Martin Skov is Senior Researcher at Copenhagen Business School and the Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance. His research focuses on understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of sensory liking. He has published extensively on neuroaesthetics, including the book Neuroaesthetics (2009) and an influential series of papers on the conceptual foundations of the field.

Marcos Nadal is Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology of the University of the Balearic Islands, Spain. His research is devoted to characterizing the psychological, neural, and evolutionary foundations of aesthetic appreciation. His contributions earned him the Baumgarten Award from the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics and the Daniel Berlyne Award from the American Psychological Association Division 10.

Contributors

Preface

1 Neuroaesthetics as a scientific discipline: An intellectual history

Martin Skov

PART 1: AESTHETIC LIKING

2 Sensory liking: How nervous systems assign hedonic value to sensory objects

Martin Skov

3 The neurobiology of liking

Eloise Stark, Kent C. Berridge and Morten L. Kringelbach

4 Disliking: From adaptive disgust to ugliness

Christoph Klebl, Michael Donner and Indra Bishnoi

5 The influence of interoceptive signals on the processing of external sensory stimuli

Alejandro Galvez-Pol, Enric Munar and James. M. Kilner

6 Neural correlates of visual aesthetic appeal

Edward A. Vessel, Tomohiro Ishizu and Giacomo Bignardi

7 Auditory pleasure elicited by music

Ernest Mas-Herrero

8 Odour aesthetics: Hedonic perception of olfactory stimuli

Gulce Nazli Dikecligil and Jay Gottfried

9 Movement appreciation

Kohinoor M. Darda, Ionela Bara and Emily S. Cross

10 The neuroscience of architecture: Beauty and behavior in the built environment

Alex Coburn, Adam Weinberger and Anjan Chatterjee

11 Sexual selection, aesthetic appreciation, and mate choice

Michael J. Ryan

12 Aesthetic sensitivity: Origin and development of an idea

Ana Clemente

13 The evolution of sensory valuation systems

Esther Ureña and Marcos Nadal

PART 2: ART

14 Perception and cognition in visual art experience

Rebecca Chamberlain

15 The music system

Amy M. Belfi and Psyche Loui

16 Watching and engaging in dance

Beatriz Calvo-Merino

17 Making sense of space: The neuroaesthetics of architecture

Zakaria Djebbara, Lars Brorson Fich and Giovanni Vecchiato

18 Literature and poetry

Arthur M. Jacobs

19 Narrative

Franziska Hartung

20 Music-evoked emotions: Their contribution to aesthetic experiences, health, and well-being

Liila Taruffi and Stefan Koelsch

21 The health benefits of art experience

Claire Howlin

22 Experiencing art in museums

Aniko Illes & Pablo P. L. Tinio

23 Context and complexity of aesthetic experiences: A neuroscientific view

Julia Crone and Helmut Leder

24 Experiencing art in social settings

Haeeun Lee and Guido Orgs

25 Top-down processes in art experience

Aenne A. Brielmann

26 Preferences need inferences: Learning, valuation, and curiosity in aesthetic experience

Sander van de Cruys, Jo Bervoets and Agnes Moors

27 Neuroscience of artistic creativity

Oshin Vartanian

28 Expertise and the brain of the performing artist

Fredrik Ullén

29 The evolution of symbolic material culture

Francesco d'Errico

30 Neuropsychology of art and aesthetics

Alejandro Dorado and Marcos Nadal

Index