Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives

In the last few years, a remarkable convergence of interests and results has emerged between scholars interested in the arts and aesthetics from a variety of perspectives and cognitive scientists studying the mind and brain within the Predictive Processing framework. The result is a vast and fast-growing research programme that promises to deliver important insights into our aesthetic behaviours as well as a wide range of psychological phenomena of general interest, including perception, cognition, learning, attention, curiosity, affect, motivation, well-being, and the dynamics of sub-personal and person-level experience. This theme issue provides a timely synthesis of this ambitious research programme, laying down a framework within which aesthetics and cognitive science can partner up to illuminate crucial aspects of the human mind.

Access the content online at https://royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/2024/379/1895

1. Introduction Aesthetics and predictive processing: grounds and prospects of a fruitful encounter Jacopo Frascaroli, Helmut Leder, Elvira Brattico and Sander Van de Cruys
2. PART I: GENERAL ISSUES
   1. Order and change in art: towards an active inference account of aesthetic experience Sander Van de Cruys, Jacopo Frascaroli and Karl Friston
   2. Modelling individual aesthetic judgements over time Aenne A Brielmann, Max Berentelg and Peter Dayan
   3. The aesthetic valve: how aesthetic appreciation may switch emotional states from anxiety to curiosity Paolo Barbieri et al.
   4. Cultivating creativity: predictive brains and the enlightened room problem Axel Constant, Karl Friston and Andy Clark
3. PART II: VISUAL ART
   1. Predicting instabilities: an embodied perspective on unstable experiences with art and design Claudia Muth and Claus-Christian Carbon
   2. A hole in a piece of cardboard and predictive brain: the incomprehension of modern art in the light of the predictive coding paradigm Ladislav Kesner
4. PART III: MUSIC
   1. Cognitive and sensory expectations independently shape musical expectancy and pleasure Vincent KM Cheung et al.
   2. A model of time-varying music engagement Diana Omigie and Iris Mencke
   3. The impact of crossmodal predictions on the neural processing of aesthetic stimuli Marianne Tiihonen et al.
5. PART IV: LITERATURE, NARRATIVE AND CINEMA
   1. Parallelisms and deviations: two fundamentals of an aesthetics of poetic diction Winfried Menninghaus et al.
   2. Designs on consciousness: literature and predictive processing Karin Kukkonen
   3. Surfing uncertainty with screams: predictive processing, error dynamics and horror films Mark Miller, Ben White and Coltan Scrivner
   4. Perceptual oddities: assessing the relationship between film editing and prediction processes Alice Drew and Salvador Soto-Faraco
6. PART V: RESPONSES AND CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES
   1. Metaphors or mechanism? Predictive coding and a (brief) history of empirical study of the arts Helmut Leder and Matthew Pelowski
   2. Fluency, prediction and motivation: how processing dynamics, expectations and epistemic goals shape aesthetic judgements Jenny Yoo, Katarzyna Jasko and Piotr Winkielman
   3. Being alive to the world: an artist's perspective on predictive processing Robert Pepperell