Publications

Ripolles, P.,  Belfi, A.M., Kasdan, A., Vessel, E.A., Halpern, A.R., Rowland, J., Hopkins, R., Starr, G.G. & Poeppel, D. (2025). A shared neural network for highly liked and disliked music. bioRxiv01.20.633989; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.20.633989

Conwell, C., Graham, D., Boccagno, C. & Vessel, E. A. (2025). The Perceptual Primacy of Feeling: Affectless visual machines explain a majority of variance in human visual visually-evoked affect. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122 (4) e2306025121, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.230602512

Christensen, J.F., Muralikrishnan, R., Münzberg, M., Castaño-Manías, B., Khorsandi, S., Vessel, E.A. (2024) Can 5 minutes of finger actions boost creative incubation? Journal of Cognitive Enhancement. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41465-024-00306-0

Bignardi, G., Smit, D. J. A., Vessel, E. A., Trupp, M. D., Ticini, L. F., Fisher, S. E., & Polderman, T. J. C. (2024). Genetic effects on variability in visual aesthetic evaluations are partially shared across visual domains. Communications Biology,7: 55. doi:10.1038/s42003-023-05710-4.

Vessel, E.A., Pasqualette, L., Uran, C., Koldehoff, S., Vinck, M. (2023). Self-relevance predicts the aesthetic appeal of real and synthetic artworks generated via neural style transfer. Psychological Science, 34(9): 1007–1023. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976231188107

Trupp, M.D., Bignardi, G., Specker, E., Vessel, E.A., Pelowski, M. (2023). Who benefits from art viewing, and how: The role of pleasure, meaningfulness, and trait aesthetic responsiveness in computer-based art interventions for well-being. Computers in Human Behavior, 145: 107764. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2023.107764

Golbabaei, S., Christensen, J.F., Vessel, E.A., Kazemian, N., Borhani, K. (2022). The Aesthetic Responsiveness Assessment (AReA) in Farsi Language: A scale validation and cultural adaptation study. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Advanced online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000532 [More Information and Downloads]

Vessel, E.A., Ishizu, T., Bignardi, G. (2022). Neural correlates of visual aesthetic appeal. In M. Skov & M. Nadal (Ed.). Routledge Intl Handbook of Neuroaesthetics. London: Routledge. Pp. 103-133. https://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003008675-7

Strijbosch, W., Vessel, E.A., Welke, D., Mitas, O., Gelissen, J., Bastiaansen, M. (2022). On the neuronal dynamics of aesthetic experience: Evidence from electroencephalographic oscillatory dynamics. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 34(3). https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01812

Welke, D., Vessel, E.A. (2022). Examining the effects of free gaze and dynamic video stimuli on engagement, eye movements, and EEG signal quality in a visual aesthetic rating task. NeuroImage, 119218. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119218

Vessel, E.A., Starr, G.S. (2022). Imaging the subjective. In A. Chatterjee & E. Cardillo (Ed.). Brain, Beauty, and Art: Essays Bringing Neuroaesthetics into Focus. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780197513620.003.0024

Vessel, E.A., Yue, X., Biederman, I. (2022). Scene preferences, aesthetic appeal and curiosity: revisting the neurobiology of the infovore. In A. Chatterjee & E. Cardillo (Ed.). Brain, Beauty, and Art: Essays Bringing Neuroaesthetics into Focus. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780197513620.003.0013

Notter, M. P., Herholz, P., Costa, S. D., Gulban, O. F., Isik, A. I., Gaglianese, A., & Murray, M. M. (2022). fMRIflows: A Consortium of Fully Automatic Univariate and Multivariate fMRI Processing Pipelines. Brain Topography. doi:10.1007/s10548-022-00935-8.

Isik, I., Vessel, E.A. (2021). From visual perception to aesthetic appeal: Brain responses to aesthetically appealing natural landscape movies. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 15:676032. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2021.676032

Welke, D.W., Purton, I., Vessel, E.A.(2021). Inspired by art: Higher aesthetic appeal elicits increased felt inspiration in a creative writing task. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/aca0000393

Pavlov, Y. G., …Welke, D., … & Mushtaq, F. (2021). #EEGManyLabs: Investigating the replicability of influential EEG experiments. Cortex,144, 213-229. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2021.03.013.

