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DiMattina C, Pipitone RN, Renteria MR, Ryan KJ. Trypophobia, skin disease, and the visual discomfort of natural textures. Sci Rep 2024; 14:5050. [PMID: 38424465 PMCID: PMC10904841 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-55149-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/11/2023] [Accepted: 02/20/2024] [Indexed: 03/02/2024] Open
Abstract
In the last decade, the behavioral sciences have described the phenomenon of trypophobia, which is the discomfort felt by some individuals when viewing images containing clusters of bumps or holes. One evolutionary hypothesis for this phenomenon is that this visual discomfort represents an adaptation which helps organisms avoid skin disease and/or ectoparasites. Even though trypophobic imagery and disease imagery are both examples of visual textures, to date there has been no comparison of the visual discomfort elicited by these two specific kinds of textures within the larger context of the visual comfort elicited by natural texture imagery more generally. In the present study, we administered the Trypophobia Questionnaire (TQ) and recorded the visual comfort ratings elicited by a large set of standard natural texture images, including several trypophobic and skin disease images. In two independent samples, we found that while all observers find skin diseases uncomfortable to view, only those scoring high on the TQ rated trypophobic imagery equally uncomfortable. Comparable effects were observed using both standard ANOVA procedures as well as linear mixed effects modeling. Comparing the ratings of both high-TQ and low-TQ participants to the standard textures, we find remarkably consistent rank-order preferences, with the most unpleasant textures (as rated by both groups) exhibiting qualitative similarities to trypophobic imagery. However, we also find that low-level image statistics which have been previously shown to affect visual comfort are poor predictors of the visual comfort elicited by natural textures, including trypophobic and disease imagery. Our results suggest that a full understanding of the visual comfort elicited by natural textures, including those arising from skin disease, will ultimately depend upon a better understanding of cortical areas specialized for the perception of surface and material properties, and how these visual regions interact with emotional brain areas to evoke appropriate behavioral responses, like disgust.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christopher DiMattina
- Department of Psychology, Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, FL, 33965-6565, USA.
| | - R Nathan Pipitone
- Department of Psychology, Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, FL, 33965-6565, USA
| | - Martin R Renteria
- Department of Biological Sciences, Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, FL, 33965-6565, USA
| | - Kriston J Ryan
- Department of Psychology, Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, FL, 33965-6565, USA
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Liu J, Liu L. Modeling visual aesthetic perception: bridges between computed texture features and perceived beauty qualities in semantic experiments. Cogn Neurodyn 2022; 16:1379-1391. [PMID: 36408068 PMCID: PMC9666615 DOI: 10.1007/s11571-022-09783-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/20/2021] [Revised: 12/27/2021] [Accepted: 01/19/2022] [Indexed: 11/03/2022] Open
Abstract
The exploration of the potential relationship between computable low-level texture, such as features extracted from color and texture, and the perceived high-level aesthetic properties, such as warm or cold, soft or hard, has been a hot research topic of neuroaesthetics. First, the selection and clustering of aesthetic antonyms used to represent the aesthetic properties of visual texture are completed through two semantic differential experiments. Subsequently, 151 visual textures are rated according to the selected aesthetic antonyms by participants in a third semantic differential experiment. Third, 106 textural features are extracted using four different image analysis algorithms to describe the low-level characteristics of visual textures. Finally, the construction and evaluation of the visual aesthetic perception model based on multiple linear and nonlinear regression algorithms are discussed. We analyzed the frequency of each aesthetic antonym selected from 20 pairs of semantic antonyms, and the most frequently mentioned 8 pairs of semantic antonyms were selected as the core set for model building. The extracted low-level features are highly correlative. Of the correlation coefficients based on absolute values, 3383 are less than 0.75, accounting for 14.84% of the total. The correlation coefficients were larger than 0.5 accounts for 27.29% of the total. Through neighborhood component analysis, the top 10 low-level features are selected with lower correlation. The gap between low-level calculated features and high-level perceived aesthetic emotions can be bridged by a brain-inspired model of visual aesthetic perception.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jianli Liu
