Nicola Di Stefano

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• Ph. D.
• Researcher at Italian National Research Council

Whether working together to move a table or supporting a child learning to ride a bike, physically connected individuals exchange haptic information to improve motor performance. However, this improvement occurs at the cost of additional effort for the more skilled partner. Objective: Here, we hypothesize that an asymmetric connection, consisting o...

Several studies have investigated crossmodal associations involving audiovisual stimuli. To date, however, far fewer studies have explored the relationship between musical timbre and visual features (e.g., soft/harsh timbres with blue/red colours). To fill this gap in the literature, 249 participants were invited to judge the match between differen...

In 1945, Norman Cazden published a groundbreaking article in the literature on consonance perception. In this seminal work, Cazden combined historical, musicological, and theoretical arguments to assert that the Pythagorean approach to consonance, based on integer ratios, lacked substantiation. Recent empirical evidence has bolstered Cazden’s persp...

Playing music is a complex task that relies on the combination of musicians’ technical and expressive skills. While the literature has investigated the effects of musical expressivity on the listeners, the way how technical difficulty and emotional expressivity affect musicians during playing has surprisingly received no attention. In an attempt to...

Over the last few decades, a growing number of studies have used wearable technologies, such as inertial and pressure sensors, to investigate various domains of music experience, from performance to education. In this paper, we systematically review this body of literature using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-...

Auditory branding is undoubtedly becoming more important across a range of sectors. One area, in particular, that has recently seen significant growth concerns the introduction of music and soundscapes that have been specifically designed to match a particular scent (what one might think of as “audio scents” or “sonic scents”). This represents an e...

The 'Molyneux problem' is typically framed in terms of the crossmodal matching of shape information from touch to vision. Indeed, shape along with intensity have commonly been considered amodal stimulus properties/dimensions (at least by developmental researchers). However, it is important to note that what is common, if anything, to the senses dif...

Research in the field of crossmodal correspondences has documented the widespread existence of consistent crossmodal associations between simple auditory and visual stimuli or dimensions (e.g., pitch-lightness) [see 1, for a review]. Far fewer studies have investigated the association between complex auditory stimuli and visually presented concepts...

Violin is one of the most complex musical instruments to learn. The learning process requires constant training and many hours of exercise and is primarily based on a student–teacher interaction where the latter guides the beginner through verbal instructions, visual demonstrations, and physical guidance. The teacher’s instruction and practice allo...

Music has been primarily conceived as a temporal art. However, over the last two ­ centuries or so, researchers across different disciplines including musicology, psychology, and philosophy, have been intrigued by the spatial nature of music and sounds, using spatial concepts to define music. This paper aims to demonstrate that an understanding of...

In this perspective paper, we explore the use of haptic feedback to enhance human-human interaction during musical tasks. We start by providing an overview of the theoretical foundation that underpins our approach, which is rooted in the embodied music cognition framework, and by briefly presenting the concepts of action-perception loop, sensorimot...

The term ‘amodal’ is a key topic in several different research fields across experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience, including in the areas of developmental and perception science. However, despite being regularly used in the literature, the term means something different to the researchers working in the different contexts. Many develo...

Over recent decades, studies investigating cross-modal correspondences have documented the existence of a wide range of consistent cross-modal associations between simple auditory and visual stimuli or dimensions (e.g., pitch-lightness). Far fewer studies have investigated the association between complex and realistic auditory stimuli and visually...

In this paper, I address the question of how emotional qualities can be attributed to musical timbre, an acoustic feature that has proven challenging to explain using traditional accounts of musical emotions. I begin presenting the notion of musical expressiveness, as it has been conceived by cognitivists to account for the emotional quality of var...

Across the millennia, and across a range of disciplines, there has been a widespread desire to connect, or translate between, the senses in a manner that is meaningful, rather than arbitrary. Early examples were often inspired by the vivid, yet mostly idiosyncratic, crossmodal matches expressed by synaesthetes, often exploited for aesthetic purpose...

In the growing literature on audiovisual correspondences, the question of how music influences image making has receivedlittle attention. To fill this gap, in this study we investigated the effect of music-induced emotions on several key parameters thatdefine drawing. Hypothesising that drawing while listening to emotionally evocative music would r...

