Latest / Incredible Mind / Neuroaesthetics: Soma Chaudhuri & Vasiliki Meletaki
Transcript
- speaker-0: You were made for creativity, learning, problem solving, and of course, action. On the Incredible Mind Podcast, I speak with neuroscientists, psychologists, doctors, artists, and others, whose work expands our understanding of how the brain works, where things can go wrong, and what simple everyday steps you can take to make the most of the unique intelligence you were born with. The Incredible Mind I'm Talking About is yours. To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower. These lines from William Blake were written in eighteen ⁓ three, but they capture today's topic neuroaesthetics. If neuroaesthetics is new to you, you're not alone. I just learned about it this year. Lucky for me, I live near the neuroaesthetics lab at the University of Pennsylvania, where lots of fascinating research is taking place. In today's episode, I speak with Soma Chowdery and Vasiliki Melataki, two researchers from the lab. Let's get started. Well, welcome everyone. I'm speaking with Soma Chowdery and Vasiliki Melataki, who are both postdoctoral researchers here at the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics in Philadelphia. We're here to discuss a really up-and-coming topic out there in the neuroscience field, which is neuroaesthetics. So Soma and Slicky, could you please explain to us what is neuroesthetic? speaker-1: As the name suggests, neuro-aesthetics is made up of two words, neuro which refers to the brain and aesthetics which refers to the beauty. Beauty means our experience or appreciation of beauty. Neuro-aesthetics brings these two words together. It's a scientific discipline, a part of cognitive neuroscience and empirical aesthetics. In our everyday life, we experience beauty. It could be you are standing in front of a painting in museum. It could be you are listening to a piece of music that gives you goosebumps. And even if you say, for example, you are reading a poem that makes you feel that, this is actually made for me. This very moment when you are moved by something, then that is what we call aesthetic experience. And neuro-aesthetics is that discipline that seeks the fundamental biological roots of these kinds of aesthetic experiences. This field actually asks how our brain responds and how we behave towards these kinds of experiences. yes, neuroaesthetics is understanding of biological roots of these kinds of aesthetic experiences. speaker-0: That is fascinating. De Seleki, do you have anything else to add? And one of the questions that I have is how is neuroaesthetics applied in our everyday lives? speaker-2: See it's all about understanding the human experience in relation to to beauty, to art, nature, whatever gives us a meaningful experience for the s for the sake of it. So without really having an additional use for something, but really to enjoy something for what it is. And neuroesthetics try to understand the the why and the how, how people behave and the brain how fun they engage with art. For how we can apply it to everyday life, the neural part it's kinda harder to apply, but it can help us be more self-aware of how we engage with our world every day. When do we see beauty and why? If we walk through a park, for example, we can take advantage of aesthetic appreciation and maybe stop more to smell the flowers. or appreciate the nature more, different places we go, or architecture if we pass by a nice building and really think about the object or why we like it, how we move around the object of our aesthetic experience, or if we like for example performances, how we engage to be more open into aesthetic engagement. So I think this is the aesthetics part and of Why behind and how we can bring more aesthetics into our everyday life. It's the most important thing, and being open, not expecting something spectacular every day. You can be appreciating more even the mug we use for our everyday coffee in the morning. It can be simple things. And I think this is the best way to really try to translate some of the findings in relation to the potential part of. are and beauty to transform. speaker-0: So we don't have to spend a ton of money to see the most beautiful thing. We can find it everywhere. Yeah. That is a really speaker-1: Even on a droplet of water, the dew drops on a leaf, we can find it beautiful. speaker-2: That speaker-0: Well, I'm sure you two are very sensitive to beauty if this is the field that you came into. One so one of my first questions is how does the brain process aesthetics? How do we decide what's beautiful and what isn't? speaker-2: So a good distinction is between beauty and aesthetic appreciation. That art does not have to be beautiful. We appreciate it and we don't necessarily have to find something beautiful. A lot of meaningful art, for example, is not necessarily beautiful, but it can still be very meaningful to us for personal reasons. And it's ⁓ a topic of discussion that we have also with artists and with artists in residence. We we always have an artist in residence in the lab. They don't always appreciate when we focus on