- College of Textile Science and Engineering, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, 214122 China
| | - Leigen Liu
- School of Textile Garment and Design, Changshu Institute of Technology, Changshu, 215500 China
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Karim AKMR, Proulx MJ, de Sousa AA, Likova LT. Do we enjoy what we sense and perceive? A dissociation between aesthetic appreciation and basic perception of environmental objects or events. COGNITIVE, AFFECTIVE & BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE 2022; 22:904-951. [PMID: 35589909 PMCID: PMC10159614 DOI: 10.3758/s13415-022-01004-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 03/27/2022] [Indexed: 05/06/2023]
Abstract
This integrative review rearticulates the notion of human aesthetics by critically appraising the conventional definitions, offerring a new, more comprehensive definition, and identifying the fundamental components associated with it. It intends to advance holistic understanding of the notion by differentiating aesthetic perception from basic perceptual recognition, and by characterizing these concepts from the perspective of information processing in both visual and nonvisual modalities. To this end, we analyze the dissociative nature of information processing in the brain, introducing a novel local-global integrative model that differentiates aesthetic processing from basic perceptual processing. This model builds on the current state of the art in visual aesthetics as well as newer propositions about nonvisual aesthetics. This model comprises two analytic channels: aesthetics-only channel and perception-to-aesthetics channel. The aesthetics-only channel primarily involves restricted local processing for quality or richness (e.g., attractiveness, beauty/prettiness, elegance, sublimeness, catchiness, hedonic value) analysis, whereas the perception-to-aesthetics channel involves global/extended local processing for basic feature analysis, followed by restricted local processing for quality or richness analysis. We contend that aesthetic processing operates independently of basic perceptual processing, but not independently of cognitive processing. We further conjecture that there might be a common faculty, labeled as aesthetic cognition faculty, in the human brain for all sensory aesthetics albeit other parts of the brain can also be activated because of basic sensory processing prior to aesthetic processing, particularly during the operation of the second channel. This generalized model can account not only for simple and pure aesthetic experiences but for partial and complex aesthetic experiences as well.
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Affiliation(s)
- A K M Rezaul Karim
- Department of Psychology, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, 1000, Bangladesh.
- Envision Research Institute, 610 N. Main St., Wichita, KS, USA.
- The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, 2318 Fillmore St., San Francisco, CA, USA.
| | | | | | - Lora T Likova
- The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, 2318 Fillmore St., San Francisco, CA, USA
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Gallo LMH, Giampietro V, Zunszain PA, Tan KS. Covid-19 and Mental Health: Could Visual Art Exposure Help? Front Psychol 2021; 12:650314. [PMID: 33995207 PMCID: PMC8119628 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.650314] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/07/2021] [Accepted: 04/01/2021] [Indexed: 01/03/2023] Open
Abstract
A worldwidemental health crisis is expected, as millions worldwide fear death and disease while being forced into repeated isolation. Thus, there is a need for new proactive approaches to improve mental resilience and prevent mental health conditions. Since the 1990s, art has emerged as an alternative mental health therapy in the United States and Europe, becoming part of the social care agenda. This article focuses on how visual esthetic experiences can create similar patterns of neuronal activity as those observed when the reward system is activated. The activation of the reward structures could have a stress buffering effect, given the interdependence observed between the reward and stress systems. Therefore, could visual esthetic experiences stimulate mental resilience? And if this were the case, could art-based interventions be offered for mental health in the context of COVID-19 and beyond?
