Synesthesia is a sensory phenomenon where certain domain-specific stimuli trigger additional sensations of e.g. color or texture. The condition occurs in about 4% of the general population, but is overrepresented in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), where it might also be associated with the presence of prodigious talents.Here we describe the case of a young transsexual man with Asperger Syndrome, synesthesia and a prodigious talent for foreign language acquisition. In our case, not only letters, numbers, spoken words, music, noises, weekdays and months lead to highly consistent, vivid color sensations but also his own and others’ emotions, geometric shapes, any mathematical symbol, and letters from an unfamiliar alphabet (Hebrew). These color associations seem to aid categorization, differentiation and storage of information and might thereby contribute to the young man’s language acquisition ability. We investigated the young man’s structural brain connectivity in comparison to adults with or without ASD, applying global fiber tracking to diffusion-weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) data. The case presented with increased connectivity, especially between regions involved in visual and emotion processing, memory, and higher order associative binding regions. An electroencephalography experiment investigating synesthetic color and shape sensations while listening to music showed a negligible occipital alpha suppression, indicating that these internally generated synesthetic sensations derive from a different brain mechanism than when processing external visual information.Taken together, this case study endorses the notion of a link between synesthesia, prodigious talent and autism, adding to the currently still sparse literature in this field. It provides new insights into the possible manifestations of synesthesia in individuals with ASD and its potential contribution to prodigious talents in people with an otherwise unexceptional cognitive profile. Additionally, this case impressively illustrates how synesthesia can be a key element not only of sensory perception but also social and emotional processing and contributes to existing evidence of increased brain connectivity in association with synesthesia. Synesthesia is a sensory condition where certain sensory stimuli lead to additional, internally generated (concurrent) sensations within the same or a different sensory modality. One of the most common synesthesia types is sequence-color synesthesia where linguistic sequences such as letters, numbers, or weekdays induce sensations of color , 2. FourThe prevalence of synesthesia has been estimated to be about 4% in the general population . While sInterestingly, synesthesia is more common in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) –26. ASD A link between synesthesia, ASD and prodigious talent was already proposed in 2007, by Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues who described the case of Daniel Tammet, a man with Asperger syndrome who also experiences synesthesia and possesses prodigious talents, similar to those commonly observed in people with “savant syndrome” . Daniel In the current study, we describe a young transsexual man, LP, diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, who came to our attention because he described multiple types of synesthesia very vividly when assessed for ASD. In contrast to previously described cases, he experiences visual synesthetic sensations  for a large proportion of his day-to-day sensory input , internal states (emotions), and even stimuli that are new to him (unknown symbols or letters). He further possesses an exceptional talent for learning new languages, which enabled him to learn to understand and speak Spanish in only a few days. Here, we describe LP’s synesthesia, his synesthetic consistency, his autistic symptoms and his cognitive profile. Further, we compared his structural brain connectivity to neurotypical  controls and adults with ASD diagnosis, using a hypothesis-free global tracking approach which has not been utilized to investigate synesthesia previously. Finally, we used EEG in order to examine his occipital alpha suppression response to music inducing synesthesia as a possible sign of low-level visual system involvement.LP was born in Northern Germany in 1998 as the younger of two children of a Russian mother and a German father. When he was in the first class of school, LP mentioned the colors that numbers induce in him to his mother – who was not surprised since she experienced colors for letters and numbers herself. LP grew up as biologically female. Already in preschool, he noticed that he was different from the other children and felt like belonging to neither sex. He had difficulties to make friends, to put himself into other’s shoes and to understand irony and metaphors. In school, LP did well in most subjects but suffered from being bullied by other children. Like many individuals with ASD who are  of female sex, he received his ASD diagnosis rather late, here at the age of 18. Around the same time, LP also decided to take the steps to change gender. He started taking male hormones in March 2017, changed his name shortly after and a mastectomy is planned. When coming to the follow-up analysis in September 2018 at the age of 20 years, LP had started studying physics and made friends. He also reported having found several new strategies, helping him to cope with situations that used to be difficult for him, including both sensory over-stimulation and social challenges.LP was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome in 2016 in a clinical department in northern Germany and his diagnosis was confirmed at the University Medical Center Freiburg in July 2017. There was no indication for other psychiatric or neurological conditions such as psychosis, depression, epilepsy or migraine nor delayed language acquisition. Consensus diagnosis was confirmed by a team of experts, following the recommendations