Team-work, Team-brain: Exploring synchrony and team interdependence in a nine-person drumming task via multiparticipant hyperscanning and inter-brain network topology with fNIRS.

Teamwork is indispensable in human societies. However, due to the complexity of studying ecologically valid synchronous team actions, requiring multiple members and a range of subjective and objective measures, the mechanism underlying the impact of synchrony on team performance is still unclear. In this paper, we simultaneously measured groups of nine-participants' (total N = 180) fronto-temporal activations during a drum beating task using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-based hyperscanning and multi-brain network modeling, which can assess patterns of shared neural synchrony and attention/information sharing across entire teams. Participants (1) beat randomly without considering others' drumming (random condition), (2) actively coordinated their beats with the entire group without other external cue (team-focus condition), and (3) beat together based on a metronome (shared-focus condition). Behavioral data revealed higher subjective and objective measures of drum-beat synchronization in the team-focus condition, as well as higher felt interdependence. The fNIRS data revealed that participants in the team-focus condition also showed higher interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) and higher Global Network Efficiency in their left TPJ and mPFC. Higher left TPJ Global Network Efficiency also predicted higher actual synchrony in the team-focus condition, with an effect size roughly 1.5 times that of subjective measures, but not in the metronome-enabled shared-focus condition. This result suggests that shared mental representations with high efficiency of information exchange across the entire team may be a key component of synchrony, adding to the understanding of the actual relation to team work.

Assessing autism at its social and developmental roots: A review of Autism Spectrum Disorder studies using functional near-infrared spectroscopy.

We review a relatively new method for studying the developing brain in children and infants with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Despite advances in behavioral screening and brain imaging, due to paradigms that do not easily allow for testing of awake, very young, and socially-engaged children-i.e., the social and the baby brain-the biological underpinnings of this disorder remain a mystery. We introduce an approach based on functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which offers a noninvasive imaging technique for studying functional activations by measuring changes in the brain's hemodynamic properties. This further enables measurement of brain activation in upright, interactive settings, while maintaining general equivalence to fMRI findings. We review the existing studies that have used fNIRS for ASD, discussing their promise, limitations, and their technical aspects, gearing this study to the researcher who may be new to this technique and highlighting potential targets for future research.

Assessing the brain 'on the line': An ecologically-valid assessment of the impact of repetitive assembly line work on hemodynamic response and fine motor control using fNIRS.

To investigate neural correlates of repetitive assembly tasks in ecologically-valid empirical settings, this study measured bilateral prefrontal (PFC) and motor activations when participants performed a carburetor assembly task using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Participants worked for one hour at a typical (low-) pace and at an accelerated high-pace. Before and after the task, a test was conducted to assess motion stability and fine motor control. The behavioral data revealed decreased motion stability after the assembly work in both conditions, with a significantly higher reduction after the high-pace task. The fNIRS data also revealed reduced activations in bilateral prefrontal and motor regions in both conditions over time. However, the low-pace task led to significantly greater activity decreases compared with the high-pace. Activity decrease in prefrontal and motor regions within the low pace also significantly related to minimal motion stability impairment, suggesting that the brain activation decreases in this and, potentially, findings of higher alpha in past repetitive-task studies using EEG, may be a result of not fatigue but worker adaptation or increasing efficiency.

Parkinson's disease and changes in the appreciation of art: A comparison of aesthetic and formal evaluations of paintings between PD patients and healthy controls.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressing neurodegenerative disease predominantly involving the loss of dopamine producing neurons with hallmark symptoms of motor disorders and cognitive, motivational, emotional, and perceptual impairments. Intriguingly, PD can also be connected-often anecdotally-with a sudden burst of artistic creativity, motivation, or changed quality/style of produced art. This has led to growing empirical interest, promising a window into brain function and the unique neurological signature of artists. This topic also fits a growing interest from researchers in other areas, including Alzheimer's or other dementia, which have suggested that specific changes in art production/appraisal may provide a unique basis for therapy, diagnosis, or understanding of these diseases. However, whether PD also shows similar impacts on how we perceive and evaluate art has never been systematically addressed. We compared a cohort of PD patients against age-matched healthy controls, asking participants to rate paintings using scales of liking and beauty and terms pertaining to artworks' formal and conceptual qualities previously designed to provide a rubric for symptom identification. We found no evidence for PD-related differences in liking or beauty. However, PD patients showed higher ratings on assessed "emotionality," potentially relating to the tie between PD, dopamine pathways, and emotion/reward.

