Robertson, 2003). With respect to motion perception the bind- ing (or maybe we should say 'unbinding') problem, comes down to determining what is moving and what is stationary, and distinguishing between the motion of different parts of a single object and the motion of different objects, something choreographers like to play with (Figure 2). Already we catch a glimpse of how aspects of the visual system can be employed artistically. ...
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... follows from the fact that the aesthetic principles mentioned above can only be isolated in theory, in practice some or all combine and rein- force each other, as the illustrations show. An interesting aspect of the present account is that it also explains why some things don't work (e.g., Figures 11 and 12). ...
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Citations
... Вилайанур Рамачандран с коллегами разработали в высшей степени спекулятивную теорию человеческого художественного опыта и нервных механизмов, которые его опосредуют (Ramachandran, Hirstein, 1999). Они описывают ряд особенностей сенсорного (в основном зрительного) восприятия, которые, по их предположению, возникли в эволюции для более эффективного обнаружения хищников и других адаптивных задач, и которые могут опосредовать некоторые особенности художественного восприятия. ...
What is the meaning of life? What is the nature of the human mind, love, morality? All of these questions tend to be answered and explained in "natural science" terms. Life arose out of inanimate nature by random physical and chemical factors and one should hardly look for any sense in it; man is the product of natural selection and reason, love and morality, are the result of chemical and electrical processes in the brain. Since these questions are among the most important for human beings, due to the unquestionable authority of the natural sciences, the proposed answers can and already do have a major impact on all areas of human life, from economics and politics to mental health and the subjective well-being of the individual. Does this perception of the world and one's place in it make one happy? Sociological studies clearly say no. Adherents of this worldview, however, argue that no matter how unpleasant it may seem, one should have the courage to accept it, because it is consistent with the scientific evidence. But is this true? Does the modern scientific picture of the world really allow for all these far-reaching conclusions? People who are professionally involved in science know that it almost never provides answers to worldview questions. All empirical facts and scientific theories can be interpreted in different ways and the choice of one interpretation or another is largely determined by one's worldview position, not vice versa. Although the book is called "Worldview Problems of Neuroscience", and most of it is indeed devoted to neuroscientific problems and their philosophical interpretation, it deals with a wider range of questions, which form the basis of the worldview of most modern people. Author tries to understand whether the reductionist materialistic worldview that dominates today, especially in the neurosciences, is really capable of plausibly explaining the current evidence about the nature of the relationship between mental processes and the physical world. The book concludes by outlining modern philosophical positions alternative to orthodox physicalism and tries to summarize them in a unified system.
... Symmetry makes it possible to observe, conceive, and sometimes even prove specific laws (Weyl, 1952). Moreover, symmetry is strongly linked to art and design (Arnheim, 1974;Ramachandran & Hirstein, 1999). The significance of symmetry is emphasized in painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, and music (Hodgson, 2011;Weyl, 1952). ...
Solving geometry problems is challenging for students of all ages. The complexity of geometry problems is multidimensional and is linked to visualization, auxiliary constructions required for solutions, computational and proof skills, and deep and robust knowledge of geometry concepts and their properties (definitions, axioms, and theorems). In this paper, we hypothesized that the field-(in)dependency and (a)symmetry of the geometric diagrams given in geometry problems affect the complexity of the problems. We designed 168 short verification problems: 21 sets of 4 geometric diagrams with a systematic variation of the examined conditions accompanied by a correct and an incorrect property. The hypotheses were examined using the accuracy and response times of 45 undergraduate and graduate Taiwanese students who were asked to solve these problems in a computerized setting. Based on the results of this test, we demonstrated that both asymmetry and field-dependency of diagrams increase problems’ complexity, as indicated by a decrease in the accuracy and an increase in reaction time of responses.KeywordsField-(in)dependency(A)symmetryGeometry ProblemsCognitive complexity
... Current theory suggests that aesthetic experience transpires from the harmonious interaction between sensory-motor, emotion-valuation, and meaning-knowledge systems (the so-called aesthetic triad, [4]) which reflects the recruitment of cortical and subcortical regions. The sensory-motor system designates the activation of regions in the occipital, temporal, and parietal cortices responsible for low-level sensory abilities (e.g., [143,144]), such as object recognition indicative of gestalt principles [145], and the engagement of the mirror neuron systems via sensorimotor embodiment necessary for the fluid comprehension of actions and their associated intentions [146,147]. The emotion-valuation system constitutes aesthetic evaluations with frontal cortical regions deputing the appraisal of beauty [7,[148][149][150], liking warranting the recruitment of reward circuitry [144,151,152], and affect being derived from the activation of limbic areas [153][154][155][156][157][158][159]. ...