of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence for Autism in Adults and the German S3-Criteria. LP completed the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-2 (ADOS-2), where he exceeded the cut-off for ASD in the communication subscale. However, he scored below the cut-off in the social interaction subscale and the combined score’s cut-off.LP’s mother completed the “Marburger Beurteilungsskala zum Asperger Syndrom” (MBAS) and the German version of the “Australian Scale for Asperger’s Syndrome” (ASAS)  in 2015 Spatial Sequence Synesthesia, where the elements of different sequences  form together a shape in space. For instance, his music playlist is like a landscape of hills and valleys – and when browsing through his playlist it feels for him like he is moving on this landscape in his mind.As long as he can remember, LP experiences colors for almost every kind of linguistic stimulus, including letters, numbers, and other symbols , weekdays and months. Further, he experiences color and often also shapes and textures for tastes, smells, all kinds of sound including music, his own feelings and emotions and other people’s characters and their emotions. He even experiences colors for stimuli that are completely new for him such as unfamiliar alphabets, unfamiliar  symbols or shapes. LP reported that the color of letters depends for him on both the visual shape and the sound/pronunciation. This becomes especially clear when comparing the colors of letters from different alphabets. For instance, in the Cyrillic alphabet, “H” is pronounced like the English/German “N” and LP sees it in light green, which is mix of his white German “H” and the green German “N”. For new written stimuli, the color is mostly related to the shape and can change slightly once he knows the symbol’s meaning or the letter’s pronunciation. For some stimuli, he also experiences a shape, consistency, or texture, which then is also associated with the color. For instance, the letter “R” for him is the only black letter “because it is the hardest one” and the letter “H” is white “because it is the softest letter”. Additionally, LP has several types of https://www.synestheste.org; see LP completed the online Synesthesia Battery  on his Spanish level, where he reached level C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. This is the fifth and next highest level  and is usually reached after several years of training. Further, besides German and Russian he also speaks English and Polish fluently, reported to be able to understand Latin, and speak French, Dutch, Swedish and Catalan at a basic level. LP reported to have learned Spanish in an inductive (bottom-up) fashion by extracting meaning from songs, texts and TV shows based on the sentence structure and already known words. Whenever gaining new knowledge this way, LP experiences a blue aura of euphoria, a sensation of a shiny blue with green reflections like the neck of a peacock. In contrast to most other languages, Spanish induced a strong blue aura in him, which was an important factor motivating him to learn this language.We interviewed LP about prodigious talents, giving him a list of examples of such talents as used in the study of Hughes et al. . We explLP’s general cognitive ability was assessed with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Adults, 4th version (WAIS-IV). LP scored exactly one standard deviation above the population mean in three sub-tests of the WAIS, namely Matrix Reasoning, Digit Span, Digit-Symbol Coding, which depend strongly on acoustic and visual working memory, concentration and abstract thinking. In the remaining sub-tests he scored within one standard deviation above or below the general population mean. In line with his relative strength in the digit span, LP mentioned that it is easy for him to learn lists of numbers and he learned more than 100 decimals of number pi on 1 day several years ago. When we asked him without warning to cite pi as far as he could remember, he could still correctly cite it until the 97th digit after the comma.http://www.nora-imaging.com/). All 61 spatial directions of the diffusion-weighted images were taken into account for the calculation of the diffusion tensor. After co-registration of the structural image onto the Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) image, the global tracking algorithm was applied to simulate the white matter fiber architecture with so-called stream tracks [MRI assessment was performed on a 3 T Siemens  PRISMA Magnetom equipped with a 64-channel head coil, including a high-resolution structural scan and a diffusion-weighted scan see . Image pm tracks . Based om tracks , a conneN = 39) and NT controls (N = 37), were assessed using identical imaging sequences and image processing procedures (see N = 23), LP had stronger connectivity between parietal regions  to pre- and postcentral gyrus and between precuneus and angular gyrus. Figure Two control groups, ASD patients , low-pass filtered at 100 Hz and stored with a sampling rate of 500 Hz. Eyes were opened (Eyes open condition) and closed (Eyes closed condition) for 30s each, timed by a stimulation program, with five repetitions . Afterwards, LP listened to self-selected music with closed eyes for 5 min (Music condition). Effects of horizontal and vertical eye movements on the EEG were corrected using Independent Component Analysis (ICA). Spectral analysis was performed on artifact-free segments of 1024 data points , logarithmized and averaged.p = 0.002). The incomplete alpha suppression may indicate drowsiness. Alpha power during the Music condition was practically indistinguishable from the Eyes closed condition  in the eyes open condition . On the other hand, LP also performed in the higher normative range on standard memory tests in the current study, without any exceptional cognitive peaks, suggesting that his memory advantage might be either rather subtle or restricted to specific tasks like learning languages.Since almost all kinds linguistic  and