Why Do We Experience Chills?

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Psychogenic Shivers: why we get the chills when we aren't cold 

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Schoeller, F. (2021, April 8). Psychogenic shivers: Why we get the chills when we aren't cold: Aeon ideas. Psychogenic shivers: why we get the chills when we aren’t cold. Retrieved from https://aeon.co/ideas/psychogenic-shivers-why-we-get-the-chills-when-we-arent-cold

Schoeller, Felix. “Psychogenic Shivers: Why We Get the Chills When We Aren't Cold: Aeon Ideas.” Psychogenic Shivers: Why We Get the Chills When We Aren’t Cold, Aeon Magazine, 8 Apr. 2021, https://aeon.co/ideas/psychogenic-shivers-why-we-get-the-chills-when-we-arent-cold.

Schoeller, Felix. “Psychogenic Shivers: Why We Get the Chills When We Aren't Cold: Aeon Ideas.” Psychogenic shivers: why we get the chills when we aren’t cold. Aeon Magazine, April 8, 2021. https://aeon.co/ideas/psychogenic-shivers-why-we-get-the-chills-when-we-arent-cold.

Schoeller, F. (2018) Psychogenic shivers: why we get the chills when we aren’t cold. Aeon, 4 June. Available at: https://aeon.co/ideas/psychogenic-shivers-why-we-get-the-chills-when-we-arent-cold.

Schoeller F. Psychogenic shivers: why we get the chills when we aren’t cold [Internet]. Dresser S, editor. 2018. Available from: https://aeon.co/ideas/psychogenic-shivers-why-we-get-the-chills-when-we-arent-cold

 

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Why We Experience Chills?

A few years ago, I proposed that the feeling of cold in one’s spine, while for example watching a film or listening to music, corresponds to an event when our vital need for cognition is satisfied. Similarly, I have shown that chills are not solely related to music or film but also to the practice of science (mainly physics and mathematics) and to the social logic of religious rituals. I believe that chills and aesthetic emotions in general can teach us something that we do not know yet. They can help us to understand what truly matters to the mind and to the society of minds.

When cold or sick, humans shiver. Shivering is a muscle tremor that produces heat which allows the body to maintain its core temperature in a changing world. Human core temperature can vary temporarily between about 28 to 42 degrees Celsius. Outside these thresholds, death occurs. Humans also shiver in the case of a fever, as heat slows down the rate of pathogen growth and improves the immune response of a living body. Goosebumps or piloerection (the bristling of hairs) can be side effects, as the muscle tremor causes hair to become erect which creates a thin layer of air, thus minimizing heat loss. Strangely enough, humans also shiver independently of any such events. For instance, certain social situations seem to provoke shivers.

Humans are particularly prone to shiver when a group does or thinks the same thing at the same time. When a crowd is sharing a common goal. When they listen to a national anthem or witness self-sacrifice. When they die for their ideas. When collective thought becomes more important than individual life. But humans also shiver from situations that are not social in nature. Some shiver when they manage to find a solution to certain mathematical problems for example, and so shivering cannot be reduced to a social mechanism.

Now, why does a psychological event trigger a physiological response related to the regulation of temperature? At a fundamental level, cognition requires change. If you stabilize a retina using adequate instruments, the organ ceases to transmit signals to the primary visual cortex, and one gradually becomes blind. From the standpoint of the sense organ, the same object never appears similar to itself twice. Two chairs are never exactly the same. In other words, one is constantly discovering a visual field. Everything you feel, you feel for the first time. Perception is really exploration and, if we can perceive anything at all, it is because we are constantly matching incoming sensory signals to available mental models. You rarely fail to recognize objects in your surroundings. The world is always already meaningful, and it is sometimes beautiful.

The process by which a mind adapts to its world is so effective that people constantly mistake one for the other. When a large part of thought matches a large part of the world, one might consciously feel what we call aesthetic emotions. Historically, aesthetics is the science of how perception meets cognition, the science of how you know what you see. The majority of aesthetic emotions are unconscious. They occur every time you see something. When you see something important enough, you might experience these emotions consciously. This happens through bodily changes such as tears, heartbeat increase, sweat – or shivers. The strange thing with shivering is that humans seem to shiver both when they are perfectly capable of predicting the behavior of external objects in real-time when it all fits together so well, and, surprisingly, when nothing at all can be predicted, when the situation goes out of control.

