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      The art of pain: A quantitative color analysis of the self-portraits of Frida Kahlo

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          Abstract

          Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) was a Mexican artist who is remembered for her self-portraits, pain and passion, and bold, vibrant colors. This work aims to use her life story and her artistic production in a longitudinal study to examine with quantitative tools the effects of physical and emotional pain (rage) on artistic expression. Kahlo suffered from polio as a child, was involved in a bus accident as a teenager where she suffered multiple fractures of her spine and had 30 operations throughout her lifetime. She also had a tempestuous relationship with her painter husband, Diego Rivera. Her physical and personal troubles however became the texture of her vivid visual vocabulary—usually expressed through the depiction of Mexican and indigenous culture or the female experience and form. We applied color analysis to a series of Frida's self-portraits and revealed a very strong association of physical pain and emotional rage with low wavelength colors (red and yellow), indicating that the expression of her ailments was, consciously or not, achieved by increasing the perceived luminance of the canvas. Further quantitative analysis that used the fractal dimension identified “The broken column” as the portrait with higher compositional complexity, which matches previous critical acclaim of this portrait as the climax of her art. These results confirm the ability of color analysis to extract emotional and cognitive features from artistic work. We suggest that these tools could be used as markers to support artistic and creative interventions in mental health.

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          Most cited references38

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          Network analysis: an integrative approach to the structure of psychopathology.

          In network approaches to psychopathology, disorders result from the causal interplay between symptoms (e.g., worry → insomnia → fatigue), possibly involving feedback loops (e.g., a person may engage in substance abuse to forget the problems that arose due to substance abuse). The present review examines methodologies suited to identify such symptom networks and discusses network analysis techniques that may be used to extract clinically and scientifically useful information from such networks (e.g., which symptom is most central in a person's network). The authors also show how network analysis techniques may be used to construct simulation models that mimic symptom dynamics. Network approaches naturally explain the limited success of traditional research strategies, which are typically based on the idea that symptoms are manifestations of some common underlying factor, while offering promising methodological alternatives. In addition, these techniques may offer possibilities to guide and evaluate therapeutic interventions.
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            A neural mechanism for exacerbation of headache by light

            The perception of migraine headache, which is mediated by nociceptive signals transmitted from the cranial dura mater to the brain, is uniquely exacerbated by exposure to light. Here we show that exacerbation of migraine headache by light is prevalent among blind persons who maintain non-image-forming photoregulation in the face of massive rod/cone degeneration. Using single-unit recording and neural tract-tracing in the rat, we identified dura-sensitive neurons in the posterior thalamus, whose activity was distinctly modulated by light, and whose axons projected extensively across layers I through V of somatosensory, visual and associative cortices. The cell bodies and dendrites of such dura/light-sensitive neurons were apposed by axons originating from retinal ganglion cells, predominantly from intrinsically-photosensitive retinal ganglion cells – the principle conduit of non-image-forming photoregulation. We propose that photoregulation of migraine headache is exerted by a non-image-forming retinal pathway that modulates the activity of dura-sensitive thalamocortical neurons.
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              Color psychology: effects of perceiving color on psychological functioning in humans.

              Color is a ubiquitous perceptual stimulus that is often considered in terms of aesthetics. Here we review theoretical and empirical work that looks beyond color aesthetics to the link between color and psychological functioning in humans. We begin by setting a historical context for research in this area, particularly highlighting methodological issues that hampered earlier empirical work. We proceed to overview theoretical and methodological advances during the past decade and conduct a review of emerging empirical findings. Our empirical review focuses especially on color in achievement and affiliation/attraction contexts, but it also covers work on consumer behavior as well as food and beverage evaluation and consumption. The review clearly shows that color can carry important meaning and can have an important impact on people's affect, cognition, and behavior. The literature remains at a nascent stage of development, however, and we note that considerable work on boundary conditions, moderators, and real-world generalizability is needed before strong conceptual statements and recommendations for application are warranted. We provide suggestions for future research and conclude by emphasizing the broad promise of research in this area.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Front Hum Neurosci
                Front Hum Neurosci
                Front. Hum. Neurosci.
                Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
                Frontiers Media S.A.
                1662-5161
                02 September 2022
                2022
                : 16
                : 1000656
                Affiliations
                [1] 1Department of Neuroimaging, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London , London, United Kingdom
                [2] 2Department of Biomedical Engineering, King's College London , London, United Kingdom
                [3] 3Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London , London, United Kingdom
                [4] 4Department of Radiology, Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital , Charlestown, MA, United States
                [5] 5Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital , Boston, MA, United States
                Author notes

                Edited by: Laura Piccardi, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

                Reviewed by: Mile Matijević, University of Zagreb, Croatia; Woo Sik Yoo, WaferMasters, Inc., United States

                *Correspondence: Federico E. Turkheimer federico.turkheimer@ 123456kcl.ac.uk

                This article was submitted to Sensory Neuroscience, a section of the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

                Article
                10.3389/fnhum.2022.1000656
                9478482
                11c590b8-565f-40fc-902f-73db33ecb081
                Copyright © 2022 Turkheimer, Liu, Fagerholm, Dazzan, Loggia and Bettelheim.

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

                History
                : 22 July 2022
                : 17 August 2022
                Page count
                Figures: 6, Tables: 2, Equations: 0, References: 40, Pages: 10, Words: 6555
                Categories
                Human Neuroscience
                Original Research

                Neurosciences
                frida kahlo,art,painting,portrait,pain,anger,color analysis,perceptual lightness
                Neurosciences
                frida kahlo, art, painting, portrait, pain, anger, color analysis, perceptual lightness

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