Pietro Sarasso
Gianni Francesetti
Felix Schoeller- 1Brain Plasticity and Behaviour Changes Research Group, Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
- 2International Institute for Gestalt Therapy and Psychopathology, Turin, Italy
- 3Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
- 4Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies, Santa Monica, CA, United States
- 5Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
Editorial on the Research Topic
Possible applications of neuroaesthetics to normal and pathological behaviour
Highlights
- Aesthetic pleasure is a fundamental aspect of human perception, extending beyond the appreciation of artworks or superficial visual stimuli.
- Neuroaesthetics has potential therapeutic applications and can be used to induce behavioral change.
- Curiosity and beauty perception are interconnected, and aesthetic experiences have implications for various areas such as knowledge acquisition, motivation, memory formation, and pain perception.
- Incorporating artistic interventions into treatment plans for neurological conditions can improve overall wellbeing and quality of life.
- Embodied aesthetics explores the relationship between interoception, emotional experiences, and neuropsychiatric disorders, and has potential implications for the restoration of interoceptive inference and treatment of conditions like depression.
1. Introduction
In recent years, a perspective on aesthetics has resurfaced as an essential evolutionary dimension of human learning, permeating basic brain functions such as cognition, perception, and emotion and indispensable to behavioral change (Biederman and Vessel, 2006; Schaeffer, 2013; Schoeller and Perlovsky, 2016; Sarasso et al., 2019; Wassiliwizky and Menninghaus, 2021; Kenett et al., 2023; Sarasso et al.). This view circles back to the original vision of Baumgarten in 1735, who defined aesthetics as the “science of sensory knowledge directed toward beauty” (Colin McQuillan, 2021), beyond the study of artistic production and consumption (Berlyne, 1973; Sarasso et al., 2020). As mentioned by Magsamen et al. in this volume, aesthetics derives from the Greek word “aisthēsis,” which means “sensation,” “perception,” (as in “anesthetics”), the very foundation of human experience. Aesthetic pleasure is not confined to the appreciation of artworks or superficial visual stimuli; rather, it is a fundamental requirement for human perception (Schoeller et al., 2018b) and a necessary condition to virtually every human activity (Vessel et al., 2012, 2013; Belfi et al., 2019), including speech perception and decision-making (Perlovsky and Schoeller, 2019). In other words, it is “always on” (Wassiliwizky and Menninghaus, 2021).
2. Neurasthenics as a promising field for therapeutic applications
This Research Topic seeks to answer the central research question of what endogenous mechanisms and exogenous factors make humans more or less sensitive to sensory novelty, exploring the potential applications of neurasthenics to psychopathology. The ultimate aim is to examine how aesthetic experiences can be used therapeutically to foster meaningful, desirable, behavioral change in a wide range of settings inducing psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (Strickland et al., 2021). As the articles in this Research Topic show, the neo-Baumgartian perspective is increasingly pervading empirical aesthetics. As reviewed by Magsamen et al. in this Research Topic, neuroaesthetics now encompasses a wide array of studies and initiatives at the intersection of arts and aesthetics with health, wellbeing, and learning. This creates a pressing need for a new framework to support and potentially accelerate neurasthenic's research and translation.
3. Curiosity and beauty perception
Scientists are beginning to explore the link between curiosity and beauty perception (Gottlieb et al., 2013; Schoeller, 2016; Tik et al., 2018; Van de Cruys et al., 2021), knowledge-acquisition processes in general (Schoeller and Perlovsky, 2016; Grossberg and Zajac, 2017; Schwartenbeck et al., 2019), the tuning of the sensory system to perceptual (Brielmann and Dayan, 2021) and social (Sarasso et al., 2021b) experiences, intrinsic motivation in educational activities (Howard et al., 2020), memory formation (Sarasso et al., 2021a), pain perception (Mitchell et al., 2008), neurodegeneration (Kliem et al.), diagnostic processes (Spee et al.), therapeutic change (Higginson et al., 2011; Connolly, 2021; Sarasso et al.), and many other topics. Beyond art therapy, we begin to see how these insights can be applied to better understand both normal and pathological behavior, from psychopathology and brain damage to cognitive impairments associated with aging.