Empathy, Einfühlung, and aesthetic experience: the effect of emotion contagion on appreciation of representational and abstract art using fEMG and SCR.

Since the advent of the concept of empathy in the scientific literature, it has been hypothesized, although not necessarily empirically verified, that empathic processes are essential to aesthetic experiences of visual art. We tested how the ability to "feel into" ("Einfühlung") emotional content-a central aspect of art empathy theories-affects the bodily responses to and the subjective judgments of representational and abstract paintings. The ability to feel into was measured by a standardized pre-survey on "emotional contagion"-the ability to pick up and mirror, or in short to "feel into", emotions, which often overlaps with higher general or interpersonal empathetic abilities. Participants evaluated the artworks on several aesthetic dimensions (liking, valence, moving, and interest), while their bodily reactions indicative of empathetic engagement (facial electromyography-EMG, and skin conductance responses-SCR) were recorded. High compared to low emotion contagion participants showed both more congruent and more intense bodily reactions (EMG and SCR) and aesthetic evaluations (higher being moved, valence, and interest) and also liked the art more. This was largely the case for both representational and abstract art, although stronger with the representational category. Our findings provide tentative evidence for recent arguments by art theorists for a close "empathic" mirroring of emotional content. We discuss this interpretation, as well as a potential tie between emotion contagion and a general increase in emotion intensity, both of which may impact, in tandem, the experience and evaluation of art.

Social risky decision-making reveals gender differences in the TPJ: A hyperscanning study using functional near-infrared spectroscopy.

Previous neuroscience studies have investigated neural correlates of risky decision-making in a single-brain frame during pseudo social (predominantly non face-to-face) contexts. To fully understand the risky decision-making behavior in more natural social interactions, the present study employed a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning technique to simultaneously measure pairs of participants' fronto-temporal activations in a face-to-face gambling card-game. The intra-brain results revealed that both those who identified as males and as females showed higher activations in their mPFC and in the inferior parts of the frontopolar area, as well as in the tempo-parietal junction (TPJ) in cases involving higher versus lower risk. This is consistent with previous findings suggesting importance of the mentalizing network in decision tasks. The fNIRS results of inter-brain neural synchronization (INS) also revealed that males and females showed increased inter-brain coherence in the mPFC and dlPFC. Females, however, uniquely showed increased inter-brain coherence in the left TPJ. This INS result suggests that males may primarily depend on non-social cognitive ability to make a risky decision in a social interaction, while females may use both social and non-social cognitive abilities. The implications are also discussed for general topics of human interaction and two-person neuroscience.

Empathy as a guide for understanding the balancing of Distancing-Embracing with negative art.

We connect the Distancing-Embracing model to theoretical and empirical evidence regarding empathy, which raises questions about the ordering and modulation of distancing in particular. Namely, distancing may not be a binary, continuously on/off process. Rather we suggest that changes in distancing as actualized via the relation between the individual and art (e.g., through empathy) might be a useful avenue for further consideration.

Near-infrared spectroscopy as a tool for driving research.

Driving a motor vehicle requires various cognitive functions to process surrounding information, to guide appropriate actions, and especially to respond to or integrate with numerous contextual and perceptual hindrances or risks. It is, thus, imperative to examine driving performance and road safety from a perspective of cognitive neuroscience, which considers both the behaviour and the functioning of the brain. However, because of technical limitations of current brain imaging approaches, studies have primarily adopted driving games or simulators to present participants with simulated driving environments that may have less ecological validity. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a relatively new, non-invasive brain-imaging technique allowing measurement of brain activations in more realistic settings, even within real motor vehicles. This study reviews current NIRS driving research and explores NIRS' potential as a new tool to examine driving behaviour, along with various risk factors in natural situations, promoting our understanding about neural mechanisms of driving safety. Practitioner Summary: Driving a vehicle is dependent on a range of neurocognitive processing abilities. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a non-invasive brain-imaging technique allowing measurement of brain activation even in on-road studies within real motor vehicles. This study reviews current NIRS driving research and explores the potential of NIRS as a new tool to examine driving behaviour.