sensory  stimuli lead to vivid visual sensations of color and shape or texture for LP, his everyday perception is strongly enriched and dominated by synesthetic sensations – a private world which he strongly enjoys. This mapping of external input to his personal color system might thereby enable a more organized categorization of sensory input, which has been suggested to contribute to the development of prodigious talents , 34, 36.stronger ROI-to-ROI connections than 89% of the NT sample and 78% of the ASD sample. However, a few participants from the control samples had even more extreme (strong or weak) connections than LP. Many of the connections that were found to be unusually strong in LP in comparison to both control groups and the ASD group alone, were those of brain regions involved in lower-level vision, including both lower-level  and higher level  visual areas. In LP, we also observed increased connectivity of the right hippocampus, a core region for memory encoding and retrieval. Treffert [LP had Treffert  argues tTreffert .LP also showed increased brain connectivity of the insula, where altered gray matter structure has been reported in projector synesthetes in comparison to controls . He alsoTaken together, some of LP’s connectivity alterations correspond to regions that have previously been indicated in synesthesia and might hence be part of the mechanism underlying LP’s synesthetic perception while other regions, such as the hippocampus, might be involved in LP’s language talent.In the EEG experiment, LP showed practically the same mean occipital alpha amplitude for both, the Eyes closed and the Music condition. We can conclude that LP’s synesthetic visual experience happens without concomitant occipital alpha reduction in the eyes-closed state, indicating that LP’s synesthetic visual experience in response to music is not based on the same brain mechanisms as processing external visual stimuli. In contrast, a previous study found reduced stimulus-related parieto-occipital alpha-suppression in response to synesthesia inducing letters in projector synesthetes as compared to both associators and non-synesthetes . Howeverp-value) of multiple comparisons could be applied. Hence, little can be concluded regarding the reliability and generalizability of the reported results. Although we had both, an NT and an autistic control group in the DTI assessment, we have no possibility to decipher alterations in brain connectivity related to LP’s synesthesia, his prodigious talent, or other individual differences. Since we did not assess LP’s functional brain connectivity during synesthetic processing or language acquisition, we also have no direct evidence that the observed structural connectivity findings were indeed related to synesthesia or memory functions. Moreover, we did not assess any control group in the EEG experiment and hence we can only conclude that LP’s alpha suppression with closed eyes was not significantly modulated by his synesthetic response to music, but not that his alpha suppression was within the range of neurotypical alpha suppression. Finally, while we did test LP’s Spanish level with an objective test, we had no possibility to measure the amount of practice LP needed to reach this level and hence our conclusion that LP learned this language unusually fast is solely based on his own report.In this case study, we present a case with Asperger syndrome and an unusually rich presentation of synesthesia, which we describe in detail based on the patient’s (LP) report. We further assessed all types of synesthesia where this was possible with an objective test, confirming that they were highly consistent and hence genuine. We also present a detailed summary of the patient’s symptoms and cognitive profile. Further, we investigated his structural brain connectivity in comparison to several control groups, using a hypothesis-free approach. However, the generalizability of findings in single cases is naturally limited. In order to identify distinctive structural connectivity patterns in LP, we screened for z-values of LP that exceeded 3 or − 3. Unfortunately, a case study does not allow any further statistical tests to calculate the probability of such extreme test results, given that the null hypothesis is correct (no difference between groups). Accordingly, no procedures for the correction (of the We present a unique case with a remarkable rich synesthesia phenotype, Asperger Syndrome and an exceptional strength in language learning. In order to get an unbiased picture of this case’s structural brain connectivity in comparison to other individuals with ASD and NT controls, we used global tracking approach. Our case’s brain imaging results correspond to previous reports of increased brain connectivity in synesthetes, especially in parietal brain regions. Further, the case LP shows that despite an otherwise unexceptional cognitive profile, synesthesia may foster specific talents – such as the effortless, intuitive and inductive acquisition of new languages. Additionally, the case of LP impressively demonstrates how synesthesia can be a key element for emotional experience, perception and ‘being-in-the-world’.Additional file 1.