... Moreover, live dance performance increased CSE in comparison to a recorded dance performance [193]. Therefore, the kinesthetic depictions within art may be more stimulating than life-like reproductions, which compliments the peak-shift principle [145] that suggests artwork is an over exaggerated portrayal of reality. Likewise, single-pulse TMS was applied over the M1 to explore the CSE related to the perceived dynamism and subjective preference of figurative and landscape paintings differing in dynamic and static content [192]. ...
Non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial electrical stimulation (tES), are widely employed in cognitive neuroscience to identify causal links between specific brain structures supporting sensory, motor, cognitive and affective functions. During the last decade, NIBS techniques have been increasingly applied to the study of the neural basis of creative thinking and aesthetic perception and appreciation. The present chapter offers an overview of mechanisms of actions of TMS and different types of tES and considers recent studies applying these techniques to shed light on the neural underpinning mediating creativity and the emergence of aesthetic experience. Available findings suggest the existence of some areas of overlap between the neural correlates of creativity and aesthetic experience mainly within prefrontal and parietal cortices (core nodes of the executive control and default mode networks); however, sensorimotor regions and low-level visual areas seem to be selectively dedicated to aesthetic experience of visual stimuli. In the concluding part, we consider current limitations and challenges in using NIBS and suggest future avenues for scientific exploration within these fields to fully exploit the great potential of brain stimulation to the study of the neural bases of creativity and aesthetic experiences.
... In the next study, we contribute by investigating a neglected area: Gestalt grouping principles in relation to esthetic appreciation, more specifically, in the tactile domain. Some authors hypothesized that esthetic appreciation is generated from being able to group elements and detect the properties that bring order and unity to them (R. A. G. Post et al., 2016;Ramachandran & Hirstein, 1999). In fact, Koffka (1940) already F I G U R E 2 Example of two stimuli used in Study 1. ...
Tactile experiences are a pivotal part of consumer behavior and choice. However, very little is known about why consumers esthetically appreciate touching products. The principle of Unity‐in‐Variety, stating that consumers like to perceive variety but only when this variety is presented as a coherent whole, has been shown to partly explain consumers' esthetic appreciation in the visual domain. We theorize that the psychological mechanisms underlying the esthetic principle of Unity‐in‐Variety are modality‐independent, and therefore that this principle also applies to consumers' tactile esthetic appreciation. Across three studies, using existing products and novel 3D printed product designs systematically manipulated along the perceptual dimensions of unity and variety, we show that both unity and variety independently contribute to tactile esthetic appreciation. Furthermore, because unity and variety are inherently partial opposites, esthetic appreciation of products is highest when both unity and variety are simultaneously maximized.
... As propriedades universais da música também refletem propriedades anatômicas e fisiológicas de nossos circuitos auditivos, evoluídos para o processamento de eventos acústicos biologicamente relevantes [51]. Segundo De fato, os processos neurais subjacentes às respostas estéticas à música são muito mais claros e facilmente detectáveis cientificamente do que os associados às respostas sucitadas pelas artes visuais [53], provavelmente porque a música exerce influências mais diretas e poderosas nos sistemas emocionais subcorticais do que as artes visuais. De fato, há estudos preliminares que mostram que drogas como a naloxona e a naltrexona, as quais são antagonistas dos receptores opióides, reduzem as emoções e os arrepios evocados pela música [52]. ...
Resumo Este artigo apresenta evidências dos fundamentos neurobiológicos e evolucionários da música e suas implicações terapêuticas. Primeiro, a música é um comportamento universal, presente em toda cultura. Segundo, apesar de evidências de alguns mecanismos músico-específicos, estudos de lesão e de neu-roimagem revelam que a música é também altamente supramodal e interage com múltiplos domínios cerebrais, recrutando ativação bilateral em regiões envolvidas com o processamento linguístico, motor e espacial. Terceiro, os padrões básicos de organização melódica e temporal da música são compartilhados entre as culturas, uma propriedade análoga às regras universais da sintaxe compartilhadas por diferentes línguas. Quarto, as respostas dos ouvintes à música também são universais através das culturas. Quinto, estudos de neurodesenvolvimento mostram que bebês processam padrões musicais semelhantemente aos adultos, fornecendo evidências de mecanismos transcendentes à cultura. Sexto, a música evoca emoções genuínas e fortes, ativando estruturas cerebrais filogeneticamente antigas do sistema límbico. Finalmente, consideramos uma redefinição da música como uma forma de comunicação baseada no som, corporificada, não-referencial e polissêmica, cujo conteúdo é essencialmente emocional. Como a música ativa áreas cerebrais envolvidas no processamento linguístico, espacial, motor e emocional básico, in-duzindo neuroplasticidade, ela representa uma possibilidade terapêutica de baixo risco e de baixo custo. Palavras-chave: música, cognição, neurodesenvolvimento, emoção.