Metaphors or mechanism? Predictive coding and a (brief) history of empirical study of the arts.

Predictive processing (PP) offers an intriguing approach to perception, cognition, but also to appreciation of the arts. It does this by positing both a theoretical basis-one might say a 'metaphor'-for how we engage and respond, placing emphasis on mismatches rather than fluent overlap between schema and environment. Even more, it holds the promise for translating metaphor into neurobiological bases, suggesting a means for considering mechanisms-from basic perceptions to possibly even our complex, aesthetic experiences. However, while we share the excitement of this promise, the history of empirical or psychological aesthetics is also permeated by metaphors that have progressed our understanding but which also tend to elude translation into concrete, mechanistic operationalization-a challenge that can also be made to PP. We briefly consider this difficulty of convincing implementation of PP via a brief historical outline of some developments in the psychological study of aesthetics and art in order to show how these ideas have often anticipated PP but also how they have remained at the level of rather metaphorical and difficult-to-measure concepts. Although theoretical in scope, we hope that this commentary will spur researchers to reflect on PP with the aim of translating metaphorical explanations into well-defined mechanisms in future empirical study. This article is part of the theme issue 'Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives'.

The dynamics of experiencing Gestalt and Aha in cubist art: pupil responses and art evaluations show a complex interplay of task, stimuli content, and time course.

Introduction: Gestalt perception refers to the cognitive ability to perceive various elements as a unified whole. In our study, we delve deeper into the phenomenon of Gestalt recognition in visual cubist art, a transformative process culminating in what is often described as an Aha moment. This Aha moment signifies a sudden understanding of what is seen, merging seemingly disparate elements into a coherent meaningful picture. The onset of this Aha moment can vary, either appearing almost instantaneously, which is in line with theories of hedonic fluency, or manifesting after a period of time, supporting the concept of delayed but more in-depth meaningful insight. Methods: We employed pupillometry to measure cognitive and affective shifts during art interaction, analyzing both maximum pupil dilation and average dilation across the trial. The study consisted of two parts: in the first, 84 participants identified faces in cubist paintings under various conditions, with Aha moments and pupil dilation measured. In part 2, the same 84 participants assessed the artworks through ratings in a no-task free-viewing condition. Results: Results of part 1 indicate a distinctive pattern of pupil dilation, with maximum dilation occurring at both trial onset and end. Longer response times were observed for high-fluent, face-present stimuli, aligning with a delayed but accurate Aha-moment through recognition. Additionally, the time of maximum pupil dilation, rather than average dilation, exhibited significant associations, being later for high-fluent, face-present stimuli and correct detections. In part 2, average, not the time of maximum pupil dilation emerged as the significant factor. Face-stimuli and highly accessible art evoked stronger dilations, also reflecting high clearness and negative valence ratings. Discussion: The study underscores a complex relationship between the timing of recognition and the Aha moment, suggesting nuanced differences in emotional and cognitive responses during art viewing. Pupil dilation measures offer insight into these processes especially for moments of recognition, though their application in evaluating emotional responses through artwork ratings warrants further exploration.

Cross-cultural comparison of beauty judgments in visual art using machine learning analysis of art attribute predictors among Japanese and German speakers.

In empirical art research, understanding how viewers judge visual artworks as beautiful is often explored through the study of attributes-specific inherent characteristics or artwork features such as color, complexity, and emotional expressiveness. These attributes form the basis for subjective evaluations, including the judgment of beauty. Building on this conceptual framework, our study examines the beauty judgments of 54 Western artworks made by native Japanese and German speakers, utilizing an extreme randomized trees model-a data-driven machine learning approach-to investigate cross-cultural differences in evaluation behavior. Our analysis of 17 attributes revealed that visual harmony, color variety, valence, and complexity significantly influenced beauty judgments across both cultural cohorts. Notably, preferences for complexity diverged significantly: while the native Japanese speakers found simpler artworks as more beautiful, the native German speakers evaluated more complex artworks as more beautiful. Further cultural distinctions were observed: for the native German speakers, emotional expressiveness was a significant factor, whereas for the native Japanese speakers, attributes such as brushwork, color world, and saturation were more impactful. Our findings illuminate the nuanced role that cultural context plays in shaping aesthetic judgments and demonstrate the utility of machine learning in unravelling these complex dynamics. This research not only advances our understanding of how beauty is judged in visual art-considering self-evaluated attributes-across different cultures but also underscores the potential of machine learning to enhance our comprehension of the aesthetic evaluation of visual artworks.

