How do we perceive beauty? How can engaging in art and the pleasure we elicit from it help us make sense, meaning and inspire us toward action in our daily activities? Can the experience of pleasure and beauty through the arts strengthenour health?
Our guest on the Dancing into Brain Health Podcast is Dr. Edward Vessel, a neuroscientist who uses behavior, brain imaging and computation to study the psychological and neural basis of aesthetic experiences, creative insight and curiosity. We discuss how neuroaesthetics research is helping us understand the way the brain responds to art, beauty and creativity and how these findings can inform future practice to improve brain health and wellbeing across our life.
To learn more about Dr. Edward Vessel here: https://www.ccny.cuny.edu/profiles/edward-vessel andhere: http://edvessel.com
Read more:
Biederman, Irving & Vessel, Edward. (2006). Perceptual Pleasure and the Brain. American Scientist - AMER SCI. 94. 10.1511/2006.3.247. https://www.americanscientist.org/article/perceptual-pleasure-and-the-brain
Vessel EA, Starr GG, Rubin N. The brain on art: intense aesthetic experience activates the default mode network. Front HumNeurosci. 2012 Apr 20;6:66. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2012.00066. PMID: 22529785; PMCID: PMC3330757. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00066/full
Vessel, E.A., Pasqualette, L., Uran, C., Koldehoff, S., Vinck, M. (2023). Self-relevance predicts the aesthetic appeal of real and synthetic artworks generated via neural style transfer. Psychological Science, 34(9), 1007 1023. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976231188107
Vessel, E.A., Isik, A.I., Belfi, A.M., Stahl, J.L., Starr, G.G. (2019). The default-mode network represents aesthetic appeal that generalizes across visual domains. Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences, Sep 2019, 201902650, https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1902650116
Conwell, C., Graham, D., Boccagno, C. & Vessel, E.A. (2025). The perceptual primacy of feeling: Affectless visual machines explain a majority of variance in human visual visually-evoked affect. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(4), e2306025121.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2306025121
Welke, D., Purton, I., & Vessel, E. A. (2023). Inspired by art: Higher aesthetic appeal elicits increased felt inspiration in a creative writing task. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 17(3), 261–277. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000393https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Faca0000393
Trupp, M.D., Bignardi, G., Specker, E., Vessel, E.A., Pelowski, M. (2023). Who benefits from art viewing, and how: the role of pleasure, meaningfulness, and trait aesthetic responsiveness in computer-based art interventions for well-being. Computers inHuman Behavior, 145, 107764.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2023.107764
Christensen, J.F., Muralikrishnan, R., Münzberg, M., Castaño-Manías, B., Khorsandi, S., Vessel, E.A. (2024) Can 5 minutes of finger actions boost creative incubation? Journal of Cognitive Enhancement. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41465-024-00306-0
This episode of Dancing into Brain Health was edited and produced by me, Magda Kaczmarska and Hilary Brown-Istrefi. The music for this show is the title cut from the album, Critical Path by Joe Venegoni and Carl Weingarten.