4. Implications for treatment
In this Research Topic, van Leeuven et al. provide a compelling example of the overlap between artistic and social brain function, which has significant practical implications for mental health and the care of individuals living with neurological conditions such as dementia. The use of artistic stimuli by Kliem et al. to investigate the stability of preferences in pathological aging also sheds light on the potential dual path of cognitive deterioration in Alzheimer's disease and dementia, as suggested by recent studies like Felisberti's (Garrido, 2019; Felisberti, 2021). These findings underscore the importance of incorporating artistic interventions into treatment plans for neurological conditions to improve overall wellbeing and quality of life (Kliem et al.). The potential preservation of a pleasure and beauty pathway for perception and memory in pathological aging raises the possibility of a revolutionary shift in the design of rehabilitation protocols. If such a pathway exists, it could have profound implications for enhancing the quality of life and wellbeing of individuals with neurological conditions. Future research on this topic may provide valuable insights into the development of targeted interventions that leverage the power of aesthetics to support cognitive function in aging and neurological disease.
5. Embodied aesthetics
When the study of perceptual inference focuses on changes inside the body (i.e., interoception) we might refer to embodied aesthetics (Kirsch et al., 2016; Koch, 2017; Kühnapfel et al., 2023). This line of research is growingly interested in how interoceptive technologies might help to restore interoceptive inference in a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders (Riva et al., 2017, 2021; Riva, 2018; Schoeller et al., 2022a; Di Lernia and Riva, 2023), especially those characterized by a loss of embodied resonance such as depression (Fuchs and Koch, 2014). Based on an embodied model of emotion (Pezzulo, 2014), Schoeller et al., shed new light on this topic by showing that simulating the somatic markers of the aesthetic emotion of chills can influence valence and arousal perception (Schoeller et al., 2018a, 2019; Haar et al., 2020). In this Research Topic, Jain et al. present recent data collected using chillsDB (Schoeller et al., 2022b), an online catalog of chill-eliciting stimuli, showing that aesthetic chills induce a reliable shift in emotional valence and arousal (Jain et al.), extending prior results demonstrating the relevance of chills for depression (Schoeller et al., 2023). Aesthetic chills can cause an emotional breakthrough, reminiscent of some of the effects of the psychedelic experience (Roseman et al., 2019) and mitigating maladaptive cognitions such as shame and negative self-perception (Schoeller et al., 2023).
6. Conclusion
Theoretical models rooted in predictive processing and sensory inference offer an intriguing avenue of research in the field of neuroaesthetics (Schoeller and Perlovsky, 2015, 2016; Schoeller, 2016; Sarasso et al., 2020; Van de Cruys and Bervoets, 2022; Richard et al., 2023; Sarasso et al.; Spee et al.). According to these models, aesthetic pleasure arises from the fitting of predictive representations to sensory experiences, reflecting a neo-Kantian approach (Perlovsky, 2014; Schaeffer, 2015; Swanson, 2016). The application of such models to therapeutic activities aimed at changing rigid and repeating behavioral patterns (Spee et al.), such as psychotherapy (Sarasso et al.) and neurorehabilitation (Kliem et al.), has promising implications. Future research in this area could yield valuable insights into the underlying mechanisms of cognitive and emotional processing, and inform the development of targeted interventions to improve mental health and wellbeing.
Author contributions
All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.
