This Research Topic is the second volume of 'At the Borders of Movement, Art, and Neurosciences-'. Please see the first volume
here.
This new Research Topic is dedicated to publishing high-quality scholarly papers on pivotal topics in the interactive field of Art, Movement, and Neuroscience. Our primary aim is to spotlight recent breakthroughs in Neuro-aesthetics that will help better understand the inherent complexity consisting of the brain mechanisms involved during artistic experiences in the widespread sense, including the production of art pieces and aesthetic appreciation. The interest in these discoveries should also enrich the field of connoisseurship to better understand the neural factors involved in the scientific expertise of artworks.
These complex behaviors integrated into different cultures largely depend on the interaction of at least five non-exclusive fundamental fields of investigation: - 1. Oculomotor skills, 2. Vision, 3. Emotion, 4. Decision-making, and 5. Oscillatory dynamics of the brain.
These five fields are in permanent interaction, and it is illusory to think that we can decipher the mechanisms involved in the perception of art and beauty without taking into account these different fields of investigation.
In this research topic, the neuroaesthetics of all art forms are to be considered, and it also addresses the development of new methodologies in the field of connoisseurship to better understand the decision-making elements of connoisseurship experts concerning masterpiece expertise. The connoisseurship practice is based on bottom-up observation of the artwork immediately followed by top-down categorization and a critical assessment of the quality and label. The nature of this intellectual judgment implies that artiness cannot be an intrinsic quality of an object but depends on a label attributed to it by the discerning eye of the observer. According to the scan path theory, when we observe a painting or any scene, we make a series of saccades of the eyes that direct the retinal fovea towards certain peremptory elements that are representative of the painting or scene observed. The scan path theory benefits from a unique mode of intermittent control of the visual system called the sampled-data operation and may help the development of new methodologies taking into account the fixational eye movements (drift/tremor and smaller microsaccades) which may occupy, in addition to the basic refreshing function, other functions in visual processing and the field of neuromorphic vision.
In this process, the study of cognitive emotional perception and the implication of the observer’s personality and subjective experience of socio-cultural communication will be investigated. The socio-cultural signposts of masterpieces represent the highest gradation in the emotional intensity of a special kind of non-verbal communication emerging to consciousness, leading to critical assessment and social validation through peer review. The study of the neural correlation of aesthetic appreciation as part of the art experience in all its cultural relativity will be measured by different brain imaging techniques such as the coupling between EEG dynamics and eye-scan paths during the visual exploration of art pieces. The possibility that the scanpath trajectory represents a visual and cognitive memory will be evaluated in the present Research Topic.
The study of meaning maps, which represent the capture of the spatial distribution of semantic information in real-world pictures, and the saliency maps which code for the spatial distribution of luminance contrast, edge orientation, and color, will occupy an important part of the Collection.
The scope of this collection encompasses a broad spectrum of topics within Movement Science. We welcome submissions of original research, full-length, mini, or systematic review papers that contribute to the advancement of our understanding of neuroaesthetics and its diverse applications. Potential themes include but are not restricted to:
• The scanpath theory and the sampled data information in visual search;
• the fixational eye movements and sensory-motor mnemonic trace;
• functional imagery during artistic experiences (fMRI, MEG, EEG);
• eye movements and brain dynamics during artistic experiences;
• saccadic and Blink visual suppression during visual search;
• meaning, saliency, and integrated maps during arts vision;
• arts and the emergence of consciousness;
• arts and emotional beauty;
• influence of observer’s personality and subjective experience of socio-cultural communication on cognitive perception;
• impacts of new methodologies on the connoisseurship decision