Exploring Complexity - Volume 11: Neuroaesthetics: Exploring Beauty Within and Around Us

Neuroaesthetics has become an important new field in the sciences bringing together researchers from cognitive science (as a general term including brain science, psychology, anthropology, ethology, artificial intelligence), the humanities (including linguistics, philosophy), and the arts (artists from the visual arts, music and poetry). Thus, neuroaesthetics is a prime example of successful interdisciplinarity. In the book Neuroaesthetics: Exploring Beauty Within and Around Us we distinguish and represent in several articles two different kinds of interdisciplinarity: "Horizontal interdisciplinarity" brings together in a complementary way different fields like (as an example) psychology, linguistics and poetry. "Vertical interdisciplinarity" refers to research on data generating mechanisms like (as an example) neural activities in the brain being associated with subjective experiences of "beauty". In the book articles refer to the visual arts ("art in space"), to "faces in art", to poetry and music ("art in time"), and to general ideas (bridging art and science). This is a unique collection of articles with a broad scope.

Dr Yan BAO is associate professor at the School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences at Peking University, and she is also guest professor at the Institute of Psychology, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich. She is also member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, and member of the Parmenides Center for Art and Science, Pöcking, Germany. She is a psychologist and cognitive scientists doing research in the fields of spatial attention, time perception and neuroaesthetics. After receiving a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's degree in educational psychology from Beijing Normal University, Yan Bao became a faculty member of psychology in 1991 at Peking University; she got a doctoral degree in cognitive psychology and received a position as associate professor in 2000. In 2001–2002 she went to LMU to work at the Institute of Medical Psychology; there she conducted research on human-machine interface with a focus on working memory and attention systems. Since 2005, Yan Bao has worked frequently as visiting scientist at several European institutions such as LMU Munich, Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Berlin, and Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology in Warsaw, Poland. Using behavioral measurements and imaging technologies (ERP, fMRI, MEG), Yan Bao made some important discoveries like the "Eccentricity Effect" of attentional control in the visual field which provides new insight for orientation in space; furthermore, she discovered the impact of tonal and non-tonal language experience on temporal perception, a neural marker of the "3 second time window" defining our subjective present which plays an important role in music and poetry, the "Rubberband Effect" in cognitive processing suggesting anticipative control for neural homeostasis, the diurnal rhythm of short-term temporal duration perception and attentional control, and also the cultural differences in aesthetic appreciation for Eastern and Western traditional visual art. Yan Bao has supervised many graduate and doctoral students, and she has published more than 100 scientific papers in journals like Cognition, Cognitive Processing, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, Brain and Cognition, Brain Research, NeuroImage, Experimental Psychology, Frontiers in Psychology, and PsyCh Journal; for the latter two journals she has co-edited special issues on time perception, chronobiology, and neuroaesthetics. Yan Bao has also served as external reviewer for European Research Council (Brussels), and she has been member of Scientific Committee for International Conference of Spatial Cognition, and of the Time Psychology Committee of the Chinese Psychological Society.

Ernst Pöppel is professor emeritus at the Institute of Medical Psychology, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany, and the former director of this institute; he is also guest professor at the School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University. He has studied psychology and biology, and he got his doctoral degree in Innsbruck, Austria. Working at the Max Planck Institute of Behavioral Physiology, Germany, he did research on time perception and described different "time windows" for sensory information processing. In research on the 24-hour body clock he discovered a new phenomenon of the interaction of circadian rhythms with some importance for extraterrestrial space flights; he furthermore developed a new statistical tool for time series analyses. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, he did research on visual processing and discovered the phenomenon of residual vision, now known as "blindsight". He got a teaching degree (habilitation) for Sensory Physiology in a Medical Faculty and another teaching degree in Psychology in a Faculty of Science. In 1976 he became professor for Medical Psychology and founded the Institute of Medical Psychology at Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) Munich, Germany. In 1979 he initiated the project "biological aspects of aesthetics" (or "biological basis of arts") bringing together artists and scientists. From 1992 until 1997 he served as Board Member at the National Research Center Jülich, Germany, where he founded Centers for Brain Research, Environmental Studies and Mathematical Modeling. Afterwards he founded at LMU the Human Science Center, an interdisciplinary institution with some 100 members worldwide. He has supervised more than 200 doctoral students from some 40 countries. He as obtained honorary doctoral degrees, and has become member of several academies like the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Germany. He has published more than 300 scientific papers like in Nature, and he has written ten books for the general public. Being a victim of World War II, and becoming a refugee, he has made his political motto: "Scientists are Natural Ambassadors". Scientists are the only ones who independent of external constraints (historical tradition, cultural identity, political system, religion, or financial opportunities, also age and gender) pursue the path to understand "the world within us and around us", and thus they create a global community.

Dr Richu Wang is Managing Editor of the PsyCh Journal. She got her Bachelor's Degree in Psychology from Chinese University of Hong Kong, Master's Degree from University of Auckland, and Doctoral Degree in Clinical Psychology from Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr Wang has been the special issue coordinators for the special issues published in PsyCh Journal, including the neuroaesthetics special collection in which most articles of this book were originally published. Dr Wang is also a popular science writer and a board member of International Association of Applied Psychology. She has successfully organized several international meetings and co-edited special issues, such as the webinar on Beauty in Science: Neuroaesthetics and beyond and the special issue of Applied Psychology in China in Applied Psychology Around the World.

Semir Zeki is Professor of Neuroesthetics at University College London, having previously held the Chair of Neurobiology there. He is known for his demonstration that the primate brain consists of many visual areas, specialized for the processing and perception of different attributes of the visual scene, such as visual motion, colour and form, an organization that has important consequences for understanding the natural of visual perception and consciousness. He is also known for launching the field of neuroesthetics, to which he has contributed significantly especially by showing that the experience of beauty regardless of its source (e.g. whether musical, visual, or mathematical) correlates with quantifiable activity in the same part of the brain, namely field A1 of medial orbito-frontal cortex. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, London; a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society, a Founder Fellow of the Academy of Medical Science, London and a Member of the Academia Europeae. Among his many prizes are the King Faisal Prize in Biology and the Erasmus Medal. He has written three books A Vision of the Brain (1993); Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain (1999) and Splendours and Miseries of the Brain (2011), which have been collectively translated into seven languages. He also co-authored a book of conversations with the late French painter Balthus (Count Klossowski de Rola) entitle La Quete de l'essentiel (1995).