Funding
FS work at the Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies was partially funded by a Joy Ventures Research Grant and Tiny Blue Dot Foundation.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher's note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
References
Belfi, A. M., Vessel, E. A., Brielmann, A., Isik, A. I., Chatterjee, A., Leder, H., et al. (2019). Dynamics of aesthetic experience are reflected in the default-mode network. NeuroImage 188, 584–597. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.12.017
Berlyne, D. E. (1973). Aesthetics and psychobiology. J. Aesthetics Art Crit. 31, 553–553. doi: 10.2307/429334
Biederman, I., and Vessel, E. A. (2006). Perceptual pleasure and the brain: a novel theory explains why the brain craves information and seeks it through the senses. Am. Sci. 94, 247–253. doi: 10.1511/2006.59.247
Brielmann, A. A., and Dayan, P. (2021). Introducing a Computational Model of Aesthetic Value. Psychological Review. Available online at: https://files.osf.io/v1/resources/eaqkc/providers/osfstorage/607e7963c29ca80307eb3f5d?action=download&direct&version=4 (accessed June 26, 2023).
Colin McQuillan, J. (2021). Baumgarten's Aesthetics: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Connolly, P. (2021). Instability and uncertainty are critical for psychotherapy: how the therapeutic alliance opens us up. Front. Psychol. 12, 784295. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.784295
Di Lernia, D., and Riva, G. (2023). Inside-out: an innovative sound technology for altering interoceptive signals. Cyberpsychol. Behav. Soc. Network. 26, 386–388. doi: 10.1089/cyber.2023.29279.ceu
Felisberti, F. M. (2021). Hedonic preferences to audio and visual stimulation in seniors with cognitive impairments. J. Alzheimer's Dis. 83, 1353–1366. doi: 10.3233/JAD-210520
Fuchs, T., and Koch, S. C. (2014). Embodied affectivity: on moving and being moved. Front. Psychol. 5, 508. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00508
Gottlieb, J., Oudeyer, P. Y., Lopes, M., and Baranes, A. (2013). Information-seeking, curiosity, and attention: computational and neural mechanisms. Trends Cogn. Sci. 17, 585–593. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2013.09.001
Grossberg, S., and Zajac, L. (2017). How humans consciously see paintings and paintings illuminate how humans see. Art Percept. 2017, 2059. doi: 10.1163/22134913-00002059
Haar, A. J. H., Jain, A., Schoeller, F., and Maes, P. (2020). Augmenting aesthetic chills using a wearable prosthesis improves their downstream effects on reward and social cognition. Sci. Rep. 10, 1–9. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-77951-w
Higginson, S., Mansell, W., and Wood, A. M. (2011). An integrative mechanistic account of psychological distress, therapeutic change and recovery: the perceptual control theory approach. Clin. Psychol. Rev. 31, 249–259. doi: 10.1016/j.cpr.2010.01.005
Howard, J. L., Chong, J. X. Y., and Bureau, J. S. (2020). The tripartite model of intrinsic motivation in education: a 30-year retrospective and meta-analysis. J. Personal. 88, 1268–1285. doi: 10.1111/jopy.12570
Kenett, Y. N., Humphries, S., and Chatterjee, A. (2023). A thirst for knowledge: grounding curiosity, creativity, and aesthetics in memory and reward neural systems. Creat. Res. J. 2023, 1–15. doi: 10.1080/10400419.2023.2165748
Kirsch, L. P., Urgesi, C., and Cross, E. S. (2016). Shaping and reshaping the aesthetic brain: Emerging perspectives on the neurobiology of embodied aesthetics. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 62, 56–68. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2015.12.005
Koch, S. C. (2017). Arts and health: Active factors and a theory framework of embodied aesthetics. Arts Psychother. 54, 85–91. doi: 10.1016/j.aip.2017.02.002
Kühnapfel, C., Fingerhut, J., and Pelowski, M. (2023). The Role of the Body in the Experience of Installation Art: A Case Study of Visitors' Bodily, Emotional, and Transformative Experience in Tomás Saraceno's “in orbit”. doi: 10.31234/osf.io/2xj9y
Mitchell, L. A., MacDonald, R. A. R., and Knussen, C. (2008). An investigation of the effects of music and art on pain perception. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts 2, 162–170. doi: 10.1037/1931-3896.2.3.162
Perlovsky, L. (2014). Aesthetic emotions, what are their cognitive functions? Front. Psychol. 5, 98. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00098
Perlovsky, L., and Schoeller, F. (2019). Unconscious emotions of human learning. Phys. Life Rev. 31, 257–262. doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2019.10.007
Pezzulo, G. (2014). Why do you fear the bogeyman? An embodied predictive coding model of perceptual inference. Cogn. Affect. Behav. Neurosci. 14, 902–911. doi: 10.3758/s13415-013-0227-x
Richard, A., Pelowski, M., and Spee, B. T. M. (2023). Art and Neurological Disorders: Illuminating the Intersection of Creativity and the Changing Brain. Berlin: Springer Nature.