... While the vast majority of studies focused on the aesthetic impressions of art (Ramachandran and Hirstein, 1999;Joy and Sherry, 2003;Bahrami-Ehsan et al., 2015;Myszkowski and Zenasni, 2016) or music (Vuust and Kringelbach, 2010;Reuter and Oehler, 2011;Brattico et al., 2013;Starcke et al., 2019), the studies that investigate the aesthetic judgements of linguistic stimuli are rare. Meanwhile, languages are routinely subjected to aesthetic judgments by the general public. ...
Introduction
Previous aesthetic research has set its main focus on visual and auditory, primarily music, stimuli with only a handful of studies exploring the aesthetic potential of linguistic stimuli. In the present study, we investigate for the first time the effects of personality traits on phonaesthetic language ratings.
Methods
Twenty-three under-researched, “rarer” (less learned and therefore less known as a foreign language or L2) and minority languages were evaluated by 145 participants in terms of eroticism, beauty, status, and orderliness, subjectively perceived based on language sound.
Results
Overall, Romance languages (Catalan, Portuguese, Romanian) were still among the top six erotic languages of the experiment together with “Romance-sounding,” but less known languages like Breton and Basque. Catalan and Portuguese were also placed among the top six most beautiful languages. The Germanic languages (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic) were perceived as more prestigious/higher in terms of status, however to some degree conditioned by their recognition/familiarity. Thus, we partly replicated the results of our earlier studies on the Romance language preferences (the so-called Latin Lover effect) and the perceived higher status of the Germanic languages and scrutinized again the effects of familiarity/language recognition, thereby calling into question the above mentioned concepts of the Latin Lover effect and the status of Germanic languages. We also found significant effects of personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness) on phonaesthetic ratings. Different personality types appreciated different aspects of languages: e.g., whereas neurotics had strong opinions about languages' eroticism, more conscientious participants gave significantly different ratings for status. Introverts were more generous in their ratings overall in comparison to extroverts. We did not find strong connections between personality types and specific languages or linguistic features (sonority, speech rate). Overall, personality traits were largely overridden by other individual differences: familiarity with languages (socio-cultural construals, the Romanization effect—perceiving a particular language as a Romance language) and participants' native language/L1.
Discussion
For language education in the global context, our results mean that introducing greater linguistic diversity in school and universities might result in greater appreciation and motivation to learn lesser-known and minority languages. Even though we generally prefer Romance languages to listen to and to study, different personality types are attracted to different language families and thus make potentially successful learners of these languages.
... How it is that humans are capable of making aesthetic judgments has long been a focus of enquiry in psychology, more recently gaining a foothold in neuroscience with the emerging field of neuroaesthetics [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] . Yet in spite of the long tradition of studying value judgments, we still have a very limited understanding of how people form aesthetic value, let alone of the neural mechanisms underlying this enigmatic process. ...
... We grouped the resulting features into three groups. (1) features created from interactions between high-level features (2) features created from interactions between low-level features and (3) features created from interactions between a high-level and a low-level feature. In order to determine the contribution of these three groups of features, we performed PCA on each group so that we can take the same number of components from each group. ...
Little is known about how the brain computes the perceived aesthetic value of complex stimuli such as visual art. Here, we used computational methods in combination with functional neuroimaging to provide evidence that the aesthetic value of a visual stimulus is computed in a hierarchical manner via a weighted integration over both low and high level stimulus features contained in early and late visual cortex, extending into parietal and lateral prefrontal cortices. Feature representations in parietal and lateral prefrontal cortex may in turn be utilized to produce an overall aesthetic value in the medial prefrontal cortex. Such brain-wide computations are not only consistent with a feature-based mechanism for value construction, but also resemble computations performed by a deep convolutional neural network. Our findings thus shed light on the existence of a general neurocomputational mechanism for rapidly and flexibly producing value judgements across an array of complex novel stimuli and situations.
... Kemudian Keseimbangan (Balance) merupakan keseimbangan dalam pendistribusian elemen pada desain sehingga visual dari desain nyaman Ketika dipandang, dalam poster ini Balance ditunjukkan melalui peletakan elemen secara simetris dan berimbang pada tiap sisi atas dan bawah yaitu bagian sisi atas ada logo dan teks dan sisi bawah terdapat gambar roti burger. Simetris merupakan salah satu prinsip dasar estetis (Ramachandran & Hirstein, 2006) (Bertamini & Makin, 2014. ...