Perceptual similarity is one of the most fiercely debated topics in the philosophy and psychology of perception. The documented history of the issue spans all the way from Plato – who regarded similarity as a key factor for human perceptual experience and cognition – through to contemporary psychologists – who have tried to determine whether, and i...

“Crossmodal correspondences” are the consistent mappings between perceptual dimensions or stimuli from different sensory domains, which have been widely observed in the general population and investigated by experimental psychologists in recent years. At the same time, the emerging field of human movement augmentation (i.e., the enhancement of an i...

This paper presents an experimental study that investigates the mapping between color and sound in two groups of subjects, consisting of 8 children and 8 adults, respectively. The color was decomposed using the Hue-Saturation-Brightness representation, and the musical stimuli consisted of chords determined by three parameters: the Root Tone, the Mo...

Supernumerary robotic limbs are innovative devices in the field of wearable robotics which can provide humans with unprecedented sensorimotor abilities. However, scholars have raised awareness of the ethical issues that would arise from the large adoption of technologies for human augmentation in society. Most negative attitudes towards such techno...

Revealed more than two millennia ago by Pythagoras, consonance and dissonance (C/D) are foundational concepts in music theory, perception, and aesthetics. The search for the biological, acoustical, and cultural factors that affect C/D perception has resulted in descriptive accounts inspired by arithmetic, musicological, psychoacoustical or neurobio...

Roughness is a perceptual attribute typically associated with certain stimuli that are presented in one of the spatial senses. In auditory research, the term is typically used to describe the harsh effects that are induced by particular sound qualities (i.e., dissonance) and human/animal vocalizations (e.g., screams, distress cries). In the tactile...

The proliferation of and interest in concepts of musical space make the question of why composers, philosophers, and musicologists have used spatial concepts for music - which is typically considered a temporal and ephemeral art form - a relevant issue in the multidisciplinary research on music. In this paper, I suggest distinguishing between a lit...

One of the most challenging goals in social robotics is implementing emotional skills. Making robots capable of expressing and deciphering emotions is considered crucial for allowing humans to socially interact with them. In addition to presenting technical challenges, the implementation of artificial emotions in artificial systems raises intriguin...

There has long been interest in the nature of the relationship(s) between hue and pitch or, in other words, between colour and musical/pure tones, stretching back at least as far as Newton, Goethe, Helmholtz, and beyond. In this narrative historical review, we take a closer look at the motivations that have lain behind the various assertions that h...

The notion of harmony was first developed in the context of metaphysics before being applied to the domain of music. However, in recent centuries, the term has often been used to describe especially pleasing combinations of colors by those working in the visual arts too. Similarly, the harmonization of flavors is nowadays often invoked as one of th...

Odour-sound correspondences provide some of the most fascinating and intriguing examples of crossmodal associations, in part, because it is unclear from where exactly they originate. Although frequently used as similes, or figures of speech, in both literature and poetry, such smell-sound correspondences have recently started to attract the attenti...

This book offers a broad and timely perspective on research on olfaction and its current technological challenges. It specifically emphasizes the interdisciplinary context in which olfaction is investigated in contemporary research. From aesthetics to sociology, from bioengineering to anthropology, the different chapters discuss a wide variety of i...

Bowing is the fundamental motor action responsible for sound production in violin playing. A lot of effort is required to control such a complex technique, especially at the beginning of violin training, also due to a lack of quantitative assessments of bowing movements. Here, we present magneto-inertial measurement units (MIMUs) and an optical sen...

Over the last few years, scholars have been debating whether aesthetic experience is characterized by a peculiar detachment from ordinary experience, i.e., «doubling», or by an intrinsic pragmatic and interactional nature. Within this debate, the embodied cognition paradigm contributes the position that the contemplative quality of aesthetic experi...

Finger-tapping tasks have been widely adopted to investigate auditory-motor synchronization, i.e., the coupling of movement with an external auditory rhythm. However, the discrete nature of these movements usually limits their application to the study of beat perception in the context of isochronous rhythms. The purpose of the present pilot study w...

Over the last few decades, research on auditory perception has increased a great deal, treating a wide range of topics from different perspectives. Empirical research has provided a detailed account of sound perception in neurobiological terms. From a different perspective, the phenomenology of music has focused on the experience of auditory percep...