I propose that psychogenic shivers correspond to an event where the measure of the total similarity between all sensory signals and available mental models reaches a local peak value.

I propose that psychogenic shivers correspond to an event where the measure of the total similarity between all sensory signals and available mental models reaches a local peak value. This can be expressed mathematically in terms of the rate of change of a function of conditional similarity. In this context, any change in learning corresponds to an aesthetic emotion. When the function reaches a local maximum, its derivative tends toward zero, and learning slows down. This corresponds to a ‘turning’ point in your total knowledge. Ten years ago, Perlovsky predicted that such an event should involve knowledge about other minds and about the meaning of life.

We know that psychogenic shivers can be inhibited by an excitant, the opioid-antagonist naloxone. Naloxone is what you would inject in a clinical setting to a patient who is victim of an overdose; it is the antagonist of morphine. It does not come as a surprise that most of my subjects state that they relax after they experience an aesthetic shiver. Besides a clear analogy with the sexual drive, what does this tell us about the exploratory drive?

I argue that stories that provoke the shivers might bring about this relief of tension by allowing humans to overcome conflicts among fundamental parts of the mind. Such stories might help us to deal with internal contradictions, where both elements are equally resistant to change. Leon Festinger, who in 1957 invented the theory of cognitive dissonance, named this a dissonance of maximum amplitude. The mind creates stories to overcome its own contradictions. Anthropologists call this a myth, and we know from a wealth of work in anthropology that rituals are likely to provoke shivers down the spine.

We give two examples for such fundamental conflicts; one is biological and the other cultural. The biological conflict derives from the fact that, while we survive as a species by sharing goals, we might never access the goal of other minds directly. We thus shiver in cases of seemingly total communication – theoretical synchrony. Another example derives from the fundamental discordance between the altruistic nature of the human animal on the one hand, and the logic of the currently dominant social system on the other. These hypotheses would explain why you might shiver in the course of a film when empathy becomes a necessary condition to reduce narrative tension to its minimum. When the bad guy ends up saving the good guy.

There are three plausible explanations for the fundamental relation between cognition and temperature. One is physiological, the other is physical, and the third is biological. The physiological explanation simply consists of describing psychogenic shivers as a case of fever. The relation between emotion and temperature is in fact very ancient, and even reptiles display evidence of stress-induced hyperthermia.

The physical explanation relates the dissipation of heat at the shiver to the processing of information in the brain. In 1961 the physicist Rolf Landauer at IBM proposed the principle that any erasure of information should be accompanied by the dissipation of heat. This was verified experimentally a few years ago in Lyon. If this hypothesis is not entirely false, then we should eventually be able to predict the amount of heat produced, given accurate knowledge of the information process. Until then, I do not see any good reason to quantify the shiver.

Finally, the biological explanation relates the origins of human thought to the tremendous changes in temperature at its birth. It might be that we can observe this relation between the mechanisms that regulate cognition and the mechanisms that regulate temperature because of the particular context in which thought saw the light of day. In other words, a shiver might have very well accompanied the first human idea. Since then, every time we grasp something important, perhaps we repeat the gesture.

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Cognitive Science Below the Neck: Toward an Integrative Account of Consciousness in the Body

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Cognitive Science Below the Neck: Toward an Integrative Account of Consciousness in the Body

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Cognitive Science Below the Neck: Toward an Integrative Account of Consciousness in the Body

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Christov‐Moore, L., Jinich‐Diamant, A., Safron, A., Lynch, C., & Reggente, N. (2023). Cognitive science below the neck: Toward an integrative account of consciousness in the body. Cognitive Science, 47(3). https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13264

Christov‐Moore, Leonardo, et al. “Cognitive Science below the Neck: Toward an Integrative Account of Consciousness in the Body.” Cognitive Science, vol. 47, no. 3, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13264.