Riva, G. (2018). The neuroscience of body memory: from the self through the space to the others. Cortex 104, 241–260. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2017.07.013
Riva, G., Serino, S., Di Lernia, D., and Pagnini, F. (2021). Regenerative virtual therapy: the use of multisensory technologies and mindful attention for updating the altered representations of the bodily self. Front. Syst. Neurosci. 15, 749268. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2021.749268
Riva, G., Serino, S., Di Lernia, D., Pavone, E. F., and Dakanalis, A. (2017). Embodied medicine: mens sana in corpore virtuale sano. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 11, 120. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00120
Roseman, L., Haijen, E., Idialu-Ikato, K., Kaelen, M., Watts, R., and Carhart-Harris, R. (2019). Emotional breakthrough and psychedelics: validation of the emotional breakthrough inventory. J. Psychopharmacol. 33, 1076–1087. doi: 10.1177/0269881119855974
Sarasso, P., Neppi-Modona, M., Sacco, K., and Ronga, I. (2020). ‘Stopping for knowledge': the sense of beauty in the perception-action cycle. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 118, 723–738. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.09.004
Sarasso, P., Perna, P., Barbieri, P., Neppi-Modona, M., Sacco, K., and Ronga, I. (2021a). Memorisation and implicit perceptual learning are enhanced for preferred musical intervals and chords. Psychon. Bullet. Rev. 28, 1623–1637. doi: 10.3758/s13423-021-01922-z
Sarasso, P., Ronga, I., Neppi-Modona, M., and Sacco, K. (2021b). The role of musical aesthetic emotions in social adaptation to the COVID-19 pandemic. Front. Psychol. 12, 611639. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.611639
Sarasso, P., Ronga, I., Pistis, A., Forte, E., Garbarini, F., Ricci, R., et al. (2019). Aesthetic appreciation of musical intervals enhances behavioural and neurophysiological indexes of attentional engagement and motor inhibition. Sci. Rep. 9, 1–14. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-55131-9
Schaeffer, J. M. (2013). La stase et le flux : l'expérience esthétique entre épiphanie et trace. Critique n° 799, 1006. doi: 10.3917/criti.799.1006
Schaeffer, J. M. (2015). “Aesthetic relationship, cognition, and the pleasures of art,” in Investigations Into the Phenomenology and the Ontology of the Work of Art: What Are Artworks and How DoWe Experience Them?, eds P. F. Bundgaard and F. Stjernfelt (Springer Nature), 145–165. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-14090-2_9
Schoeller, F. (2016). The satiation of natural curiosity. Int. J. Signs Semiotic Syst. 2016, 70102. doi: 10.4018/IJSSS.2016070102
Schoeller, F., Bertrand, P., Joy Gerry, L., Jain, A., Haar Horowitz, A., and Zenasni, F. (2018a). Combining virtual reality and biofeedback to foster empathic abilities in humans. Front. Psychol. 9, 2741. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02741
Schoeller, F., Haar, A. J. H., Jain, A., and Maes, P. (2019). Enhancing human emotions with interoceptive technologies. Phys. Life Rev. 31, 310–319. doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2019.10.008
Schoeller, F., Horowitz, A. H., Maes, P., Jain, A., Reggente, N., Moore, L. C., et al. (2022a). Interoceptive Technologies for Clinical Neuroscience. doi: 10.31234/osf.io/sqr6z
Schoeller, F., Jain, A., Adrien, V., and Maes, P. (2022b). Aesthetic Chills Foster Self-Acceptance and Emotional Breakthrough in Depression. Available online at: https://psyarxiv.com/rhftq/download (accessed June 26, 2023).