The role of the body in the experience of installation art: a case study of visitors' bodily, emotional, and transformative experiences in Tomás Saraceno's "in orbit".

Installation art, with its immersive and participatory character, has been argued to require the use and awareness of the body, which potentially constitute key parts of the artwork's experience and appreciation. Heightened body awareness is even argued to be a key to particularly profound emotional or even transformative states, which have been frequently ascribed to this genre. However, the body in the experience of installation art has rarely been empirically considered. To address this gap, we investigated the body's role in the experience of Tomás Saraceno's in orbit installation. Based on a list of self-report items created from a review of the theoretical literature, we-for the first time-captured (quantitatively and qualitatively): what kind of subjective bodily experiences visitors (N = 230) reported, how these items grouped into clusters (using network science), and how these relate to emotion, art appraisal, and transformative outcomes. Network analysis of the items determined four communities related to "interoception," "presence," "disturbance," and "proprioception." Proprioception (e.g., awareness of balance/movement/weight) turned out to be a significant determinant of art appreciation in our study, and, together with "disturbing" body experiences (feeling awkward/watched/chills), coincided with transformation. We also assessed individual differences in body awareness yet did not find that these moderate those relationships. We suggest future research on installation art based on a more unified assessment of the role of the body in embodied-enactive aesthetics and its relation to the intensity and impact of art experience in general.

Let's put a smile on that face-A positive facial expression improves aesthetics of portrait photographs.

In today's age of social media and smartphones, portraits-such as selfies or pictures of friends and family-are very frequently produced, shared and viewed images. Despite their prevalence, the psychological factors that characterize a 'good' photo-one that people will generally like, keep, and think is especially aesthetically pleasing-are not well understood. Here, we studied how a subtle change in facial expression (smiling) in portraits determines their aesthetic image value (beyond a more positive appearance of the depicted person). We used AI-based image processing tools in a broad set of portrait photographs and generated neutral and slightly smiling versions of the same pictures. Consistent across two experiments, portraits with a subtle smile increased both spontaneous aesthetic preferences in a swiping task as well as improving more explicit aesthetic ratings after prolonged viewing. Participants distinguished between aspects associated with image beauty and the depicted person's attractiveness, resulting in specific interactions between variables related to participant traits, image content, and task. Our study confirms that a subtle-and in this case fully artificial-smile reliably increases the aesthetic quality of portraits, illustrating how current image processing methods can target psychologically important variables and thereby increase the aesthetic value of photographs.

Machine learning revealed symbolism, emotionality, and imaginativeness as primary predictors of creativity evaluations of western art paintings.

Creativity is a compelling yet elusive phenomenon, especially when manifested in visual art, where its evaluation is often a subjective and complex process. Understanding how individuals judge creativity in visual art is a particularly intriguing question. Conventional linear approaches often fail to capture the intricate nature of human behavior underlying such judgments. Therefore, in this study, we employed interpretable machine learning to probe complex associations between 17 subjective art-attributes and creativity judgments across a diverse range of artworks. A cohort of 78 non-art expert participants assessed 54 artworks varying in styles and motifs. The applied Random Forests regressor models accounted for 30% of the variability in creativity judgments given our set of art-attributes. Our analyses revealed symbolism, emotionality, and imaginativeness as the primary attributes influencing creativity judgments. Abstractness, valence, and complexity also had an impact, albeit to a lesser degree. Notably, we observed non-linearity in the relationship between art-attribute scores and creativity judgments, indicating that changes in art-attributes did not consistently correspond to changes in creativity judgments. Employing statistical learning, this investigation presents the first attribute-integrating quantitative model of factors that contribute to creativity judgments in visual art among novice raters. Our research represents a significant stride forward building the groundwork for first causal models for future investigations in art and creativity research and offering implications for diverse practical applications. Beyond enhancing comprehension of the intricate interplay and specificity of attributes used in evaluating creativity, this work introduces machine learning as an innovative approach in the field of subjective judgment.