Moving from the physiological characterization of emotion as a specific bodily response to a stimulus, I highlight some phenomenological properties of emotions, differentiating them from moods and atmospheres. Then, I consider the three notions in relation to music. In conclusion, I trace the difference between emotions, moods, and atmospheres back...

We present an easy to wear and use wearable system to monitor wrist and elbow movements in musicians. The system is based on two piezoresistive sensors embedded into a garment. Pilot tests on an adult double-bass player were carried out to assess the feasibility of the device for monitoring bowing technique. Results show promising performances in i...

It. Incarnazione, Embodiment; Fr. Incarnation, Embodiment; Germ. Verkörperung, Embodiment; Span. Encarnación, Embodiment. The English term literally means the act or process of embodying something, i.e. something becoming part of a body. In the last decades, embodiment has become one of the most ubiquitous, debated, and popular concepts in academic...

The role of gesture in music has been widely investigated in different disciplines, from experimental psychology to aesthetics, from musicology to anthropology. What seems to drive the different researches is the question about the relationship arising between gestures and sound, and how this relationship affects the experience of music. In this ar...

Background Rhinoplasty is one of the most complex procedures in plastic surgery. In patients over 65, the procedure is even more demanding because of the coexistence of multiple complicating psychological and anatomical factors. The aims of our study were to analyze the necessity of rhinoplasty in elderly patients, to analyze the perception of pati...

In sixth century BC, Pythagoras discovered the mathematical foundation of musical consonance and dissonance. When auditory frequencies in small-integer ratios are combined, the result is a harmonious perception. In contrast, most frequency combinations result in audible, off-centered by-products labeled “beating” or “roughness;” these are reported...

Background A patient's perspective is usually measured by patient-reported outcome instruments, which are becoming increasingly relevant to current research on clinical outcomes. The aims of our review were to identify studies that evaluated patient satisfaction after gynecomastia correction, analyze existing questionnaires, and summarize the devel...

Within the field of systems theory, the term robustness has typically been applied to different contexts such as automatic control, genetic networks, metabolic pathways, morphogenesis, and ecosystems. All these systems involve either man-made machines, or living organisms. In this chapter, we will consider music as a peculiar complex system, involv...

Drawing on shared research experiences and collaborative projects, this book offers a broad and timely perspective on research on the hand and its current challenges. It especially emphasizes the interdisciplinary context in which researchers need to be trained in contemporary science. From language to psychology, from neurology to the social scien...

Two biases affect the idea of beauty often embodied in aesthetic surgery. The first one is that the living body is the sum of different parts; the second one claims that beauty results from the sum of beautiful elements. Taken together, these 2 biases explain most of the aesthetic surgery procedures, in which a localized improvement is supposed to...

In diverse interaction processes that characterize music experience, the human hand can be seen as a mediator and facilitator for the brain’s processing of musical expressive patterns. After a brief overview on the human expressive system for music, we consider gestures and hand articulations in music production and performance, focusing on hand de...

The literature still lacks a review regarding PROs applied for rhinoplasty. Thus, we performed a systematic review of the literature to identify PROMs that assess patient satisfaction and quality of life after rhinoplasty. The aim of our study was to identify existing questionnaires and to summarize their development, psychometric properties, and c...

Background The aims of our study were to identify studies that evaluated patient satisfaction after transsexual surgery, analyze existing questionnaires, and summarize their development, psychometric properties, and content. MethodsA systematic review of the English-language literature was performed. Patient-reported outcome measures designed to as...

To date, behavioural procedures adopted to assess sound preferences in young children have evaluated the responses of participants while listening to the stimuli administered by the experimenter. Due to the difficulties which may arise in the interpretation of the results, recent studies have suggested some limitations to these procedures, stimulat...

In the present paper we describe an instrumented toy to study auditory preferences in young children. After brief considerations on the theoretical framework, the design of the mechanical, electronic and software components of the system is presented. The system allows for: (a) producing audio stimuli according to how children play with the toy; (b...

To date, behavioural procedures adopted to assess sound preferences in young children have evaluated the responses of participants while listening to the stimuli administered by the experimenter. Due to the difficulties which may arise in the interpretation of the results, recent studies have suggested some limitations to these procedures, stimulat...

