Neuroaesthetics

We have recently initiated some studies on neuroaesthetics including music perception, emotion construction through dance movements and mentalizing/perspective taking through role playing among actors and non-actors.  Our work on music perception aims to look at feature based mapping of music perception as a function of nature and duration of musical training using behavioural and functional neuroimaging methods. We are also investigating emotion perception through dance movements using point light displays as stimuli in a sorting task. This work explores the possibility of explaining affect representation through the theory of rasadharmas in Indian aesthetics. More recently we have initiated a study on mentalizing and perspective taking through role playing in a fictional first person perspective paradigm among professional actors and non-actors. 

We intend to use task based functional MRI to look at the region and network specific involvement as we investigate three art forms in the context of certain cognitive domains such as auditory perception for musical stimuli, emotion categorization and mentalizing/perspective taking.  These fMRI studies are being conducted at the National Neuroimaging Facility at the Centre of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Allahabad.