beauty because that's not necessarily the reason they did what they did. When we're talking about human artifacts and artists, but for a staic appreciation in general, our our brains are quite similar. They're more similar than different. Most people appreciate similar characteristics in facial beauty, in bodies, what we like in bodies. in nature as well. But human artifacts like architecture and art seem to have more divergence in human appreciation, which I think is quite interesting and there are evidence for this cross culturally. In terms of the brain, there are different systems that are involved in appreciation of beauty that are not necessarily different from other experiences, but the their combination and how they relate to aesthetic appreciation is what make them more More unique. So for example, now we have a World Cup going on. Yes. Personally, I'm I'm not a big fan. I'm not being responsible. But I I love dance. So I love going to dance performances. A friend of mine may be watching soccer all the time and for them it is a true aesthetic experience, but going to dance ⁓ performances is not. So the same brain regions will be involved in it. speaker-0: You're not a soccer fan. speaker-2: But the meaning we get out of it and the why depends on our ⁓ personal ⁓ experiences. speaker-0: And our personal preferences. speaker-1: Exactly. Because in general people think that there is a particular brain region, particular spot in the brain that lights up when we sing, wow, it's a fantastic, beautiful thing. But it is not actually how it works. Beauty or appreciation of beauty is not ⁓ a localized point in the brain. So it is not localized to any particular region in the brain. Rather, it's a neural symphony in the brain. Amazing. Yes, so there is a well established model called Aesthetic Triad and it is developed by neuroscientist ⁓ Prashant Chatterjee, the director of the N Center for NeuroAesthetics and Ocean Vartanian and they proposed that instead of single spot in the brain or single region in the brain, there are three distinct brain systems or brain networks that are responsible for our aesthetic experiences. One is the sensory motor system, capturing our sensory perceptions that what we see, what we feel, what we smell, what we hear. And then the emotion valuation system that is capturing our feeling of being moved, feeling of our internal pleasure, emotional attachment. So all these things are captured by emotion valuation system. speaker-0: Emotional evaluation. Is that the limbic? speaker-1: system? Emotion valuation system is a reward circuitry of the system of the brain. Yes, when we see something or appreciate something, we always try to attach some meaning to it. Whether it comes from our memory, our past experiences, our knowledge, our culture, we always want to attach meaning and that attaching meanings of our knowledge speaker-0: Okay, great words then. speaker-1: That is captured by our knowledge meaning center of the brain. These kinds of three systems in the brain, they work synchronously, not in there's they're in hierarchical order or they are working in a pipeline, not like that. Imagine a jazz improvisation concert. So all the musicians, they listen to each other, they respond to each other. And finally the symphony emerges, right? So this same thing happens in the brain. When we see or appreciate some beauty, all these three systems have a rich conversation among each other. And finally, when they align and then emerges the aesthetic experience. And that's why Vasile was telling right now that these are very similar, but still they are varying person to person. It's like this, because I would say the synchronicity to make the symphony. So that's why the same sunset, same sunrise appears to moving to someone and another maybe completely unmoved. speaker-0: I guess my question where I see it becoming more personalized is in the meaning making, perhaps the most. And is that through that neuroscience concept of association? Is it associating this experience with other memories? speaker-1: You Yes, is semantic memory network and semantic means a meaning. So it is gathering the meaning from your past experience, your knowledge, your culture, your lived experience. So all these things we attaching the meaning to the experience that we are experiencing. speaker-2: It's a man. And also these models, like for example, the meaning making expertise is one of our main ex ⁓ factors for a SETI experience. So for example, we see that people respond differently to ⁓ similar SE experiences depending on their level of expertise. So if we see ⁓ the meaning making the system maybe affecting the sensory motor based on movements and maybe ⁓ we might have done ourselves when we watch a performance, for example. It's not the same if a professional dancer is watching a dance performance or if we see we we see somebody joining different areas the way they're involved will be different based on the level of expertise that we have. These systems really work with each other. They're not in a hierarchy that one is after the other. Right. They work at the same time. And they they are in constant