PENDAHULUAN Berkembangnya kegiatan perekonomian saat ini menyebabkan banyaknya produk baru yang bermunculan. Hal ini membuat semakin banyak opsi untuk konsumen dalam memilih The purpose of this research is to determine the meaning contained in the McDonald's Father's Day series advertising posters. The type of this research is descriptive with a qualitative approach. The researcher uses Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotic analysis, which focuses on signs and markers, to determine the meaning contained in the poster. According to the research results, the McDonald's poster series Father's Day celebrates Father's Day through the Burger Buns image, which represents a father figure. The text "Happy Father's Day," which indicates that McDonald's is celebrating this special occasion. The yellow M logo is McDonald's identity, as well as the red background represents the primary way McDonald's products are presented. This is an open access article under the CC-BY-SA license. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui makna yang terkandung dalam poster iklan McDonald's seri Father's Day. Jenis penelitian ini adalah penelitian deskriptif dengan pendekatan kualitatif. Untuk mengetahui makna yang terkandung dalam poster, peneliti menggunakan analisis semiotika Charles Sanders Peirce yang berfokus pada tanda dan penanda. Hasil yang didapatkan adalah poster McDonald's seri Father's Day memiliki makna perayaan hari ayah lewat gambar Burger Buns yang merepresentasikan figur seorang ayah. Teks "Happy Father's Day" yang bermakna McDonald's ikut dalam merayakan momen spesial ini. Logo M kuning yang menjadi wajah dari McDonald's dan background warna merah yang mewakili cara utama penyajian produk McDonald's. This is an open access article under the CC-BY-SA license. Keywords Semiotika Poster Hari Ayah Iklan.
... Previous research on aesthetic preferences demonstrates that people have a general dislike of art that they consider meaningless (Dissanayake, 1988;Donald, 1991;Humphrey, 1999;Lewis-Williams, 2002;Ramachandran & Hirstein, 1999). Those high in a personal need for structure especially dislike seemingly meaningless modern art (Landau, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski & Martens, 2006). ...
Across four studies participants ( N = 818) rated the profoundness of abstract art images accompanied with varying categories of titles, including: pseudo-profound bullshit titles (e.g., The Deaf Echo ), mundane titles (e.g., Canvas 8 ), and no titles. Randomly generated pseudo-profound bullshit titles increased the perceived profoundness of computer-generated abstract art, compared to when no titles were present (Study 1). Mundane titles did not enhance the perception of profoundness, indicating that pseudo-profound bullshit titles specifically (as opposed to titles in general) enhance the perceived profoundness of abstract art (Study 2). Furthermore, these effects generalize to artist-created abstract art (Study 3). Finally, we report a large correlation between profoundness ratings for pseudo-profound bullshit and “International Art English” statements (Study 4), a mode and style of communication commonly employed by artists to discuss their work. This correlation suggests that these two independently developed communicative modes share underlying cognitive mechanisms in their interpretations. We discuss the potential for these results to be integrated into a larger, new theoretical framework of bullshit as a low-cost strategy for gaining advantages in prestige awarding domains.
... However, the color of the child's body (red or pale) after plunging it in the water of the well is a physical characteristic. The color is not only a ritual-related but also culturerelated communicator (cf., e.g., Ramachandran and Hirstein 1999). Its meaning, like the meaning of other elements of the pilgrimage environment and units of motion, "arrives in context" (Birdwhistell 1952, p. 10). ...
There are endless lists of academic publications on pilgrimage and on nonverbal communication, but very rarely if at all, do these two phenomena meet together in the same one, hence the author’s attempt to bring them together here. In this article the author discusses nonverbal communication in the context of pilgrimage rituals. Since rituals are carried out both physically and mentally, their performance requires the involvement of all the senses. A ritual may be verbal or nonverbal and very often is both. All elements of the ritual send a message. Thus, ritual communicates—it is a source of information about the individual retrieved by others—but it is not only that, as it also effects the mind, thoughts and spirituality of the individual. It has enormous influence on the well-being of a person; it is therapeutic. The author describes and analyzes single rituals related to the well, the tree, various kinds of stones, and other objects located on pilgrimage routes. While doing this, the author takes a phenomenological approach. She bases her analysis of nonverbal communication mainly on ethnographic materials. She also utilizes sources from the areas of archeology, anthropology, sociology and psychology. They are supplemented by her own participant observation at many pilgrimage places in Ireland over the period 1995–2012.