Swipes and Saves: A Taxonomy of Factors Influencing Aesthetic Assessments and Perceived Beauty of Mobile Phone Photographs.

Digital images taken by mobile phones are the most frequent class of images created today. Due to their omnipresence and the many ways they are encountered, they require a specific focus in research. However, to date, there is no systematic compilation of the various factors that may determine our evaluations of such images, and thus no explanation of how users select and identify relatively "better" or "worse" photos. Here, we propose a theoretical taxonomy of factors influencing the aesthetic appeal of mobile phone photographs. Beyond addressing relatively basic/universal image characteristics, perhaps more related to fast (bottom-up) perceptual processing of an image, we also consider factors involved in the slower (top-down) re-appraisal or deepened aesthetic appreciation of an image. We span this taxonomy across specific types of picture genres commonly taken-portraits of other people, selfies, scenes and food. We also discuss the variety of goals, uses, and contextual aspects of users of mobile phone photography. As a working hypothesis, we propose that two main decisions are often made with mobile phone photographs: (1) Users assess images at a first glance-by swiping through a stack of images-focusing on visual aspects that might be decisive to classify them from "low quality" (too dark, out of focus) to "acceptable" to, in rare cases, "an exceptionally beautiful picture." (2) Users make more deliberate decisions regarding one's "favorite" picture or the desire to preserve or share a picture with others, which are presumably tied to aspects such as content, framing, but also culture or personality, which have largely been overlooked in empirical research on perception of photographs. In sum, the present review provides an overview of current focal areas and gaps in research and offers a working foundation for upcoming research on the perception of mobile phone photographs as well as future developments in the fields of image recording and sharing technology.

Art and Perception: Using Empirical Aesthetics in Research on Consciousness.

Understanding consciousness is a major frontier in the natural sciences. However, given the nuanced and ambiguous sets of conditions regarding how and when consciousness appears to manifest, it is also one of the most elusive topics for investigation. In this context, we argue that research in empirical aesthetics-specifically on the experience of art-holds strong potential for this research area. We suggest that empirical aesthetics of art provides a more exhaustive description of conscious perception than standard laboratory studies or investigations of the less artificial, more ecological perceptual conditions that dominate this research, leading to novel and better suited designs for natural science research on consciousness. Specifically, we discuss whether empirical aesthetics of art could be used for a more adequate picture of an observer's attributions in the context of conscious perception. We point out that attributions in the course of conscious perception to (distal) objects versus to media (proximal objects) as origins of the contents of consciousness are typically swift and automatic. However, unconventional or novel object-media relations used in art can bring these attributions to the foreground of the observer's conscious reflection. This is the reason that art may be ideally suited to study human attributions in conscious perception compared to protocols dedicated only to the most common and conventional perceptual abilities observed under standard laboratory or "natural"/ecological conditions alone. We also conclude that art provides an enormous stock of such unconventional and novel object-media relations, allowing more systematic falsification of tentative conclusions about conscious perception versus research protocols covering more conventional (ecological) perception only. We end with an outline of how this research could be carried out in general.

Can a Brief Interaction With Online, Digital Art Improve Wellbeing? A Comparative Study of the Impact of Online Art and Culture Presentations on Mood, State-Anxiety, Subjective Wellbeing, and Loneliness.

