Ricerc@Sapienza

Over time, the view that creativity is embodied has emerged. In order to explore if visual creativity is supported by embodied mechanisms, the simulation approach was used as a framework of reference. The idea that visual creativity relies on mental representations that implement motor processes was faced. Participants were instructed to think aloud while carrying out the Creative Mental Synthesis Task, which allows to form pre-inventive structures and interpret them according to a specific category.

Lacunae are the voids left by missing or damaged pieces of artwork, and their presence constitutes a central problem in the aesthetic experience of viewing artwork. However, we hypothesize that experience and knowledge of art might differentially modify viewer reactions to degraded artwork. Here, we investigated the implicit and explicit attitudes of art experts and non-experts towards the aesthetics of perfectly intact and lacunar artwork. Sections of Flemish oil paintings were displayed with or without a degradation mask, which mimics lacunae.

We combined virtual reality and multisensory bodily illusion with the aim to characterize and reduce the perceptual (body overestimation) and the cognitive-emotional (body dissatisfaction) components of body image distortion (BID) in anorexia nervosa (AN). For each participant (20 anorexics, 20 healthy controls) we built personalized avatars that reproduced their own body size, shape, and verisimilar increases and losses of their original weight. Body overestimation and dissatisfaction were measured by asking participants to choose the avatar that best resembled their real and ideal body.

Recent theories posit that physiological signals contribute to corporeal awareness - the basic feeling that one has a body (body ownership) which acts according to one's will (body agency) and occupies a specific position (body location). Combining physiological recordings with immersive virtual reality, we found that an ecological mapping of real respiratory patterns onto a virtual body illusorily changes corporeal awareness.

Although several outcome measures are used to assess various areas of interest regarding spinal cord injuries (SCIs), little is known about the frequency of their use, and the ways in which they transform shared knowledge into implemented practices. Herein, 800 professionals from the International Spinal Cord Society, especially trained for caring in patients with SCI, were invited to respond to an Internet survey collecting information on the use of standardized measures in daily clinical practices.

Embodying Tool Use: From Cognition to Neurorehabilitation

«Embodiment» is a term that highlights how our sense of the body is plastic and can be extended beyond the biological self to incorporate a salient tool. Theoretical bases are grounded in the widely discussed concepts of embodiment, tool use, and body representation. To support these claims, we will first explore highlight a pathway in the confusing scenario of the consequences of dynamic bodily representations. The primary interest is to explore the potentialities of embodiment, and to assess human experiences that can be directly measured concerning partial or complete bodily illusions.

After a flashback on the history of zoosemiotics, the paper focuses on the way the "embodied" paradigm of post 1980s cognitivism helped renew the debate on animal communication.

La semantica cognitiva di seconda generazione si sviluppa attorno alla nozione di embodiment. La tesi del radicamento delle strutture concet-tuali nella costituzione fisica dell’uomo denuncia i limiti delle teorie tradizionali che intendono il linguaggio come un dispositivo cognitivo autonomo, o che definiscono il significato come la relazione tra espres-sioni linguistiche e realtà. Questo lavoro intende fornire una lettura critica delle teorie dell’embodiment, a partire da due evidenze.

In the last decades, by virtue of the overcoming of the Saussurean vulgata, especially after the publication of the Ecrits de linguistique générale, the reflections on the double essence of the language has revealed the inadequacy of the dichotomies from which classical structuralism arose. In this new context, the couples nature/culture, langue/parole, synchrony/diachrony, syntagmatic/associative etc. appear as methodological premises or as antinomies which have to be understood in dialectical terms, so that they cannot be solved, but only pragmatically composed.