Home > Events > MBB Cluster event: Neuroaesthetics, creativity, and the emotional-perceptual impact of art

MBB Cluster event: Neuroaesthetics, creativity, and the emotional-perceptual impact of art

Date
Mon, 3 Nov 2025 | 17:30 - 18:30
Location
Levett Room
Speakers
Associate Professor Amaia Salazar
Event Price
Free
Booking Required
Not required

Dr. Salazar explores the transformative power of art through the lens of neuroaesthetics, highlighting how creative practice shapes perception, emotion, and wellbeing. Drawing on both scientific research and her own experience as an artist and academic, she will discuss how aesthetic encounters engage the senses, the body, and the mind, producing distinctive perceptual and emotional responses. She will present examples from participatory projects and workshops, illustrating how active involvement in artistic creation can enhance sensory awareness, foster emotional insight, and support wellbeing. By combining artistic practice with neuroaesthetic perspectives, she emphasises that art is not merely decorative but a vital way of understanding human experience, revealing the dynamic interplay between creativity, perception, and emotion.

Biography:
Dr. Amaia Salazar is a visual artist, art researcher, and associate professor at the Faculty of Art and Communication, Francisco de Vitoria University (UFV), Madrid, Spain. She has conducted research at international institutions such as the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, where she was a Margarita Salas Postdoctoral Researcher and Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College. She has also been a visiting researcher at the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL), where she explored the links between art and cognitive neuroscience, and at New York University (NYU), where she complemented her research with insights from behavioural psychology. She is currently a visiting fellow (2025/26) at Warburg Institute, London, and Art Health Advisor from Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, at the Department of Neurophysiology, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford.
Her work lies at the intersection of art, science, and health, examining how artistic experiences can enhance understanding of cognitive and emotional processes. Specialising in embodied cognition and dream states, she employs artistic practice as a tool for research.