dialogue based on What do we know? speaker-0: So we experience the thing, it's a piece of art or a dance or music or nature. Yes. And then the reward piece maybe comes in the emotional reward, also because we're assigning meaning, probably at the same time. But we have to be experiencing it, obviously. And the more knowledge that you have on a certain area, for example, I'm a gardener and I will get so excited about a specific plant. Yes. But speaker-1: whether the rule. speaker-0: My friend will look at it and just say, ⁓ it's a beautiful pink flower. And I say, ⁓ but it's a it's a native milkweed and it's here from the butterflies or whatever. I I'm assigning additional meaning based on my deeper knowledge of the plant, or even just because I've spent so much time around plants, I'm down to the shape of the leaf and the flower. I'm noticing so much more detail, which to me makes the experience maybe even more vivid. speaker-2: Yeah, and especially in this case you know how much work it takes to keep this plant alive and striving to have all the flowers. So an extra meaning for you is knowing what it takes to arrive to the same speaker-0: Yes. And you're right, a a dance can be beautiful to a novice, but to a very experienced dancer, they may just it almost might ruin the experience of that because they're finding the flaws, right? Yeah. ⁓ speaker-1: I love the flowers. That's called the curse of expertise. ⁓ psychology there is a word, is a curse of expertise. In poetry also we have seen in my PhD work because I worked on poetry and creativity and aesthetics that when the poem is aesthetically beautiful, it is creative. it is one of the factors, the primary factor. speaker-2: So speaker-0: It's considered creative. speaker-1: And we found that this positive relationship, if you increase aesthetic appeal, then the creativity increases. This relationship is much more stronger in experts than the non-experts. They were much more knowledgeable about what is the stylistic content of the poem. So they feel that aesthetically appealing poem should be creative in comparison with non-experts. speaker-0: So for them it must be creative to be a Exactly. But what if you're not an expert in poetry? What what do you look like? speaker-1: They are, the same thing happens because in the overall it is the model that when a poem is aesthetically beautiful to the, it is still considered creative. And the difference is that the experts think that it is much more. speaker-0: ⁓ so it's more enhanced. Yes. So there is an argument to gain some expertise in areas that you're passionate about because then your enjoyment exactly of that thing will be deeper. speaker-1: more in hand. speaker-0: How about you, Vasiliki? Why did you choose neuroaesthetics as a speaker-1: field. speaker-2: It kinda happened. So for for years I was doing dance and I was studying psychology and I knew I wanted to find a way to combine the two. I as a participant I was receiving the benefits of engaging in art and how it makes us feel and how it can help us go to different emotions and different stages. My my master thesis in creativity, where I also worked on different creative tasks and I saw the benefits of engaging with creative practices. So then I did my PhD ⁓ working with professional ballet dancers ⁓ in in London, sensory model processing of emotion, how we perceive emotions of the faces of other people, how do we engage with our own ⁓ body sensations as well, and how that might interfere with emotion perception. And as I was working on this, I found out the work that The lab here does on on neuroesthetics and it was kind of ⁓ an obvious transition to understand better how and why we engage with with art, with architecture, how the environment helps us in our everyday life, in nature, engaging with nature. So I've been here for a few years and I work primarily projects in relation to the environment, built environment or natural environment. And we do have some projects that might be in the wild, so outside of the lab we have projects in the lab as well, VR and speaker-0: VR virtual speaker-1: Really speaker-2: Yes, in virtual reality, yes. And in all of this we try to understand the aesthetic appreciation of the environment and the potential impact on the well-being of the the inhabitants of the spaces. So this work is is quite meaningful for me. speaker-0: So how the the immediate environment around us, whether it's just outside in a public space or maybe even in our own backyards. speaker-2: We have done this in different ways. We haven't been completely in urban spaces. We do have a project right now on this, but we have a model of how we approach aesthetic experience of architecture. We found that people seem to appreciate buildings and natural environments based on three things coherence, fascination, and hominess. Coherence is how organized a space is, ⁓ how orderly. Fascination is about the visual richness ⁓ of the space. You can have as an example Gaudi, very rich. And the last one, hominess, is how comfortable we are. It's really about the personal ease ⁓ in the space. speaker-0: I like a sense of harmony that the person