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Reposted by Aenne Brielmann

Kaiser Lab @dkaiserlab.bsky.social · 17h

From line drawings to scene perception — our new review argues for moving beyond experimenter-driven manipulations toward participant-driven approaches to reveal what’s in our internal models of the visual world. 👁️✍️🛋
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Characterizing internal models of the visual environment | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Despite the complexity of real-world environments, natural vision is seamlessly efficient. To explain this efficiency, researchers often use predictive processing frameworks, in which perceptual effic...

royalsocietypublishing.org

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Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics @ae.mpg.de · 1d

📢 Call for Abstracts!

The 2nd Annual Conference on #AestheticDevelopment takes place on Nov 20, 2025, at the MPIEA. We invite submissions on how children engage with and develop through the arts.

🗓 Deadline: Oct 12, 2025
🔗 indico.ae.mpg.de/event/29/abstracts/
#Aesthetics #Conference

Visual with a Call for Papers for the 2nd Annual Conference on Aesthetic Development.

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Aenne Brielmann @aennebrielmann.bsky.social · 17h

I finally have some new work to share - some thoughts on how we perceive style with a sprinkle of aesthetics, Fechner, and most importantly: labradors 🐕

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How do we see style?

In a recent series of experiments, Boger and Firestone ask: How do we perceive style?’. Their findings suggest that style perception relies on basic p…

www.sciencedirect.com

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International Association for Empirical Aesthetics @iaea-aesthetics.bsky.social · Aug 5

In case you missed it, be sure to check out IAEA's newly redesigned website! You can learn about the society, become a member, learn about affiliated labs, and get info about our 2026 congress!

iaea-aesthetics.org

Home - International Association of Empirical Aesthetics %

We are an organization of researchers who use scientific methods to investigate aesthetic experience and aesthetic behavior.

iaea-aesthetics.org

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Nature Portfolio @natureportfolio.nature.com · Jul 21

A study in Nature Human Behaviour finds that four-day work weeks without a reduction in income boost workers’ job satisfaction and physical and mental health, driven by enhanced work performance, lower levels of fatigue and fewer sleep problems. go.nature.com/3Um75MP #econsky 🧪

This is figure 2. The plot shows the distribution of work hours at baseline (in red) and at endpoint (in green). Panel a presents company-level average work hours. Panel b presents individual-level work hours.

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Martin Skov @mskov01.bsky.social · Jul 22

What if animals find beauty in the world, just like we do?

Brief article in Psyche:
psyche.co/ideas/what-i...

What if animals find beauty in the world, just like we do? | Psyche Ideas

Chimpanzees favour the colour red. Junglefowl prefer symmetry. Our shared capacity for aesthetic pleasure is cause for wonder

psyche.co

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Dirk Bernhardt-Walther @dirkbwalther.bsky.social · Jun 27

@mskov01.bsky.social and @mnadal.bsky.social recently reviewed arts-based interventions:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I got the opportunity to write a comment:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

TLDR: ABIs hold some promise but must be tested with the same rigor as other treatments.

Can arts-based interventions improve health? A conceptual and methodological critique

Can art improve health and wellbeing? The claim that there is strong evidence that engaging with art ameliorates symptoms of mental and physical disor…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Reposted by Aenne Brielmann

Kelly Jakubowski @kellyjakubowski.bsky.social · Jul 5

The first two papers from the @leverhulme.ac.uk funded Music & Imagination project are now out, led by the fantastic @hazelvanderwalle.bsky.social! First, we built and validated a stimulus set of over 350 music clips varying in genre, familiarity, emotion, etc. doi.org/10.3758/s134...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

doi.org

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Aenne Brielmann @aennebrielmann.bsky.social · Jul 11

Such an ambitious, important project.
So happy to see it published

Cell Press @cellpress.bsky.social · Jul 10

When groups watch a dance performance, their brainwaves sync up 🕺💃 cell.com/iscience/ful...

@guidorgs.bsky.social‬, @auralair.bsky.social
@cp-iscience.bsky.social

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Reposted by Aenne Brielmann

Eric Columbus @ericcolumbus.bsky.social · May 6

🚨🚨 Deranged letter from Education Secretary Linda McMahon to Harvard’s president, cutting off federal funding for any new grants.

Worth reading in full. It is NUTS.

