Empathy, engagement, entrainment: the interaction dynamics of aesthetic experience

A recent version of the view that aesthetic experience is based in empathy as inner imitation explains aesthetic experience as the automatic simulation of actions, emotions, and bodily sensations depicted in an artwork by motor neurons in the brain. Criticizing the simulation theory for committing to an erroneous concept of empathy and failing to distinguish regular from aesthetic experiences of art, I advance an alternative, dynamic approach and claim that aesthetic experience is enacted and skillful, based in the recognition of others’ experiences as distinct from one’s own. In combining insights from mainly psychology, phenomenology, and cognitive science, the dynamic approach aims to explain the emergence of aesthetic experience in terms of the reciprocal interaction between viewer and artwork. I argue that aesthetic experience emerges by participatory sense-making and revolves around movement as a means for creating meaning. While entrainment merely plays a preparatory part in this, aesthetic engagement constitutes the phenomenological side of coupling to an artwork and provides the context for exploration, and eventually for moving, seeing, and feeling with art. I submit that aesthetic experience emerges from bodily and emotional engagement with works of art via the complementary processes of the perception–action and motion–emotion loops. The former involves the embodied visual exploration of an artwork in physical space, and progressively structures and organizes visual experience by way of perceptual feedback from body movements made in response to the artwork. The latter concerns the movement qualities and shapes of implicit and explicit bodily responses to an artwork that cue emotion and thereby modulate over-all affect and attitude. The two processes cause the viewer to bodily and emotionally move with and be moved by individual works of art, and consequently to recognize another psychological orientation than her own, which explains how art can cause feelings of insight or awe and disclose aspects of life that are unfamiliar or novel to the viewer

The Problem of Mental Action

In mental action there is no motor output to be controlled and no sensory input vector that could be manipulated by bodily movement. It is therefore unclear whether this specific target phenomenon can be accommodated under the predictive processing framework at all, or if the concept of “active inference” can be adapted to this highly relevant explanatory domain. This contribution puts the phenomenon of mental action into explicit focus by introducing a set of novel conceptual instruments and developing a first positive model, concentrating on epistemic mental actions and epistemic self-control. Action initiation is a functionally adequate form of self-deception; mental actions are a specific form of predictive control of effective connectivity, accompanied and possibly even functionally mediated by a conscious “epistemic agent model”. The overall process is aimed at increasing the epistemic value of pre-existing states in the conscious self-model, without causally looping through sensory sheets or using the non-neural body as an instrument for active inference

Beyond sensorimotor segregation: On mirror neurons and social affordance space tracking

Mirror neuron research has come a long way since the early 1990s, and many theorists are now stressing the heterogeneity and complexity of the sensorimotor properties of fronto-parietal circuits. However, core aspects of the initial ‘ mirror mechanism ’ theory, i.e. the idea of a symmetric encapsulated mirroring function translating sensory action perceptions into motor formats, still appears to be shaping much of the debate. This article challenges the empirical plausibility of the sensorimotor segregation implicit in the original mirror metaphor. It is proposed instead that the teleological organization found in the broader fronto-parietal circuits might be inherently sensorimotor. Thus the idea of an independent ‘purely perceptual’ goal understanding process is questioned. Further, it is hypothesized that the often asymmetric, heterogeneous and contextually modulated mirror and canonical neurons support a function of multisensory mapping and tracking of the perceiving agents affordance space. Such a shift in the interpretative framework offers a different theoretical handle on how sensorimotor processes might ground various aspects of intentional action choice and social cognition. Mirror neurons would under the proposed “social affordance model” be seen as dynamic parts of larger circuits, which support tracking of currently shared and competing action possibilities. These circuits support action selection processes—but also our understanding of the options and action potentials that we and perhaps others have in the affordance space. In terms of social cognition ‘ mirror ’ circuits might thus help us understand not only the intentional actions others are actually performing—but also what they could have done, did not do and might do shortly