Christov‐Moore, Leonardo, Alex Jinich‐Diamant, Adam Safron, Caitlin Lynch, and Nicco Reggente. “Cognitive Science below the Neck: Toward an Integrative Account of Consciousness in the Body.” Cognitive Science 47, no. 3 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13264.

Christov‐Moore, L. et al. (2023) “Cognitive science below the neck: Toward an integrative account of consciousness in the body,” Cognitive Science, 47(3). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13264.

Christov‐Moore L, Jinich‐Diamant A, Safron A, Lynch C, Reggente N. Cognitive Science Below the Neck: Toward an Integrative Account of Consciousness in the Body. Cognitive Science. 2023 Mar;47(3).

 

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Cognitive Science Below the Neck: Toward an Integrative Account of Consciousness in the Body

Despite historic and recent evidence that our beliefs can have drastic effects on bodily function, we seem to lack a model of how this might work. We believe this is due in large part to a failure to consider that computational processes we attribute to cognition may be occurring below the neck, and to a lack of a language by which we could describe beliefs as something that can be instantiated within the body.

In a recent paper, we proposed that we expand the scope of cognitive science to include the body and develop a formal language to describe the relationship between cognitive and bodily systems. To do so, we propose to integrate the best parts of three contemporary accounts that deal with mind and body.

Firstly, parametrically deep allostasis (PDA), a two-level Bayesian inference model, can help us understand how affective valence (the positivity or negativity of a feeling) arises from our bodily experiences. At the surface level, the model uses sensory information to anticipate our homeostatic needs. At the deep level, it continuously tracks the fitness of the surface-level models, indexing fitness as affective valence. This model frames the role of our slow, deep feelings in statistical language that can allow us to possibly speak of beliefs in terms of signaling and computation in interoceptive systems.

Secondly, embodied predictive interoception coding (EPIC) provides a biologically plausible implementation of PDA. EPIC describes a predictive system in the central nervous system that takes inputs from the body via the interoceptive nervous system. It senses precision-weighted ascending homeostatic/metabolic and exteroceptive signals in highly laminated sensory "rich club" hubs and issues allostatic predictions that drive descending allostatic control signals. 

Finally, Carvalho and Damasio's functional/anatomical account of the interoceptive nervous system (INS) provides a crucial, holistic field of view that permits for unique forms of computation in systems below the neck. They frame the spatiotemporally diffuse properties of interoception and affect (described in PDA) as products of INS physiology, with a neurobiological framing that “matches up” well with the cortical field of view of the EPIC model.

 

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Combined, these complementary accounts can expand the scope of cognitive science below the neck, using a formal language that allows us to speak of beliefs in terms of signaling that can be studied within CNS/INS interactions. Beliefs can be enacted in bodily function and influence declarative awareness, while “beliefs” in bodily signaling can emerge to impact conscious thought. This approach can deepen our understanding of belief, ritual, and set/setting in research and clinical outcomes, with potential implications for treating psychopathology and effecting therapeutic change. Novel methodological developments will be needed to trace signaling in the transition from CNS to INS as beliefs translate into bodily change, and vice versa. A field of view that encompasses cortical and interoceptive anatomy and computational processes, along with a formal language for belief transmission and enactment, can transform mind-body mysteries into novel science and therapy.

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A diagram showing how ultrasound for neuromodulation works

Current State of Potential Mechanisms Supporting Low-Intensity Focused Ultrasound for Neuromodulation

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Published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience in 2022, this review intended to answer how ultrasound for neuromodulation works

Our review titled, Current state of potential mechanisms supporting low intensity focused ultrasound for neuromodulation, attempts to address the following questions: 1) How can we alter the amount of mechanical energy or other properties of the mechanical energy using the sonication parameters available with each device, 2) How are neuronal tissue affected by mechanical energy, and 3) How do those sonication parameters change the type of neuromodulation (i.e., excitatory or suppressive)? We reviewed the theoretical mechanisms of action for neuromodulation and the empirical findings tracking all the sonication parameters used to elucidate the possible link between the proposed mechanisms of action and the choice of sonication parameters. This is still an emerging field, but a tabulation of the empirical findings and theoretical models is needed to help clinicians and researchers choose the best paradigm to use.