In order to meet the demand for high-quality fruit and vegetable (F&V) products, a wide variety of novel non-thermal processing (NTP) technologies are under development. This study used a qualitative focus group approach to investigate consumers’ perception and attitudes towards non-thermally processed F&V products among young (18–30 years old) and middle-aged (45–60 y.o.) consumers across six European countries: Denmark, Germany, Italy, Serbia, Spain, and the Netherlands. Findings show that the expected benefits and social concerns are important factors which affect consumers’ attitudes toward non-thermally processed F&V. Extending shelf-life, being healthier and more nutritious, and better hygiene and safety were important benefits, whilst impacts on product quality, safety risks, higher price and environmental costs were the concerns most often mentioned by participants. However, due to a lack of knowledge and trustworthy information sources, consumers have difficulties in assessing relevant benefits and risks. Targeted communication that could explicitly and efficiently reveal benefits and risks is highly recommended to enhance consumer awareness and trust. This may especially be needed to reach middle-aged consumers who showed less confidence in NTP, compared to young consumers. Consumers from Spain, Denmark, and the Netherlands appeared more interested in consuming NTP F&V, compared to Italy, Serbia, and Germany. These findings are expected to provide recommendations to better communicate non-thermally processed F&V with consumers in the EU. Fruit and vegetables (F&V) are critical elements of a healthy diet supplying essential nutrients to humans . The incFood processing technologies are improved on a continuous basis. Currently, a wide variety of non-thermal processing technologies (NTP) are under development ,4. DurinWhile scientists may applaud the progress of food technologies, consumers are known to have more conservative attitudes towards food processing . ConsumeA number of factors are known to influence consumers’ perceptions of food technologies. For instance, consumers’ perceived benefits and risks were found to affect consumers’ attitudes towards new food technologies ,14,15. CNevertheless, from a consumer policy standpoint, consumer-oriented communication is important to enhance social awareness and trust in products processed with novel technologies . InteresIn light of the growing interest in mild processing for shelf-life extension and food waste reduction, this study aims to better understand consumers’ perception and attitudes towards non-thermally processed F&V, drawing on data from six European countries: Denmark, Germany, Italy, Serbia, Spain, and the Netherlands. Moreover, consumers’ perceptions towards the potential effects of interactive NTP on household F&V waste reduction were also investigated. Findings from this study are expected to provide recommendations to better communicate non-thermally processed F&V with consumers in the EU.In total, 12 focus groups were conducted in six European countries with 94 participants. In order to obtain a pan-European outlook of consumers’ perception and attitudes, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Serbia, Spain, and the Netherlands were chosen for this research. In each country, two age groups were addressed: young-age  and middle-aged  population. These two groups were selected as target groups due to their known differences in purchasing power and attitudes towards novel food products and technologies ,20. BesiAll the focus groups (FGs) were conducted between November 2019 and February 2020. The same protocol was followed throughout the discussion to ensure consistency across all six countries . FGs werBefore the FG discussion, participants received and signed an informed consent form describing the aim of the project and the use of the data, as well as a short questionnaire designed to collect their basic demographic information. The moderator started the group discussion with a brief introduction to the overall project and the procedure of the ensuing discussion. Then, the participants introduced themselves. Afterwards, the moderator followed the group interview protocol  to discuNTP use mild temperatures and limited amounts of physical processing aids to increase shelf-life and keep the nutrients, freshness and sensory attributes of F&V products for longer time.” Afterwards, participants’ perceptions and attitudes towards NTP were further collected.Participants’ perceptions towards NTP (theme 2) were discussed in three stages. Firstly, the moderator asked participants if they knew any F&V processing technologies and whether they’ve heard about NTP before. Then the moderator introduced the NTP concept briefly as follows: “In the second stage, more detailed explanations of some representative NTP were presented to consumers, supported by PowerPoint slides. The moderator summarized the NTP into categories of sanitization, preservation, stabilization, and extraction and gave examples for each category: ultrasounds, electrolyzed water, plasma-activated water, blue light, and UV light for sanitization; bioactive coating, active and intelligent packaging for preservation; ultrasounds and high-pressure processing for stabilization; ultrasounds, pulsed electric field, and membrane filtration for extraction of bioactive compounds in F&V. In-depth discussions about participants’ perceptions towards NTP were followed, focusing on expected benefits and concerns regarding the NTP. The underlying reasons which caused the above concerns and expectations were explored at the end of stage 2.The last stage focused on participants’ willingness to purchase non-thermally processed F&V and their expected communication approaches of the processing information provided by different sources.Recordings of the FG discussion from the six countries were translated and transcribed into English text. NVivo 12  was used to code the transcriptions based on the standard content analysis procedures ,22,23,24In accordance with the focus group themes  the resuIn The factors can be summarized into three major categories: (1) internal product features, such as sensory quality (31%), seasonality (13%), origin (12%), naturalness (10%) and nutritional value (8%); (2) external product features; and (3) personal habits and individual needs of consumers.With regards to sensory quality, participants paid most attention to product appearance and taste. Accordingly, product appearance was mentioned as the first cue for freshness for participants. Moreover, participants reported that they sometimes tried to smell and touch the products to tell their freshness. Local products or products originating from areas with a good reputation and in the right season(s) were preferred. Participants generally thought local and seasonal