Starting from two different case studies—cancer explanatory theories and musical consonance and dissonance perception theories—we aim to show how different analytical aspects of complex phenomena can be grasped by apparently divergent accounts. Reaching a more adequate understanding of these phenomena thus needs an integrated systemic view in which...

In this work we describe a new sensing technique to study auditory preferences in young children based on the interaction between perception and action. Manipulation is assessed thanks to a novel device instrumented with a magneto-inertial sensing core. This system allows estimating the manipulation in terms of angular displacements with errors low...

The paper discusses an ethical analysis of three common cases involving the most popular requests in rhinoplasty. As the nose plays a fundamental role in the aesthetics and physiognomy of the human face, the request for rhinoplasty may be an expression of both subjective discomfort and objective dysfunction. The paper aims, therefore, to fill the g...

Perché alcuni suoni stanno bene insieme e altri no? Da più di due millenni, questa semplice domanda è al centro della riflessione di filosofi, scienziati e teorici della musica. Da Pitagora a Keplero, da Galilei a Helmholtz, fino alle ricerche sperimentali contemporanee, il fenomeno della consonanza e della dissonanza è tra i più dibattuti della te...

Since the beginning of human history, music appears to be one of the most transcultural and permanent characters of mankind, as the discovery of ancient musical instruments suggests. Though different animal species use complex sounds for communication, the development of a structured musical language is unique to humans. In this chapter we focus on...

Il fenomeno della consonanza è oggetto di indagine nella tradizione teorico-musicale occidentale sin dalle sue origini. Ad oggi, non esiste una teoria della consonanza la cui validità sia universalmente riconosciuta. Nella prima sezione dell’articolo, presentiamo quattro modelli di spiegazione della consonanza – quello aritmetico, psico-fisico, fis...

The search for beauty and its value has been a discussion topic since the ancient Greeks composed their myths. The advent of safer and more advanced modern plastic surgery techniques and the spread of aesthetic medicine have renewed the search for beauty. Today, beauty seems possible, accessible, and more democratic than ever before. To be beautifu...

The article calls into question the very possibility of a post-human aesthetics, starting from the following premise: rather than post-human, it is more correct to speak of post-natural, indicating by this expression a reality produced through a new type of evolution, which does not simply change human nature, but de-natures it, radically transform...

L’articolo esamina i contenuti filosofici de Il settimo sigillo di Bergman, a partire da un confronto diretto con la sceneggiatura del film. Oltre che su aspetti generali dell’estetica di Bergman, ci soffermiamo sul ruolo che alcuni nuclei tematici assumono all’interno della pellicola : in particolare, sul rapporto tra fede e conoscenza, sul ruolo...

Different accounts have been given in order to face the problem of the emergence of musical consonance and dissonance. Getting a more adequate comprehension of such phenomenology may require a systemic view to integrate such multidimensionality into a unitary picture in which every partial solution enlightens a particular aspect of the very same pr...

Moving from the Aristotelian definition of human as the only animal endowed with the gift of speech, we focus on the reasons why rhetoric has to be considered an essential dimension of human being. As humanity is strictly related to speech, rhetoric became a fundamental medium for knowledge of truth. Plato, in Gorgia’s dialogue, underlines the risk...

In this paper, we aim to show that behind the utilization of a progressive rhetoric always lies a progressive existential behavior. Therefore, starting from the linguistic level of rhetoric, we move to the anthropological one. Here we present three fundamental elements for promoting a progressive strategy for bioethics: 1. to strongly desire that t...

Abstract: A new paradigm about machine-design in robotics, currently defined as ‘Embodied Intelligence’, has recently been developed. Here we consider the debate on the relationship between the hand and the intellect, from the perspective of the history of philosophy, aiming at providing a more suitable understanding of this paradigm. The new botto...

In this paper we reflect on the philosophical and epistemological connections between a new technology recently developed within robotics, and the previous mechanical approach. We will perform this task introducing the cyber-hand case: a very particular kind of bio-mechatronical prosthesis designed by bio-engineers in University Campus Bio-Medico i...

Aim of this paper is to analyse Nuages gris, a short piano piece composed by Franz Liszt in the last period of his life. These two pages, totally 48 bars, are quite easy to play and very far from transcendental and virtuoso style which still characterizes Liszt’s late production. Despite of its apparent simplicity, Nuages is to be seen as a very mo...