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DellItalia, John, et al. “Current state of potential mechanisms supporting low intensity focused ultrasound for neuromodulation.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience: 228.

DellItalia, J., Sanguinetti, J. L., Monti, M. M., Bystritsky, A., & Reggente, N. Current state of potential mechanisms supporting low intensity focused ultrasound for neuromodulation. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 228.

DellItalia, John, Joseph L. Sanguinetti, Martin M. Monti, Alexander Bystritsky, and Nicco Reggente. “Current state of potential mechanisms supporting low intensity focused ultrasound for neuromodulation.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience: 228

DellItalia, J., Sanguinetti, J.L., Monti, M.M., Bystritsky, A. and Reggente, N., Current state of potential mechanisms supporting low intensity focused ultrasound for neuromodulation. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, p.228.

DellItalia J, Sanguinetti JL, Monti MM, Bystritsky A, Reggente N. Current state of potential mechanisms supporting low intensity focused ultrasound for neuromodulation. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.:228.

Science Without Jargon

Science should be accessible to everyone. However, dense jargon-filled articles can make it difficult for non-experts to engage with research. Making science accessible promotes scientific literacy and informed decision-making. In this post, we summarize our recent article for a lay audience.

 

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How ultrasound for neuromodulation works

Non-invasive brain stimulation has been used to modulate the activity of neural tissue without the need for surgical procedures to implant devices or permanently alter the neural tissue. Non-invasive brain stimulation has been used for neuromodulation across empirical research and clinical practices using transcranial electrical stimulation and transcranial magnetic stimulation. These types of neural modulation use electric (i.e., transcranial electrical stimulation) or magnetic (i.e., transcranial magnetic stimulation) fields applied outside the skull to induce changes in the electrochemical activity underneath the device within and around neurons. These fields tend to affect larger areas and affect all the neural tissue that the fields pass through. Thus, this limits which brain regions can be targeted precisely or individually.

An alternative to the putative non-invasive brain stimulation is devices using ultrasound. Ultrasound has been used for decades by clinicians to image various parts of the body, but recently ultrasound devices have begun to be used for neuromodulation. Ultrasound doesn’t use electric or magnetic fields, rather it generates acoustic waves that are a mechanical force. This mechanical force can be focused on a precise area with only the maximal mechanical energy converging on millimeter-sized region. This allows for deeper and/or smaller brain regions to be targeted compared to transcranial electrical stimulation and transcranial magnetic stimulation. However, the different energy source compared to electric or magnetic fields requires a different understanding of how neuromodulation occurs. Without this understanding, effective uses of ultrasound in empirical research and clinical practices will be limited.

Ultrasound’s acoustic waves have the characteristic properties of wavelength, amplitude, and frequency. Wavelength is the distance between two peaks within the wave, the amplitude is the height of the wave, and frequency is the number of peaks in a second. Each of these properties affects the total amount of mechanical energy delivered by the ultrasound device and other sonication parameters. The total energy can be measured by either the average amount in a spatial region or the average amount delivered over time typically converted into the units of watts per centimeter squared. In addition to the intensity, the total energy delivered over time is affected by the duty cycle, which is the percentage of time the sonication occurs. The duty cycle also determines if a paradigm is pulsed or continuous. Pulsed paradigms are any duty cycle below 100 percent, which allows for breaks between the sonication, compared to a continuous application of ultrasound. The frequency of the ultrasound’s acoustic waves is related to the sonication parameters of center frequency and pulse repetition frequency. The center frequency is set by the device manufacturer, which is the frequency delivered by the device and this frequency is related to the spatial precision of the acoustic wave delivered. The pulse repetition frequency is the frequency of the acoustic wave delivered by the pulsed paradigm. The final commonly adjusted sonication parameter is sonication duration (i.e., total time of acoustic wave delivered).