products had a more natural taste and were more environmental-friendly. Many participants expressed a specific preference towards organic products and concerns over whether the products contain additives and preservatives. Compared to fresh produce, some participants tried to avoid purchasing F&V derived juices and smoothies due to the sugar and additive content in some industrial products, and instead preferred to make their own juices and smoothies. Some participants from Denmark mentioned a specific preference for products with the green-keyhole label , which iThere were some interesting discussions about the correlation between high quality and a beautiful appearance. While some participants believed that a good appearance is an important indicator of freshness, others declared that they were less willing to buy products which look “too perfect”, because they believed that too beautiful products were less natural and therefore may not taste good, as illustrated by the following quotes:“The inconsistency of apple size is more appealing to me. When I went to Korea, every apple was exactly the same size and that is too perfect.”“Things that are too beautiful always hide some imperfections.”Price (9%) was the most frequently mentioned external product feature, followed by others including brand, package type , and the Fairtrade label . Participants from Denmark and Germany seemed more willing to purchase products with fair-trade certifications.Because of differences in income and individual concerns, price was used differently as a quality cue by consumers. Some perceived products offered at particularly low prices to be of poor quality, whereas other participants preferred lower-priced products if there are no discernible differences in quality, compared to the more expensive ones, as the following quotes illustrate:“The low-priced juices are full of preservatives.”“A medium quality product must have an adequate price because no one gives you anything good for free. If there is a good relationship between price, quality, origin and authenticity, even if it is not branded, the product is acceptable for me.”.“I will take the cheaper one first, unless the other one has something recognizable at first glance, it has the organic label on it, or something like this. Otherwise I don’t have the patience to compare.”“As a student, I just prefer products that are cheaper.”Participants’ personal habits (10%) played an important role in their F&V choices as well. Some participants preferred more convenient products, e.g., vegetables in cans, due to lack of time or interest in cooking, and paid less attention to nutrients damage or taste. Moreover, individual shopping frequency and plans determined choices of the package size and ripeness status of F&V, etc.:“As for vegetables, we consume a lot of canned ones. It is more convenient than cooking the vegetables every day. You go down to the supermarket and buy several jars, and you can preserve them better.”The discussion of theme 2 was conducted in three stages . The firAt the first discussion stage, participants reported a lack of knowledge regarding the processing of F&V products in general. Most of them showed concern about what happens during cultivation, with frequent mention of pesticides. With respect to the post-harvest processing, participants thought that some F&V products were processed in order to extend the shelf-life and enhance the quality, but save for a few exceptions  participants did not have much specific knowledge. With respect to the concept of non-thermal processing technologies (NTP), almost all participants had never heard of it, with both quotes and their facial expressions confirming a complete lack of knowledge.At the second stage, after being introduced by the moderators to some of the most representative NTP, a few of the participants declared that they were familiar with the concepts of some technologies, for instance, blue light and ultrasound, but not in the context of food processing.Moreover, participants were found to have various perceptions towards different NTP types after the introduction of representative NTP technologies. Some participants found some of the NTP techniques were relatively easier to understand and more acceptable, for instance, light-based technologies and active packaging.“Washing is the least bad … coating is the worst for me, you literally put it in your mouth so I wonder how good it could be.”Some participants felt hesitant, or even outright objected, to purchase non-thermally processed F&V. The pie chart in Participants’ concerns regarding damages to the sensory quality of products were most frequently stated (23%). Accordingly, they stated that they would be more open to consuming non-thermally processed products if compared to conventional processing technologies, NTP did not cause loss of taste and aroma while maintaining the nutritious value and naturalness as close to the original (non-processed) products as possible:“The taste is very important. I have lived in South America and the bananas there are tastier. While they have to come all the way from there to our supermarkets, you need this kind of technology.”“Everyone’s producing them now not to have taste and smell, but to look pretty. I don’t want to look at it, I want to eat it.”Regarding safety and health-related concerns, even though some of the participants acknowledged that compared to conventional technologies, NTP could reduce the use of chemical additives and preservatives in the final products, they were worried that it may introduce other harmful compounds into the products:“I think it’s important to say that these procedures assure me that I won’t get any kind of disease or any kind of bacteria by ingesting them.”“How can that affect my health?”