Schoeller, F., Jain, A., Horowitz, A. H., Yan, G., Hu, X., Maes, P., et al. (2023). ChillsDB: A gold standard for aesthetic chills stimuli. Sci. Data. 10, 307. doi: 10.1038/s41597-023-02064-8
Schoeller, F., and Perlovsky, L. (2015). Great expectations—narratives and the elicitation of aesthetic chills. Psychology. 2015, 616205. doi: 10.4236/psych.2015.616205
Schoeller, F., and Perlovsky, L. (2016). Aesthetic chills: knowledge-acquisition, meaning-making, and aesthetic emotions. Front. Psychol. 7, 1093. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01093
Schoeller, F., Perlovsky, L., and Arseniev, D. (2018b). Physics of mind: experimental confirmations of theoretical predictions. Phys. Life Rev. 25, 45–68. doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2017.11.021
Schwartenbeck, P., Passecker, J., Hauser, T. U., FitzGerald, T. H., Kronbichler, M., and Friston, K. J. (2019). Computational mechanisms of curiosity and goal-directed exploration. eLife 8, 27. doi: 10.7554/eLife.41703.027
Strickland, J. C., Garcia-Romeu, A., and Johnson, M. W. (2021). Set and setting: a randomized study of different musical genres in supporting psychedelic therapy. ACS Pharmacol. Transl. Sci. 4, 472–478. doi: 10.1021/acsptsci.0c00187
Swanson, L. R. (2016). The predictive processing paradigm has roots in Kant. Front. Syst. Neurosci. 10, 79. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2016.00079
Tik, M., Sladky, R., Di Bernardi Luft, C., Willinger, D., Hoffmann, A., Banissy, M. J., et al. (2018). Ultra-high-field fMRI insights on insight: neural correlates of the aha!-moment. Hum. Brain Map. 39, 3241–3252. doi: 10.1002/hbm.24073
Van de Cruys, S., and Bervoets, J. (2022). Preferences Need Inferences: Learning, Valuation, and Curiosity in Aesthetic Experience. The Routledge International. Available online at: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003008675-28/preferences-need-inferences-sander-van-de-cruys-jo-bervoets-agnes-moors (accessed June 26, 2023).
Van de Cruys, S., Damiano, C., Boddez, Y., Król, M., Goetschalckx, L., and Wagemans, J. (2021). Visual affects: linking curiosity, aha-erlebnis, and memory through information gain. Cognition 212, 104698. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104698
Vessel, E. A., Gabrielle Starr, G., and Rubin, N. (2012). The brain on art: intense aesthetic experience activates the default mode network. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 6, 66. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2012.00066
Vessel, E. A., Gabrielle Starr, G., and Rubin, N. (2013). Art reaches within: aesthetic experience, the self and the default mode network. Front. Neurosci. 7, 258. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2013.00258
Keywords: aesthetics, neuroaesthetics, embodied aesthetics, artistic interventions, psychopathology, interoceptive technology, learning, aesthetic chills
Citation: Sarasso P, Francesetti G and Schoeller F (2023) Editorial: Possible applications of neuroaesthetics to normal and pathological behaviour. Front. Neurosci. 17:1225308. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2023.1225308
Received: 19 May 2023; Accepted: 15 June 2023;
Published: 14 July 2023.
Edited and reviewed by: Rufin VanRullen, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France
Copyright © 2023 Sarasso, Francesetti and Schoeller. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Felix Schoeller, felixsch@mit.edu; Pietro Sarasso, pietro.sarasso@unito.it