has. speaker-2: How at home we feel? Are we comfortable in the space where we are? Do we feel okay to bring our guard down in the space where we are? And that can be in a doctor's office, it can be in the yard, it can be in our bedroom. To give you an idea of how we test this, one of my main projects is in a substance abuse rehabilitation clinic in Maryland. And there we have built from scratch how we we designed a biophilic refreshment. Biophilic meaning nature inspired. Biophilia. Yes. Bio Biophilia is this theory that we have a tendency to be close to nature in natural systems. speaker-0: Thank you. Okay. Yeah, I l a love of speaker-1: Filia means affinity. Filia or positive phobia. ⁓ speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-2: Yes, so we have built this space where we have plants, we have real ⁓ vertical gardens, I have different materials in there that relate to biophilia. And this is in a space where people can use their own when they need to decompress. So if they feel either distressed for any reason or waiting between appointments and sessions, the patients can go in the space for a few minutes to to calm down. And we've been collecting some behavioral responses about how people feel in there, how do they like it if they do, and also we collect ⁓ physiological responses. So we collect heart rate, heart rate variability to see how the body reaction changes over time. So this is ⁓ an example of really meaningful project in the white, meaning not in in the lab. Yeah, and yeah, with the real world in the wild. ⁓ speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-2: Yeah, and ⁓ it's in a clinical space so this is important for us because we test one of these ideas about how nature has the potential to be good for us in population where they need it the most. speaker-0: And that it impacts their actual physical well being as well. I have experienced that when I've had to bring my son to children's hospital. If you go into the main lobby, they're it's so full of art and it's very beautiful. Yeah. And it it does calm you down. Yeah. speaker-2: It does. speaker-0: When when you're when you're in that space. Yes. Versus a depressing, cramped, mm, just clinical office space. ⁓ Yeah, shabby, you can you almost feel a greater sense of panic. So that's that's so interesting. So that is a a real world application of neuroaesthetics. Yeah. Now you said you did dance and so do you write poetry? Yeah, I think speaker-1: Yeah I'm from India and I did my bachelor's and master's in physics there. So this trajectory is a bit non-linear. After my master's I was teaching in a school as a physics teacher and I was involved also a part-time PhD in my physics, material science department in one of the reputed institutions in Calcutta in India. But after that due to some familial reasons and there was quite a long hiatus. So after that I decided because I have been an avid reader of poetry and I also write poems since my childhood. Then I thought that why not reach my passion and my ability to do science and why not these kinds of poetry and science combine these two apparently different worlds together. So I started my PhD in London on poetry and its creativity and aesthetic evaluation, how people evaluate poems, creativity and aesthetic and the beauty of the poem. And even during my PhD days, I've been following the work of neuroasthetics that is coming out of this center and Center for Neuroasthetics. that poetry is definitely a very subjective and very personal level of neuro-aesthetics research domain because poetry is related to personal experience, imagination, emotion, our culture, all these things. What I was drawn to is that neuro-aesthetics is not about only art or music or poetry. It has some social relevance, real life experiences, consequences also. So I found that this center studies neuro-aesthetics in socially relevant issues. Here my work is on the intersection of beauty and morality. To be more precise, anomalies, facial anomalies and moral judgment. What is it? We all know that beauty is very hard to overlook in our daily life. We all know that attractive people, they are often treated positively in our social life. They are treated that they are much more friendly, they are good in moral values, like they are warm, they are capable, they are intelligent. All these good adjectives are for attractive people. The darker flip side is that the people having facial differences like scars, pulses, even acne and all, they are treated more negatively in our social life. We feel that they are not warm, they are not capable. intelligent, they are not trustworthy, not friendly. So this kind of all negative adjectives are put onto them. This is called anomalous is bad stereotype, a bias, a stigma in contrast with beauty is good stereotype. This is the painful truth in our society. I was drawn to this kind of socially relevant research that neuro-aesthetics can help me understand. So a sense of social commitment that has brought me here. speaker-0: That is so interesting. What do we do though with beauty equaling good? You can see how important beauty has seemed to become increasingly