“…look not only at profit but also at the good of the consumer, if you do not think that the product is intended for use by consumers, it could be dangerous to health.”Moreover, some participants stated that if non-thermally processed F&V products were much more expensive than conventional processed or non-processed products, they would be less interested in them:“If it cleans 99% of the bacteria instead of 90%, then I don’t know if it’s worth for me to pay 10 or 20 cents more.”Participants were concerned about energy costs and environmental impacts of NTP, for instance, whether the amount of water needed in the mild washing techniques would be higher than that of conventional washing. Interestingly, quite a few participants declared that they prefer to buy loose F&V than products with plastic packaging to reduce the environmental pollution that plastics can create, as exemplified by the following quotes:“The recyclability of the packaging matters as well.”“Maybe (novel) water washing leads to the use of larger amount of water, but with the use of lights you can use less water and therefore improve the fight against waste from this point of view.”Moreover, a few participants associated extended shelf-life with loss of naturalness and nutrients and wondered whether too many chemical preservatives or too much treatment had been applied:“It’s not normal that something that should last for 2–3 weeks actually lasts 2 months.”“…with the aim of preserving its freshness to make it more durable over time, but compromising its nutritional characteristics and taste is not natural.”However, as illustrated in “When it comes to shelf-life, we may have less food wasted, I think it’s an important item.”“There are definitely benefits with the processing technologies. You do it for a reason. You do it to get rid of bacteria and germs to extend the shelf-life… you throw out less food and be able to ship it further over longer distance.”Participants expected non-thermally processed F&Vs could be healthier and more nutritious (17%) than conventionally processed or non-processed products, due to the reduction of chemical preservatives and better maintenance of natural nutrients. Moreover, it was expected that non-thermally processed F&V could be more hygienic and therefore be safer to consume (17%), compared to non-processed F&V:“Perhaps the preserving of nutrients.”“When I hear the word ‘mild’, I’m assuming it’ll use much less chemicals … and other additives.”“These technologies give me an idea of disinfected, clean food, probably without microbes.”Some participants expected that NTP could be better in the protection of products’ sensory quality (13%) and be more environmental-friendly (13%), comparing with conventional processing. A few participants regarded NTP as less invasive and more natural technologies in general:“If they are able to enhance its taste and texture and everything, then that is exciting.”“We even buy those products that are “heavily processed” already, as opposed, if it is processed by some mild version, I would probably prefer it.”At the end of stage 2, after thorough discussions of the factors which influenced participants’ perception of NTP and non-thermally processed F&V, the underlying reasons which caused the above concerns and expectations were explored. Some participants declared that their lack of knowledge and awareness due to the lack of complete and trustworthy information sources made them feel less confident in NTP and non-thermally processed products:“I am confused about what I don’t know.”“I don’t feel I have the knowledge to choose. I don’t know how to.”“Knowing about technologies, a person is more confident about what to buy.”Participants could roughly be divided into four groups based on their various perceptions and interests towards NTP stated at the second stage of theme 2. The “accepting” group consisted of participants who were interested in NTP and willing to purchase non-thermally processed F&V with some prerequisites, such as that they caused no changes to the product property or added no chemicals into the products. They regarded NTP as a sign of scientific and technical progress that could improve F&V quality and reduce food waste in general:“It is ok as it is more natural and has no addition of the chemicals and stuff, like the washing and lights.”“I just think the science is very cool.”The “neutral” group had limited interest in knowing NTP but were willing to purchase the treated products as long as the processing technology had been thoroughly tested and the quality of products was good and certified by trustworthy sources:“I honestly don’t mind processing. Just give me good, nice tasting apples, even if they’ve been really processed.”“It depends on how it really affects the product, if it is just to preserve it or if it can change some properties of the products, etc.”The “rejecting” group had neither interest nor trust in NTP and were not willing to purchase F&V treated by NTP or any kind of processing technology. They regarded NTP as a marketing ploy and preferred non-processed, natural products.“The more a product is closer to the original status, without any processing, the better.”Finally, there were some participants who belonged to the “mixed feeling” group since they raised both concerns and expected benefits towards NTP.Additionally, regional differences within the EU, as well as differences between demographics, were identified . OverallSome gender differences were found in individual countries and specific benefits and concerns. Females from Spain and Serbia expressed fewer concerns towards NTP, whilst females from Denmark, the Netherlands, and Italy had more concerns, compared to males. Female participants were more interested in “better hygiene and safety” (22%) and “more natural” (17%), compared to male participants . Male participants expected “extension of shelf-life” (33%) the most and showed more concerns to the price (24%) and loss in sensory aspects (24%), compared to female participants .With respect to differences across countries , partici“Suspicious. What is the actual process like? Will that affect my health and how?”“I think they are mostly focused on having it look pretty.”