The mechanical energy delivered by the ultrasound device has seven proposed mechanisms to affect the activity of groups of neurons. Neurons are connected and each neuron’s activity either helps to excite other neurons connected to it or suppresses the activity of the neurons connected to it. These signals involve both electrical and chemical signaling. Since ultrasound is mechanical, the mechanisms of action proposed describes: 1) effects of mechanical energy on the temperature., 2) how the neurons detect and transform that mechanical energy to electrical or chemical signaling (i.e., mechanosensitive ion channels), or 3) how mechanical energy interacts with the elasticity of neurons to change the electrical properties or structure of neurons (e.g., direct flexoelectricity, change of membrane conformational states, or sonoporation).

Ultrasound has been used for decades to destroy malignant tissue by using enough intensity to generate larger changes in temperature. These large changes in temperature are not seen in the intensity ranges used in non-invasive brain stimulation. Despite the lower intensity used, there is still a mechanical force acting on the neurons. Some neurons have specific mechanisms for detecting external mechanical forces. These are most well understood in our tactile sensations. When our hand presses against a surface, specialized neurons detect the mechanical force by getting stretched which allows for chemical and electrical signaling to occur. The amount and distribution of neurons with similar properties in the brain is an active area of research. In addition to these specialized neurons, the mechanical energy from ultrasound can change the electrical properties of neurons by distorting the shape. The specific configuration of the membrane allows for electrical signals (i.e., direct flexoelectricity) to be produced as the mechanical energy changes the alignment of the interior and exterior parts of the membrane. On top of these alignment changes, there are pressure changes which can also generate both chemical and electrical changes from the changes in membrane conformational states.

Additionally, the neuron’s membranes can have changes to their permeability called sonoporation allowing for electrical changes that can elicit the neuron to fire. This process was investigated how the ultrasound’s pulse repetition frequency, intensity, or duty cycle could produce excitatory or suppressive effects. The key sonication parameter that best predicted differences in neuronal activity was duty cycle. Higher duty cycles between 10% to 70%, typically excited neurons, while lower duty below 10% created suppressive effects. Unfortunately, this one parameter did not predict the suppressive findings well, but the excitatory findings were almost all exclusively found between 10% to 70% duty cycle.

While duty cycle was predictive of some results found in the literature, it left most of the results unexplained. More models and theories are needed to expand the understanding of the mechanisms of action. Hopefully, this review gives a basic knowledge base to clinicians and researchers to use in their treatments or experiments. As the understanding of the mechanisms of action expand, more nuanced treatments and experiments can be used.

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Figures & Captions

Feel free to use these figures in your articles, blogs, and presentations. If you do, please cite this work.

Figure 1.

Low intensity focused ultrasound general principles. (A) A depiction of a typical LIFU experimental setup. A participant is seated (2) with an US device (5) firmly pressed against their head held in place by an arm (3). The US device is controlled by a computer system (4) and targeted using infrared system (1). (B) Depiction of the mechanical wave properties (amplitude, wavelength, and frequency) used in US stimulation. (C) Spatial intensities of the mechanical wave. (D) Temporal intensities of the mechanical wave. (E) Two exemplary pulsation schemes: pulsed (in yellow) and continuous (in teal). Both the pulsing schemes have a customizable sonication duration with inter stimulation interval with the DC parameter (i.e., the ratio of tone burst duration over pulse repetition period) determining the pulsing scheme.

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Figure 2.

Proposed ultrasonic stimulation’s mechanisms for neuromodulation. Depicted in column 1 are six neuronal membranes (four with an ion channel [rows A,C,D,E] and two neuronal membranes [rows B,F] with polar lipid bilayer) and a neuron with the microtubules highlighted (row G). Depicted in column 2, these membranes have four types of electrophysiological-mechanical coupling during an action potential: change in membrane conformation state, thermodynamic waves, direct flexoelectricity, and opening of mechanosensitive ion channels (see Section above). Column 3 depicts these same four electrophysiological-mechanical coupling during US stimulation along with three other possible mechanisms of US’s neuromodulation: thermal modulation, sonoporation and cavitation, and microtubule resonance (see Section above).

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Figure 3.