When experienced in-person, engagement with art has been associated-in a growing body of evidence-with positive outcomes in wellbeing and mental health. This represents an exciting new field for psychology, curation, and health interventions, suggesting a widely-accessible, cost-effective, and non-pharmaceutical means of regulating factors such as mood or anxiety. However, can similar impacts be found with online presentations? If so, this would open up positive outcomes to an even-wider population-a trend accelerating due to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Despite its promise, this question, and the underlying mechanisms of art interventions and impacts, has largely not been explored. Participants (N = 84) were asked to engage with one of two online exhibitions from Google Arts and Culture (a Monet painting or a similarly-formatted display of Japanese culinary traditions). With just 1-2 min exposure, both improved negative mood, state-anxiety, loneliness, and wellbeing. Stepdown analysis suggested the changes can be explained primarily via negative mood, while improvements in mood correlated with aesthetic appraisals and cognitive-emotional experience of the exhibition. However, no difference was found between exhibitions. We discuss the findings in terms of applications and targets for future research.

Can we really 'read' art to see the changing brain? A review and empirical assessment of clinical case reports and published artworks for systematic evidence of quality and style changes linked to damage or neurodegenerative disease.

The past three decades have seen multiple reports of people with neurodegenerative disorders, or other forms of changes in their brains, who also show putative changes in how they approach and produce visual art. Authors argue that these cases may provide a unique body of evidence, so-called 'artistic signatures' of neurodegenerative diseases, that might be used to understand disorders, provide diagnoses, be employed in treatment, create patterns of testable hypotheses for causative study, and also provide unique insight into the neurobiological linkages between the mind, brain, body, and the human penchant for art-making itself. However-before we can begin to meaningfully build from such emerging findings, much less formulate applications-not only is such evidence currently quite disparate and in need of systematic review, almost all case reports and artwork ratings are entirely subjective, based on authors' personal observations or a sparse collection of methods that may not best fit underlying research aims. This leads to the very real question of whether we might actually find patterns of systematic change if fit to a rigorous review-Can we really 'read' art to illuminate possible changes in the brain? How might we best approach this topic in future neuroscientific, clinical, and art-related research? This paper presents a review of this field and answer to these questions. We consider the current case reports for seven main disorders-Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, frontotemporal and Lewy body dementia, corticobasal degeneration, aphasia, as well as stroke-consolidating arguments for factors and changes related to art-making and critiquing past methods. Taking the published artworks from these papers, we then conduct our own assessment, employing computerized and human-rater-based approaches, which we argue represent best practice to identify stylistic or creativity/quality changes. We suggest, indeed, some evidence for systematic patterns in art-making for specific disorders and also find that case authors showed rather high agreement with our own assessments. More important, through opening this topic and past evidence to a systematic review, we hope to open a discussion and provide a theoretical and empirical foundation for future application and research on the intersection of art-making and the neurotypical, the changed, and the artistic brain.

Social reputation influences on liking and willingness-to-pay for artworks: A multimethod design investigating choice behavior along with physiological measures and motivational factors.

Art, as a prestigious cultural commodity, concerns aesthetic and monetary values, personal tastes, and social reputation in various social contexts-all of which are reflected in choices concerning our liking, or in other contexts, our actual willingness-to-pay for artworks. But, how do these different aspects interact in regard to the concept of social reputation and our private versus social selves, which appear to be essentially intervening, and potentially conflicting, factors driving choice? In our study, we investigated liking and willingness-to-pay choices using-in art research-a novel, forced-choice paradigm. Participants (N = 123) made choices from artwork-triplets presented with opposing artistic quality and monetary value-labeling, thereby creating ambiguous choice situations. Choices were made in either private or in social/public contexts, in which participants were made to believe that either art-pricing or art-making experts were watching their selections. A multi-method design with eye-tracking, neuroendocrinology (testosterone, cortisol), and motivational factors complemented the behavioral choice analysis. Results showed that artworks, of which participants were told were of high artistic value were more often liked and those of high monetary-value received more willingness-to-pay choices. However, while willingness-to-pay was significantly affected by the presumed observation of art-pricing experts, liking selections did not differ between private/public contexts. Liking choices, compared to willingness-to-pay, were also better predicted by eye movement patterns. Whereas, hormone levels had a stronger relation with monetary aspects (willingness-to-pay/ art-pricing expert). This was further confirmed by motivational factors representative for reputation seeking behavior. Our study points to an unexplored terrain highlighting the linkage of social reputation mechanisms and its impact on choice behavior with a ubiquitous commodity, art.