THE SECRETARY OF EDUCATION
WASHINGTON, DC 20202
May 5, 2025
Dr. Alan Garber
Office of the President
Harvard University
Massachusetts Hall
Cambridge, MA 02138
Dr. Garber,
The Federal Government has a sacred responsibility to be a wise and important steward of American taxpayer dollars. Harvard University, despite amassing a largely tax-free $53.2 billion dollar endowment (larger than the GDP of 100 countries), receives billions of dollars of taxpayer largess each year. Receiving such taxpayer funds is a privilege, not a right. Yet instead of using these funds to advance the education of its students, Harvard is engaging in a systemic pattern of violating federal law. Where do many of these "students" come from, who are they, how do they get into Harvard, or even into our country—and why is there so much HATE? These are questions that must be answered, among many more, but the biggest question of all is, why will Harvard not give straightforward answers to the American public?
Harvard University has made a mockery of this country's higher education system. It has invited foreign students, who engage in violent behavior and show contempt for the United States of America, to its campus. In every way, Harvard has failed to abide by its legal obligations, its ethical and fiduciary duties, its transparency responsibilities, and any semblance of academic rigor. It had scrapped standardized testing requirements and a normalized grading system. This year Harvard was forced to adopt an embarrassing "remedial math" program for undergraduates.
Why is it, we ask, that Harvard has to teach simple and basic mathematics, when it is supposedly so hard to get into this "acclaimed university"? Who is getting in under such a low standard when others, with fabulous grades and a great understanding of the highest levels of mathematics, are being rejected?
Harvard has even been embroiled in humiliating plagiarism scandals, exposed clearly and plainly in the media, with respect to your then…

$running the institution in a totally chaotic way. Harvard alumnus and highly successful hedge fund manager Bill Ackman noted that, under her leadership, Harvard has become "a political advocacy organization for one party." Ackman has called for the resignation of Pritzker, concluding that the "[t)he mismanagement here is Penny Pritzker" and noting that any serious corporation would have removed her after a litany of recent failings and the fact that, incredibly, "Harvard is not in a good financial position." According to Ackman, one of the world's foremost finance experts, Harvard's so-called S53 billion endowment is "massively overstated as far as what it's really worth," and Harvard has irresponsibly taken out $8 billion in debt. If this is true, it is concerning evidence of Harvard's disastrous mismanagement, indicating an urgent need for massive reform-not continued taxpayer investment. If Harvard prefers not to change, then Harvard should have no problem using its overflowing endowment to fund its bloated bureaucracy. At its best, a university should fulfill the highest ideals of our Nation, and enlighten the thousands of hopeful students who walk through its magnificent gates. But Harvard has betrayed this ideal. Perhaps most alarmingly, Harvard has failed to abide by the United States Supreme Court's ruling demanding that it end its racial preferencing, and continues to engage in ugly racism in its undergraduate and graduate schools, and even within the Harvard Law Review itself. Our universities should be bastions of merit that reward and celebrate excellence and achievement. They should not be incubators of discrimination that encourage resentment and instill grievance and racism into our wonderful young Americans. The above concerns are only a fraction of the long list of Harvard's consistent violations of its own legal duties. Given these and other concerning allegations, this letter is to inform you that Harvard should no longer seek GRANTS from the fede…$

Federal Agencies. The Administration's priorities have not changed and today's letter marks the end of new grants for the University.
These requests will advance the best interests of Harvard University, so it can reclaim its status as a respected educational institution for the future leaders of America. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Sincerely,
Linda E. McMahon
Secretary of Education

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Dirk Bernhardt-Walther @dirkbwalther.bsky.social · Apr 11

Creativity as aesthetics in reverse? How does the Mirror Model of Art hold up when seen through the lens of neuroscience? It doesn't.

New paper with Oshin Vartanian, Delaram Farzanfar and Pablo Tinio in Neuropsychologia.
doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

@uoftpsychology.bsky.social
@uoft.bsky.social

The Mirror Model of Art sees creativity and aesthetics as mirrors of one another.

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Eric Schulz @ericschulz.bsky.social · Apr 11

🚨 We're hiring! If you're excited about 🤖 ML/LLMs, 🧠 cognitive science, or 💭 computational psychiatry, come join us in Munich. Two fully funded PhDs @www.helmholtz-munich.de: tailored mentorship, international vibe, lots of room to grow.
📅 May 16th
🔗 hcai-munich.com/PhDHCAI.pdf

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Aenne Brielmann @aennebrielmann.bsky.social · Apr 10

Ah, yes, now I feel like I’m properly back at work 😂

Sign stating „Do NOT turn off, sleep, or remove from power. Analyses are running.

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Marco Bertamini @marco-be.bsky.social · Apr 6

PhD position opening in Padova. It is a multidisciplinary project in Experimental Aesthetics and Psychology of Art.
www.bertamini.org/lab/MIRACLE....

www.bertamini.org

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Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · Apr 3

The cultural evolution of distortion in music (and other norms of mixed appeal).