Vessel, E.A.(2020). Neuroaesthetics. In Encyclopedia of Behavioral Neuroscience, 2nd edition (pp. 661-670). Elsevier. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-809324-5.24104-7

Schlotz, W., Wallot, S. Omigie, D., Masucci, M.D., Hoelzmann, S.C., Vessel, E.A. (2020). The Aesthetic Responsiveness Assessment (AReA): A screening tool to assess individual differences in responsiveness to art in English and German. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/aca0000348 [More Information and Downloads]

Botvinik-Nezer, R., … Isik, A. I., … Nichols, T. E., & Schonberg, R. A. P. &. T. (2020). Variability in the analysis of a single neuroimaging dataset by many teams. Nature,582, 84-88. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2314-9.

Appelhoff, S., Sanderson, M., Brooks, T. L., van Vliet, M., Quentin, R., Holdgraf, C., Chaumon, M., Mikulan, E., Tavabi, K., Höchenberger, R., Welke, D., Brunner, C., Rockhill, A. P., Larson, E., Gramfort, A., & Jas, M. (2019). MNE-BIDS: Organizing electrophysiological data into the BIDS format and facilitating their analysis. The Journal of Open Source Software,4(44): 1896. doi:10.21105/joss.01896.

Isik, A.I., Vessel, E.A. (2019). Continuous ratings of movie watching reveal idiosyncratic dynamics of aesthetic enjoyment. PLoS ONE 14 (10): e0223896. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0223896

Belfi, A.M.*, Vessel, E.A.*,  Brielmann, A., Isik, A.I., Chatterjee, A., Leder, H., Pelli, D.G., Starr, G.G. (2019). Dynamics of aesthetic experience are reflected in the default-mode network. NeuroImage, 188, 584-597. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.12.017 (* shared first authorship)

Vessel, E.A., Isik, A.I., Belfi, A.M., Stahl, J.L., Starr, G.G. (2019). The default-mode network represents aesthetic appeal that generalizes across visual domains. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Sep 2019, 201902650, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1902650116

Esteban, O., Markiewicz, C. J., Blair, R. W., Moodie, C. A., Isik, A. I., Erramuzpe, A., Kent, J. D., Goncalves, M., DuPre, E., Snyder, M., Oya, H., Ghosh, S. S., Wright, J., Durnez, J., Poldrack, R. A., & Gorgolewski, K. J. (2019). fMRIPrep: A robust preprocessing pipeline for functional MRI. Nature methods,16(1), 111-116. doi:10.1038/s41592-018-0235-4.

Belfi, A. M., Kasdan, A., Rowland, J., Vessel, E. A., Starr, G. G., & Poeppel, D. (2018). Rapid timing of musical aesthetic judgments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(10): 1531-1543. doi: 10.1037/xge0000474

Vessel, E.A., Maurer, N.M., Denker, A.H., Starr, G.G. (2018). Stronger shared taste for natural aesthetic domains than for artifacts of human culture. Cognition, 179, 121-131. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.06.009

Belfi, A. M., Vessel, E. A., & Starr, G. G. (2018). Individual ratings of vividness predict aesthetic appeal in poetry. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 12(3), 341-350. doi: 10.1037/aca0000153

Vessel, E.A., Biederman, I., Subramaniam, S., Greene, M.R. (2016). Effective signaling of surface boundaries by L-vertices reflect the consistency of their contrast in natural images. Journal of Vision, 16(9): 15, 1-10, doi: 10.1167/16.9.15

Vessel, E.A., Stahl, J., Maurer, N., Denker, A., Starr. G.G. (2014). Personalized visual aesthetics. Proc. SPIE 9014, Human Vision and Electronic Imaging XIX, 90140S, 1-8. doi: 10.1117/12.2043126

Vessel, E.A., Starr, G.G., Rubin, N. (2013). Art reaches within: aesthetic experience, the self and the default-mode network. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 7:258, doi: 10.3389/fnins.2013.00258

Vessel, E.A., Starr, G.G., Rubin, N. (2012). The brain on art: Intense aesthetic experience activates the default mode network. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6:66, doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2012.00066

Vessel, E.A., & Rubin, N. (2010). Beauty and the beholder: Highly individual taste for abstract, but not real-world images. Journal of Vision, 10(2): 18, 1-14, http://journalofvision.org/10/2/18, doi: 10.1167/10.2.18

Yue, X, Vessel, E.A., & Biederman, I. (2007). The neural basis of scene preferences. NeuroReport, 16(6), 525-529. doi: 10.1097/WNR.0b013e328091c1f9

Biederman, I. & Vessel, E.A. (2006). Perceptual pleasure and the brain. American Scientist, 94, 249- 255. doi: 10.1511/2006.59.247