Art reception is a complex process influenced by many factors, both internal and external. A review of the literature shows that knowledge about the artist, including their mental health, has an impact on the general assessment of their artwork. The purpose of this research was to examine the relationship between knowledge about the artist’s mental illness and the perception of the artwork. We focused on the subjective emotional experience and general assessment of ten specific pictures painted by patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. The research followed four cohorts (two groups divided into two subgroups—art experts and laypeople) of students for over a month. The results revealed significant differences between the two general groups as well as between the ‘expert’ and ‘laypeople’ groups. The findings showed that non-aesthetic categories (e.g., knowledge about the mental illness of an artist) were related to artwork perception and support a holistic and dynamic approach to aesthetic emotions.

In recent years, in cognitive science (especially infl uenced by the concept of the embodied mind), have been emerging proposals to use phenomenology methods in the cognitive considerations, and overcome the so-called explanatory gap. Good examples of these proposals are neurophenomenology and front-loaded phenomenology, which have been briefl y characterized. Next, I will describe the biofeedback (BF) HRV mechanism, which according to the hypothesis, may be an eff ective tool supporting the above attempts to implement phenomenology for neurobiological research. To sum up aim of this article is: presenting the fi rst-person data problem in cognitive science; describeing the exemplary methods and role of phenomenology in empirical research, and proposeing BF HRV as an eff ective tool to achieve the psychophysiological state postulated by the above methods.

The paper is an analysis of the book written by Piotr Podlipniak presenting an original perspective on the origins of musical tonality. Using methods of the natural sciences, the author attempts to reconstruct the possible development of tonal music, pointing to the so-called Baldwin effect as an important factor. The review briefly describes the individual chapters and highlights the basic ideas contained in the book.Keywords: musicology; musical tonality; Baldwin effect; evolutionism; culture AbstraktTekst stanowi analizę książki autorstwa Piotra Podlipniaka zawierającej oryginalną koncepcję genezy tonalności muzycznej. Autor, posiłkując się metodami nauk przyrodniczych, rekonstruuje prawdopodobną genezę tonalności muzycznej, wskazując na tzw. efekt Baldwina jako istotny czynnik. W recenzji scharakteryzowano krótko poszczególne rozdziały książki oraz omówiono podstawowe idee.

The aim of this paper and poster is to discuss some of the problems occurring in attempts to visualize neurobiological mechanisms. According to the thesis, neurobiological, static schemas should not only depict the order of connections among individual neural structures accordingly, but they have also the potential to present more detailed information about relations within mechanisms, such as patterns of dynamic interactions, their intensity, arrangement and the size of specific components, etc. First I will introduce the problems of visualization in neuroscience, then I am going to discuss these problems with an example of the cortico-subcortical loops (C-SL) mechanism. Finally, I will show my solutions to some visualization problems and discuss the original schemas presented in the poster.

António Damásio jest jednym z najbardziej rozpoznawalnych neuronaukowców badających świadomość i emocje. Najnowsza książka portugalskiego badacza Odczuwanie i poznawanie. Jak powstają świadome umysły? stanowi obszerne podsumowanie jego dotychczasowych rozważań na temat roli odczuwania i emocji w kształtowaniu świadomego umysłu. Artykuł jest przeglądem oraz krytycznym omówieniem podstawowych tez i idei zawartych w publikacji. Przedstawiono strukturę książki wraz z syntetycznym omówieniem treści poszczególnych rozdziałów oraz krótką ocenę.