Neuronal intramembrane cavitation excitation model. Plaksin et al. (20142016) proposed the NICE model hypothesizing sonoporation (see Figure 2F) as US’s mechanism of neuromodulation. The US’s DC (see Figure 1E) determines the polarity of neuromodulation. A low DC (i.e., below 5%) during a stimulation’s off-periods will preferentially activate thalamic reticular neurons (TRN), thalamocortical neurons (TCN), and low-threshold spiking (LTS) interneurons via T-type voltage-gated calcium channels (see Section above for full description) producing an inhibitory effect. A high DC (i.e., over 20%) during the on-periods will preferentially activate regular spiking (RS) pyramidal cells and fast spiking (FS) interneurons while suppressing the LTS interneurons producing an overall excitatory effect. This excitatory effect is simulated using a basic network model of LTS, FS, and RS neurons connected with excitatory and inhibitory synapses and thalamic inputs. The network model predicts an optimum excitation of 70% DC.

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Figure 4.

Excitatory and suppressive empirical findings’ relationships to DC, PRF, ISPPA, fc, and SD. DC, PRF, ISPPA, fc, and SD are used as grouping factors for excitatory and suppressive findings. We used density plots for each study, but studies with multiple sonication parameters have each one plotted. In the top panel, high DC, above 10%, has the vast majority of the excitatory findings. While ow DC, less than 10%, contains the majority of the suppressive findings, there are still approximately 30% of the suppressive findings above 10% DC. The top panel is highlighted in red because DC is the one sonication parameter that has any distinction between excitatory and suppressive findings. In the four bottom panels, PRF, ISPPA, fc, and SD has no clear distinction between excitatory and suppressive findings.

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Frontiers Research Collection: Possible Applications of Neuroaesthetics To Normal and Pathological Behaviour

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Dr. Felix Schoeller is now a Topic Editor for the Frontiers Research Collection under the topic: Possible Applications of Neuroaesthetics To Normal and Pathological Behaviour

 

 

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Frontiers Research Collection: Possible Applications of Neuroaesthetics To Normal and Pathological Behaviour

The aim of this Research Topic is to clarify the role of aesthetic experiences in driving cognitive-emotional change in everyday life at an individual, interpersonal and group level. We are specifically interested in empirical studies of aesthetic emotions in relation to learning and psychopathology. Modern aesthetics — i.e., the science of what is sensed — was originally intended as an alternative to the philosophy of knowledge; in Baumgarten’s words: “the science of sensory knowledge directed toward beauty” (Baumgarten, 1750). In the past few decades, there has been a renewed interest in this relation between aesthetic emotion and knowledge acquisition. Recent evidence suggests that the perception of beauty may subtend the learning process -i.e., the update of perceptual, affective and relational expectations and behavioural plans- and, as such, the somatic markers of aesthetic emotions could serve as potential biomarkers for transient states of enhanced brain plasticity. These findings extend neuroaesthetic research to a wide range of human activities focused on learning and cognitive change, such as education and healthcare.

 

We invite researchers to join forces to document, investigate and understand the role of aesthetic experiences in driving change. We expect contributions deeply rooted in neuro-behavioural data and drawing from multidisciplinary approaches, where experimental and applied aesthetic research may dialogue: neurosciences, clinical and experimental neuropsychology, cognitive science, neurocomputational modelling, experimental psychology, clinical and developmental psychology, psychotherapy and psychiatry, as well as neurorehabilitation.

The key domains of application that will be considered in the special issue are the following:

-Learning/Education. Learning models and research on memory (e.g., how do aesthetic principles potentiate learning), design of timelines and spaces for learning, teaching and educational activities in general.

-Mental Health and psychotherapy: possible application of neuroaesthetic principles to psychotherapy, clinical settings and neurorehabilitation contexts. How do aesthetic competences and aesthetic settings serve diagnostic, rehabilitation and therapeutic processes? Research on the aesthetic variables in the therapeutic encounter: e.g., how do aesthetic sensibility and aesthetic tools/practices influence the therapy of neurological/psychopathological conditions?

-Normal and pathological learning: how do aesthetic emotions influence learning processes and plasticity in normal individuals and in psychiatric and neurological patients? Can we obtain a better understanding of the neurocognitive mechanisms subtending psychopathological behaviour using neuroaesthetic principles?

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