“I just think the science is very cool. It was washed with this water technology and then we put it through some blue light. Then we have smart vegetables … wow, this is science!”“I don’t know if it  is important knowledge for me and I think I would rather trust the government. Living in Denmark, if the producers are allowed to produce and sell it, I would trust that I can just buy it without any risk.”At the third stage of theme 2, participants’ expectations towards communication of the processing information were discussed. Most statements focused on the type of language, the sources of information, the focuses of information, the communication channels, and the need for labels showing endorsement or certification.Some participants hoped to better understand NTP by themselves and expect that packaging and social media could explicitly reveal the information in an efficient way, using language that average consumers can easily understand. On the contrary, other participants would rather let the experts and researchers decide what is the good and safe processing method and trust the products with relevant certifications in the market. They expected that the information sources could be trustworthy, monitored by relevant authorities, confirmed by experts, and in compliance with rules and regulations. Furthermore, many participants consequently stated that if the effects of NTP on both the products and human health have been thoroughly studied and NTP have been widely used in the F&V industry, they would feel more confident in consuming non-thermally processed F&V in their daily life:“I would be 90% sure if it has a certification.”“I would definitely not trust it if the benefits information was from the producer’s side. They have an interest in selling more apples. So it would need to come from, for instance, an external source for it to be credible enough.”“I am not an expert. I can believe that mild processing is useful, but there must be a predisposed institute to confirm that it is a positive process.”“If it is a widely used thing, then I would feel safer.”Some participants declared they lacked time or interest to go in-depth by themselves, thus, they expected that product labels could just include a certification logo or a few words to directly highlight the benefits and advantages of non-thermally processed products compared to conventional or non-processed products. Participants also suggested that a QR code could be put on the label so that consumers who want to learn more about the processing details could just scan and explore by themselves. Some participants mentioned that except for using labels, signs, and packages to convey the information, short videos shown on in-store displays could also be an optional channel to explain NTP to consumers. Furthermore, a few participants mentioned that supermarkets could have tasting corners for consumers to taste non-thermally processed F&V, with staff to introduce relevant information to consumers, which they believed could help consumers both understand NTP and be less skeptical if the taste is good:“If put the information on a package or a product, I would not read it … maybe put it somewhere else, a website or a QR code. If someone really wants to know and wants to go deeper, they can have that information.”“I wouldn’t give it too much thought on how it was processed.”In general, for fresh fruit and vegetable produces, participants paid attention to the information of product origin, date of packaging, recyclability of the package, and the presence of relevant certifications, e.g., organic labeling. Regarding F&V-derived juices and smoothies, participants gave priority to the ingredients of the products, especially the presence of additives and the sugar content, followed by the nutrient table, dates of packaging and expiration, storage instructions, recyclability of the package, and the presence of certifications. Participants who were allergic to some food compounds usually checked the allergens information.In addition to the conventional information on the package, some participants mentioned that they would like to have information sources on the entire product value chain, from its production until it reached consumers’ hands. Some participants showed interest in knowing a detailed description of the origin of the product, and the duration from its production until it was put on the shelf. Moreover, participants who were especially interested in sustainability issues would like to know the carbon footprint of the product during the planting and processing, compared to the average carbon footprint of similar products. Most participants expected easy access to such kind of information through scanning QR codes, e.g.:“I looked at the organic jam and one of them had a small QR code on it, which you can scan easily. You’ll see a map there. My jam came from the farmer Müller and therefore it costs 2–3 euros more. And I was so interested and decided to buy it immediately … I have my mobile phone in my hand anyway … I’m more involved and I found the website was very clear and well presented, much easier than looking on the long labels on the back of the package.”Generally, participants did not have any formal knowledge regarding storage; rather, most stated that they followed the storage ways of their parents or simply replicate the same storage conditions as the supermarkets or grocery shops from where they bought the products. For fresh products, only a few participants declared that they used to check the storage instruction from the label or searched online to confirm whether they chose the best storage methods. Accordingly, the participants’ behavior in terms of F&V storing was not always compliant with recommendations: for instance, some participants stored potatoes and onions inside the fridge.Participants declared that only a limited quantity of F&V was thrown away, in general. Participants discarded different kinds of F&V, mainly due to the sensory decays of the F&V. Sometimes, they made mistakes in shopping plans and bought more amount than needed, or just forgot what they have at home beforehand. Some participants, most notably YA who lived alone, complained about the package size of some F&V being too big for their consumption needs, but they had no choices of smaller packages or loose ones.Many participants reported increased awareness of the societal costs of F&V waste and had made some active efforts to reduce it, for example by making better shopping plans. Some used the extra amount to bake cakes, make jams and soups, or simply freeze some kinds of F&V to make smoothies or for other use in the future. Some participants mentioned that they used some apps or websites to make recipes for their leftover F&V at home.