in our society, especially as more digital media is available. People's faces are plastered everywhere. Is it ⁓ not such a good thing that beauty equals good? speaker-1: stereotype, right? We have that. If we ask people, do you judge a person by his look, his or her look? The honest answer should be yes. Because neuroscience says that when we perceive a face within milliseconds, that kind of first impression is captured in our brain. So now the question is, do we have this first impression lead to our final verdict? How deep does this bias, anomalous, this bad bias run in the society. speaker-0: And what does it apply to? Because if you're in a society where everyone looks one way, is anomaly just being from a different place? speaker-1: We have found a similar line in this darkness actually. are social animal, humans are. Our brains are categorizing machines, categorizing information in laptop, grocery items, apples, oranges. So we all categorize. Even we categorize people. Evolutionary research and social psychology research tells that ⁓ sex and rest, these are the two primary visually salient factors. That actually leads to the categorization. Based on this sex and race, we group people. Now, what if this face carries anomalies? Do these facial differences or anomalies act also as a cue, like sex and race do? So if this is so, then we can say that the bias is rigid. We remember people with their facial anomalies. But interestingly, found that no, we do not. speaker-0: ⁓ speaker-1: Actually my data says we do not remember the facial anomalies as a cue to remember people or to group people That's a good thing. So in that case we speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: So the good thing is that we find that this kind of anomalous is bad, stereotype is fearful, not that fearful. It's fragile, it's malleable, it's flexible. So anything fragile or malleable that can be changed. speaker-0: Right. How much is our sense of aesthetic beauty tied to our culture the more we see and we're told, ⁓ this type of person's beautiful? How much does that skew our sense of aesthetics? Yes. And and where is change possible within? speaker-1: That's a very good question. They have found that this kind of anomalous is bad stereotype is culturally shaped. They did the experiment on Hatsa community. They are hunter-gatherers in Eastern Africa. So they are totally away from Western media, television culture because they are simply living on their own culture. This team from our center, they found Anomalous is bad stereotype, this kind of bias or stigma, it is not present in the Hatha community who are totally devoid, isolated. But interestingly, some Hatha community members who are somewhat associated with some Western media culture, to them, anomalous is bad stereotype is a revealing factor. speaker-0: And is this Western culture primarily or is it all all major cultures? It's speaker-1: all mature culture in general but it's really interesting that it's culturally shaped and so it's a main takeaway is that the darker side of the bias is not that rigid it can be changed it can be changed it has a more shallower root than sex and race these are kinds of things evolutionarily rooted and all so these can these are medieval it can be changed and that's the good part speaker-0: Any thoughts on beauty? speaker-2: So for beauty we do see cross-cultural differences. We we like the familiar and we seem to prefer it versus the unfamiliar in in faces, in bodies, in buildings, in pretty much everything. However, one of the factors that seem to modulate this relationship is again expertise and exposure. Another post from the lab, ⁓ Cochin Rodata, they did some work between the participants ⁓ and North American, ⁓ UK and I think Australian participants too. And their evidence suggests that naive participants had preference for familiarity for in-group, so there was this in-group bias. But the more experience they had and the more open they were to new experiences, participants tend to have less in-group bias. speaker-0: That makes sense. speaker-2: Yes, it doesn't make sense. So culture and exposure, expertise, and openness to experience and curiosity as well another trait seem to really modulate what we find aesthetically pleasing and beautiful. speaker-0: Because you both are active in a form of art, does neuroaesthetics explore the experience of making art? speaker-2: Because of what the phase that is. It's really about the aesthetic experience, how we perceive it. So it's more focused on how we perceive it. But there is a lot of amazing work about creating art and the meaningful experiences, the aesthetic appreciation as well. Either as part of art therapy or having having a hobby. And also there are some theories about the potential overlap or conflict between the intentionality of the artist and what the audience perceives. So maybe we understand something different what the creator wanted to to say. And maybe that's intentional, maybe that's appreciated by the artist, that was our goal, or maybe not. Can depend on the artist and how much context there is. So there is this work happening right now. One