Tempo and intensity of pre-task music modulate neural activity during reactive task performance

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2013 The Authors.Research has shown that not only do young athletes purposively use music to manage their emotional state (Bishop, Karageorghis, & Loizou, 2007), but also that brief periods of music listening may facilitate their subsequent reactive performance (Bishop, Karageorghis, & Kinrade, 2009). We report an fMRI study in which young athletes lay in an MRI scanner and listened to a popular music track immediately prior to performance of a three-choice reaction time task; intensity and tempo were modified such that six excerpts (2 intensities × 3 tempi) were created. Neural activity was measured throughout. Faster tempi and higher intensity collectively yielded activation in structures integral to visual perception (inferior temporal gyrus), allocation of attention (cuneus, inferior parietal lobule, supramarginal gyrus), and motor control (putamen), during reactive performance. The implications for music listening as a pre-competition strategy in sport are discussed

A common neural scale for the subjective pleasantness of different primary rewards.

When an economic decision is taken, it is between goals with different values, and the values must be on the same scale. Here, we used functional MRI to search for a brain region that represents the subjective pleasantness of two different rewards on the same neural scale. We found activity in the ventral prefrontal cortex that correlated with the subjective pleasantness of two fundamentally different rewards, taste in the mouth and warmth on the hand. The evidence came from two different investigations, a between-group comparison of two independent fMRI studies, and from a within-subject study. In the latter, we showed that neural activity in the same voxels in the ventral prefrontal cortex correlated with the subjective pleasantness of the different rewards. Moreover, the slope and intercept for the regression lines describing the relationship between activations and subjective pleasantness were highly similar for the different rewards. We also provide evidence that the activations did not simply represent multisensory integration or the salience of the rewards. The findings demonstrate the existence of a specific region in the human brain where neural activity scales with the subjective pleasantness of qualitatively different primary rewards. This suggests a principle of brain processing of importance in reward valuation and decision-making

Decision-Making: A Neuroeconomic Perspective

This article introduces and discusses from a philosophical point of view the nascent field of neuroeconomics, which is the study of neural mechanisms involved in decision-making and their economic significance. Following a survey of the ways in which decision-making is usually construed in philosophy, economics and psychology, I review many important findings in neuroeconomics to show that they suggest a revised picture of decision-making and ourselves as choosing agents. Finally, I outline a neuroeconomic account of irrationality

Decision-Making: A Neuroeconomic Perspective

This article introduces and discusses from a philosophical point of view the nascent field of neuroeconomics, which is the study of neural mechanisms involved in decision-making and their economic significance. Following a survey of the ways in which decision-making is usually construed in philosophy, economics and psychology, I review many important findings in neuroeconomics to show that they suggest a revised picture of decision-making and ourselves as choosing agents. Finally, I outline a neuroeconomic account of irrationality.neuroeconomics; decision-making; rationality; ultimatum; philosophy; psychology

The influence of the visual elements of cover design on the appeal of art and cultural magazines: case study is book fare in Oulu

Design of magazines - a complex and time-consuming process, often requiring custom solutions. Developers need to know what impact on the visual component of information influence on the audience. The purpose of this case is to gain an understanding of what kind of visual elements of paper media influence on the choice of viewer. As a particular type of magazine were chosen art and cultural magazine with a reason to narrow research and to get depth knowledge about this topic. The study is structured that in the first chapter the information about purpose and research questions is provided. Second chapter describes research materials and methodology that were used to collect data. The third chapter gives the literature review that focus subjects of the study. In the chapters four, the results of the research is analysed and conclusions are made. After all chapters made generalised conclusion using data from the literature review and data collected from the interviews

Still Moving

Here is something puzzling. Still Lifes can be expressive. Expression involves movement. Hence, (some) Still Lifes move. This seems odd. I consider a novel explanation to this ‘static-dynamic’ puzzle from Mitchell Green (2007). Green defends an analysis of artistic expressivity that is heavily indebted to work on intermodal perception. He says visual stimuli, like colours and shapes, can elicit experienced resemblances to sounds, smells and feelings. This enables viewers to know how an emotion feels by looking at the picture. The hypothesis is intriguing, but I show that his suggestion that we empathize with the pictorial content is implausible and that this exposes a flaw in the way his argument moves from experiential mappings to experiential-affective mappings. Consequently, I register some reservations about the way Green supposes we detect these cross-modal qualities

The effect of thermal stimuli on the emotional perception of images

Thermal stimulation is a feedback channel that has the potential to influence the emotional response of people to media such as images. While previous work has demonstrated that thermal stimuli might have an effect on the emotional perception of images, little is understood about the exact emotional responses different thermal properties and presentation techniques can elicit towards images. This paper presents two user studies that investigate the effect thermal stimuli parameters (e.g. intensity) and timing of thermal stimuli presentation have on the emotional perception of images. We found that thermal stimulation increased valence and arousal in images with low valence and neutral to low arousal. Thermal augmentation of images also reduced valence and arousal in high valence and arousal images. We discovered that depending on when thermal augmentation is presented, it can either be used to create anticipation or enhance the inherent emotion an image is capable of evoking

Going back to its roots: can hospitableness provide hotels competitive advantage over the sharing economy?

While the customer experience is at the heart of the hospitality industry, experience-related research remains underrepresented. This gap is critical, particularly given the emerging threat of the sharing economy to the hotel industry along experiential factors. Using data from a survey of 630 customers who stayed at a hotel or an Airbnb, the authors use structural equation modeling to compare two models with alternative conceptualizations of the dynamics of experiential consumption in the accommodations industry. Building on the concept of the experiencescape from the branding and hospitality and tourism literatures, the model enhances Pine and Gilmore’s (1998) original experience economy construct by demonstrating the critical role of the dimension of hospitableness in facilitating favorable experiential and brand-related outcomes, particularly in the context of the hotel experience. The findings have important implications for the hotel industry’s strategic experience design initiatives and emphasize the need to use hospitableness in order to create a competitive advantage in a rapidly changing environment.Accepted manuscrip