Modelling mental rotation in cognitive robots

Mental rotation concerns the cognitive processes that allow an agent mentally to rotate the image of an object in order to solve a given task, for example to say if two objects with different orientations are the same or different. Here we present a system-level bio-constrained model, developed within a neurorobotics framework, that provides an embodied account of mental rotation processes relying on neural mechanisms involving motor affordance encoding, motor simulation and the anticipation of the sensory consequences of actions (both visual and proprioceptive). This model and methodology are in agreement with the most recent theoretical and empirical research on mental rotation. The model was validated through experiments with a simulated humanoid robot (iCub) engaged in solving a classical mental rotation test. The results of the test show that the robot is able to solve the task and, in agreement with data from psychology experiments, exhibits response times linearly dependent on the angular disparity between the objects. This model represents a novel detailed operational account of the embodied brain mechanisms that may underlie mental rotation. © The Author(s) 2013

Relating spatial perspective taking to the perception of other's affordances: providing a foundation for predicting the future behavior of others

Understanding what another agent can see relates functionally to the understanding of what they can do. We propose that spatial perspective taking and perceiving other's affordances, while two separate spatial processes, together share the common social function of predicting the behavior of others. Perceiving the action capabilities of others allows for a common understanding of how agents may act together. The ability to take another's perspective focuses an understanding of action goals so that more precise understanding of intentions may result. This review presents an analysis of these complementary abilities, both in terms of the frames of reference and the proposed sensorimotor mechanisms involved. Together, we argue for the importance of reconsidering the role of basic spatial processes to explain more complex behaviors

A method to bridge the gap between affordance formalisation and visual simulation in virtual environment

International audienceRecently, Wells suggested using the formalism of the Turing Machine to describe the concept of affordance. Even though the author has shown that the generic properties of the concept were taken into account in this modelling, no research has yet attempted to model adaptive behaviour in an ecosystem with this formalism. In this paper, we propose to facilitate the passage from an abstract model of affordance through the Turing Machine to a concrete simulation of the model within a Virtual Environment. This simulation makes the direct observation of the emergence of interaction between a human or animal agent and some relevant patterns of sensorial information coming from the surroundings (sensorial invariants) possible. After a presentation of the different stages of the modelling method, we illustrate it by applying it to a basic ecological situation: the predation behaviour of the tick (Ixodes Ricinus). This modelling effort enables us to envisage the potentialities, the limits and the issues of this framework

Dopamine, affordance and active inference.

The role of dopamine in behaviour and decision-making is often cast in terms of reinforcement learning and optimal decision theory. Here, we present an alternative view that frames the physiology of dopamine in terms of Bayes-optimal behaviour. In this account, dopamine controls the precision or salience of (external or internal) cues that engender action. In other words, dopamine balances bottom-up sensory information and top-down prior beliefs when making hierarchical inferences (predictions) about cues that have affordance. In this paper, we focus on the consequences of changing tonic levels of dopamine firing using simulations of cued sequential movements. Crucially, the predictions driving movements are based upon a hierarchical generative model that infers the context in which movements are made. This means that we can confuse agents by changing the context (order) in which cues are presented. These simulations provide a (Bayes-optimal) model of contextual uncertainty and set switching that can be quantified in terms of behavioural and electrophysiological responses. Furthermore, one can simulate dopaminergic lesions (by changing the precision of prediction errors) to produce pathological behaviours that are reminiscent of those seen in neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease. We use these simulations to demonstrate how a single functional role for dopamine at the synaptic level can manifest in different ways at the behavioural level

The aesthetic stance - on the conditions and consequences of becoming a beholder

What does it mean to be an aesthetic beholder? Is it different than simply being a perceiver? Most theories of aesthetic perception focus on 1) features of the perceived object and its presentation or 2) on psychological evaluative or emotional responses and intentions of perceiver and artist. In this chapter I propose that we need to look at the process of engaged perception itself, and further that this temporal process of be- coming a beholder must be understood in its embodied, contextual and dynamic speci- ficity. Through both phenomenological and neuroscientific explorations I analyze what is characteristic about a more “aesthetic stance” and argue that there is a certain asym- metry between beholder and beheld, which has to do with a disengagement of goal- directed action, and which allows for other kinds of perceptual involvement than in a more “practical stance”. It is a multi-disciplinary project integrating a sensorimotor no- tion of aesthetic affordances, 18th century philosophy, and large-scale brain network findings. What ensues is a new dynamic framework for future empirical and theoretical research on aesthetic perception