example that I can give you from work from the lab, we Have a collaboration with a facility that works with military personnel and veterans and they do art therapy during their program. And there they they they painted they painted masks and they did a mask at the beginning of their art therapy training and at the end after a few sessions. What we did is that we took these masks and we asked participants to rate these masks ⁓ on different emotions. Either how they failed themselves, the participants writing the images, or how the participants thought the creator failed. And we what we found was amazing, we all the masks that were created at the beginning seemed to involve com mo more negative emotions. It was more about difficulties while the ones that were at the end of the session, they were rated with more positive emotions, ⁓ transformation without the participants knowing. speaker-0: them know. Yes. Okay. And the participants were they therapy clients? speaker-2: No, they were random people ⁓ online. Yeah, completely unrelated to the therapy program. And it mapped into the feelings of the creators of the map. speaker-1: ⁓ speaker-0: So the participants were able to interpret the emotional state of the creators. And was there any research done, maybe not, into the transformation internally for the clients themselves who made these masks? Did they look at their own pieces and speaker-2: Yeah, quite well, yeah. They didn't think from it. Yes, the participants involved with the our therapy training they do provide feedback and all that. It's just the the study did not speaker-0: Yeah, the study was foc ⁓ this is so interesting. Well, is there anything else you would like to say about neuroaesthetics or your work before we close out today? speaker-2: What I'll say is more of a word of caution because neuro aesthetics is a scientific field, it's very interdisciplinary. We work a lot as well with people who are not scientists. For example, I I collaborate with architects. And what's important is there are lots of neuro something words that people like to create. ⁓ and usually anything with a tag neural, people will assume it's correct. So it's more of a word of caution when people hear about how our brain reacts to things or people saying that they apply neuroesthetics. I'm not even sure what this means in different practices. It might be true, it might be not. So it's about being more aware that it's hard for us to do science communication. ⁓ this is part of science communication but there's only so much that we can do. So we really try to promote And explain what we do. And then the readers or the audience, it's just good to be aware of the language and maybe search more about news that might sound very amazing news about what we find in the brain things cities. Usually the findings we have are not always as clear as we might want them. So just a word of caution of how we approach news related to neuroscience. speaker-0: ⁓ well that I can believe. speaker-1: Yeah, exactly. is a message to all that people should rely on scientific papers to know about what neuroesthetics is. Many things pops up. Don't get influenced or don't get fascinated by such fancy words like brain and neuro and all these things. People are marketing these kinds of things. This is misleading actually. speaker-0: ⁓ speaker-1: People have to know what are institutes or scientifically proven facts and people should see what the researchers are telling. It's not that very easy to get things that anything attaching neuro means it's taking a high but that should not be there. speaker-0: it's got a bit of hype. I totally agree as someone who reads scientific papers. Easy to do sometimes. speaker-1: is not true. ⁓ speaker-0: Well yes, they do show the nuance that you're both talking about. Not always stuff is black and white. ⁓ big news came out then it's speaker-1: I'm talking about not talking about yeah there's a search Google scholar PubMed and read paper. Overall you have to get the scientifically proven fact that is coming up. speaker-0: Yes. If one thing in my own studies of neuroscience, and I'm really coming at it from an adult learning perspective, is that it is as complicated as you could possibly imagine. That and there are some truths in neuroscience, but there is a lot that is still in motion. That's part of why I'm doing this podcast is to bring actual scientists and and your work out to everybody else so we can start learning and get more curious. speaker-2: Yes. speaker-0: Yes. So thank you so much, both of you. This has been really speaker-2: Thank you for having me. speaker-1: Thank you for having us. speaker-0: This episode is dedicated to Keaton McCollough, who introduced me to neuroaesthetics. Incredible Mind Podcast is written, produced, and edited by me, Michelle Crossmith. Peter Aronson is consulting producer. Angela Ferrero designed the cover art, and the music was created by Alex Grohl. If you're enjoying this content, please like and subscribe to Incredible Mind Podcast wherever you're listening. Extra credit if you submit a review. For more information, check out our website at Incredible-Mind dot org.