New paper (w Greg Bryant) on a weird social phenomenon, with a general model of how such phenomena evolve as ways to distinguish subcultures.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

The cultural evolution of distortion in music (and other norms of mixed appeal) | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Music traditions worldwide are subject to remarkable diversity but the origins of this variation are not well understood. Musical behaviour is the product of a multicomponent collection of abilities, ...

royalsocietypublishing.org

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Giacomo Bignardi @giacomobignardi.bsky.social · Mar 26

Our study is now out in @naturecomms.bsky.social! Here, we integrate large-scale registry musicality data from twins to investigate the genetics of music enjoyment 🧬🎶🧑‍🤝‍🧑

Simon Fisher @profsimonfisher.bsky.social · Mar 25

“What an odd thing“ wrote Oliver Sacks “to see an entire species playing with listening to meaningless tonal patterns, preoccupied for much of their time by what they call ‘music’...“. Our new paper, led by ace student @giacomobignardi.bsky.social, unpacks this puzzle from a genetic perspective. 🧪

Twin modelling reveals partly distinct genetic pathways to music enjoyment - Nature Communications

Here, Bignardi et al. report on a study of over 9,000 Swedish twins that indicates the ability to enjoy music is influenced by multiple partly distinct genetic factors.

www.nature.com

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EVAlabs Vienna @evalabs.bsky.social · Mar 25

While we sadly had to say goodbye to Eva in the EVAlabs, two new people will have the chance to say hello to her at her new lab in Tübingen @iwmtue.bsky.social

www.iwm-tuebingen.de/www/en/karri...

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Claire Howlin 🎶🧠 @dancingresearch.bsky.social · Mar 25

Phenomenal paper here from Quinn and Jones published in Nature Mental Health showing

Group Arts Activitites can have moderate benefits for #anxiety and #depression for older adults.

🎨🖌️🎭👵🏻

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

#creativeageing @naturementalhealth.bsky.social

Group arts interventions for depression and anxiety among older adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis - Nature Mental Health

In this systematic review and meta-analysis of group arts interventions for older adults, the authors found that participation in shared artistic experience was associated with lower levels of depress...

www.nature.com

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Aenne Brielmann @aennebrielmann.bsky.social · Mar 25

So, I’m teaching basic biopsychology of vision this term - anyone want to share some cool demos I could show? #visionscience

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Giacomo Bignardi @giacomobignardi.bsky.social · Mar 24

"Our results suggest that art stands as a powerful tool for communicating negative information, that is otherwise costly and unpleasant to engage with... Art may serve as a gateway for staying engaged, and potentially facilitate knowledge, meaningful dialog, and action"

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Art promotes exploration of negative content | PNAS

Experiencing negative content through art has a unique power to transform our perceptions and foster engagement. While this idea has been widely di...

www.pnas.org

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PsyArXivBot @psyarxivbot.bsky.social · Mar 24

Examining the Connections Between Music Engagement and Social Well-Being: A Scoping Review: https://osf.io/mbkeh

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Grace Lindsay @neurograce.bsky.social · Mar 23

I'm organizing a "Data for Good Rapid Response Team", i.e. a set of people who can be mobilized to work on short data science projects to help various groups and organizations. Sign up here if this is of interest to you, and please share with others with data science skills.

Data-for-good rapid response team

I'm collecting people with data science skills who may want to hear about sporadic opportunities to use their skills for good on short projects. Project themes will center on topics I am connected wit...

docs.google.com

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Emily S. Cross @escross.bsky.social · Mar 22

💃🧠 Psyched to share my latest paper in Neuron on the past, present and future of dance neuroscience research! Crazy to think where this field will be in 20 more years 🚀

authors.elsevier.com/a/1kkh3_KOmx...

#PsychSciSky #neuroskyence #Dance #CognitiveNeuroscience #Neuroaesthetics #BrainScience

authors.elsevier.com

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Aenne Brielmann @aennebrielmann.bsky.social · Mar 20

Ah, my long held nightmare from grad school days came true 😞

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Reposted by Aenne Brielmann

Martin Skov @mskov01.bsky.social · Mar 14

"Can arts-based interventions improve health? A conceptual and methodological critique" by @mnadal.bsky.social and I has been accepted for publication in Physics of Life Reviews.

The pre-proof version is online at the following URL:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Can arts-based interventions improve health? A conceptual and methodological critique

Can art improve health and wellbeing? The claim that there is strong evidence that engaging with art ameliorates symptoms of mental and physical disor…

www.sciencedirect.com

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