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura M. H. Gallo
- Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Vincent Giampietro
- Department of Neuroimaging, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Patricia A. Zunszain
- Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Kai Syng Tan
- Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, United Kingdom
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Redies C, Grebenkina M, Mohseni M, Kaduhm A, Dobel C. Global Image Properties Predict Ratings of Affective Pictures. Front Psychol 2020; 11:953. [PMID: 32477228 PMCID: PMC7235378 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00953] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/12/2020] [Accepted: 04/17/2020] [Indexed: 01/08/2023] Open
Abstract
Affective pictures are widely used in studies of human emotions. The objects or scenes shown in affective pictures play a pivotal role in eliciting particular emotions. However, affective processing can also be mediated by low-level perceptual features, such as local brightness contrast, color or the spatial frequency profile. In the present study, we asked whether image properties that reflect global image structure and image composition affect the rating of affective pictures. We focused on 13 global image properties that were previously associated with the esthetic evaluation of visual stimuli, and determined their predictive power for the ratings of five affective picture datasets (IAPS, GAPED, NAPS, DIRTI, and OASIS). First, we used an SVM-RBF classifier to predict high and low ratings for valence and arousal, respectively, and achieved a classification accuracy of 58–76% in this binary decision task. Second, a multiple linear regression analysis revealed that the individual image properties account for between 6 and 20% of the variance in the subjective ratings for valence and arousal. The predictive power of the image properties varies for the different datasets and type of ratings. Ratings tend to share similar sets of predictors if they correlate positively with each other. In conclusion, we obtained evidence from non-linear and linear analyses that affective pictures evoke emotions not only by what they show, but they also differ by how they show it. Whether the human visual system actually uses these perceptive cues for emotional processing remains to be investigated.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christoph Redies
- Experimental Aesthetics Group, Institute of Anatomy I, Jena University Hospital, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany
| | - Maria Grebenkina
- Experimental Aesthetics Group, Institute of Anatomy I, Jena University Hospital, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany
| | - Mahdi Mohseni
- Experimental Aesthetics Group, Institute of Anatomy I, Jena University Hospital, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany
| | - Ali Kaduhm
- Experimental Aesthetics Group, Institute of Anatomy I, Jena University Hospital, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany
| | - Christian Dobel
- Department of Otolaryngology and Institute of Phonatry and Pedaudiology, Jena University Hospital, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany
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Brattico P, Brattico E, Vuust P. Global Sensory Qualities and Aesthetic Experience in Music. Front Neurosci 2017; 11:159. [PMID: 28424573 PMCID: PMC5380758 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2017.00159] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/30/2016] [Accepted: 03/13/2017] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
A well-known tradition in the study of visual aesthetics holds that the experience of visual beauty is grounded in global computational or statistical properties of the stimulus, for example, scale-invariant Fourier spectrum or self-similarity. Some approaches rely on neural mechanisms, such as efficient computation, processing fluency, or the responsiveness of the cells in the primary visual cortex. These proposals are united by the fact that the contributing factors are hypothesized to be global (i.e., they concern the percept as a whole), formal or non-conceptual (i.e., they concern form instead of content), computational and/or statistical, and based on relatively low-level sensory properties. Here we consider that the study of aesthetic responses to music could benefit from the same approach. Thus, along with local features such as pitch, tuning, consonance/dissonance, harmony, timbre, or beat, also global sonic properties could be viewed as contributing toward creating an aesthetic musical experience. Several such properties are discussed and their neural implementation is reviewed in the light of recent advances in neuroaesthetics.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Elvira Brattico
- Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University and The Royal Academy of Music Aarhus/AalborgAarhus, Denmark
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Jacobs RHAH, Cornelissen FW. An Explanation for the Role of the Amygdala in Aesthetic Judgments. Front Hum Neurosci 2017; 11:80. [PMID: 28303095 PMCID: PMC5332392 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00080] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/16/2015] [Accepted: 02/08/2017] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
It has been proposed that the top-down guidance of feature-based attention is the basis for the involvement of the amygdala in various tasks requiring emotional decision-making (Jacobs et al., 2012a). Aesthetic judgments are correlated with particular visual features and can be considered emotional in nature (Jacobs et al., 2016). Moreover, we have previously shown that various aesthetic judgments result in observers preferentially attending to different visual features (Jacobs et al., 2010). Here, we argue that—together—this explains why the amygdalae become active during aesthetic judgments of visual materials. We discuss potential implications and predictions of this theory that can be tested experimentally.
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Affiliation(s)
- Richard H A H Jacobs
- Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen Nijmegen, Netherlands
| | - Frans W Cornelissen
- Laboratory for Experimental Ophthalmology, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen Groningen, Netherlands
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