“I think the perception or the knowledge and consciousness about food waste has increased. If I see myself ten years ago or just five years ago, I threw out foods without thinking … But now with this focus on food waste, I feel much more guilty when I throw out foods.”Participants had suggestions for the industry as well. Better possibilities for purchasing loose products and/or smaller packages were expected. Supermarkets could lower the price of less fresh F&V. Producers could also suggest some recipes for their F&V in different ripeness status, by printing in their package or hiding in some QR codes.Interactive packaging with freshness indicator attracted interest from some participants, especially for the packaging of products whose ripeness is hard to tell by touching and/or looking. They saw the advantages from the convenience, food sanitation, and waste reduction point of view, e.g.,“Melon, pineapple, avocado … in products that are more complicated to know if they are ripe or not at first sight. If you have to touch them, I think it’s better to put the indicator.”To meet consumers’ demand for safe F&V products of high quality, a wide variety of non-thermal processing technologies are under development ,4. In thLack of knowledge among the participants was one of the major impediments to their acceptance. Participants were found to largely rely on affect heuristic and trust heuristic when building their perceptions towards NTP . When asConsumer-oriented sufficient communication and early involvement of target consumers could contribute to a higher level of social trust in NTP and the likelihood of market success .To counteract the effect of concerns about NTP on consumers’ food choice, consumer communication and education from technology development till product launch are highly recommended .Our results revealed many factors that may affect the success of consumer communication with regard to NTP and influences caused by NTP, including trust in the information source, content and focus of the information, message development in terms of language and style, and communication channels.Information sourceIf consumers do not trust the information source, the benefits may not be convincing. Consumers expect that information sources should be trustworthy, monitored by relevant authorities, confirmed by experts from third parties, and in compliance with rules and regulations. This finding fits with research by Siegrist , who repInformation contentParticipants showed that they were hesitant to accept novel NTP mainly because they were not aware of any potential safety or health risks and clear benefits, due to lack of information. They expected that the public could be informed about the proven safety and benefits of NTP in a sufficient way, based on which they could be more likely to accept a novel food technology. This finding is in line with previous research reporting that tangible benefits based on consumer needs and expectations could reduce misunderstanding and positively affect consumers’ perceptions and purchase willingness ,28.For the development of communication messages, it is recommended to focus on the most important perceived benefits of NTP included enhanced quality and safety, extension of shelf-life, lower environmental impacts, and maintenance of naturalness and nutrients. These findings are also in line with previous studies ,29,30,31The extension of shelf-life is one of the major goals as well as benefits of NTP, which could potentially contribute to the reduction of F&V waste. Even though this benefit was expected by most participants in this study, some participants associated longer shelf-life with the addition of preservatives and loss of taste and naturalness. This finding should be of concern to marketers regarding the communication of benefits related to shelf-life.Language styleCompanies should not assume that consumers may view specific technical terms the same way as they do . In the With regards to communication of non-thermally processed products, it should be of concern to marketers of non-thermally processed F&V that the phrase “non-thermal processing technologies” and “minimal processing” may have negative utility for some consumers. Indeed, NTP may only be regarded as a benefit by food technologists and nutritionists who are aware of the negative effects of thermal processing on food sensory quality and nutritional value ,26. By cCommunication channelsA variety of communication channels, such as product packages, in-store displays, leaflets, manufacturers’ websites or other forms of social media, were mentioned by participants of the study and could be adopted by marketers. Participants suggested that a barcode could be put on the label so that consumers who want to learn more about the processing details could just scan and explore by themselves. Short videos  could be displayed in-store to explain NTP to consumers. In addition, participants showed specific interest in product tasting, which is shown to reduce the hesitance of consumers to trial purchase products processed by new technologies ,28.Communication targeted at different consumersSpecific communication messages are recommended to reach targeted consumers of different socio-demographic backgrounds. The study suggests that different age groups may have different perceptions towards non-thermally processed F&V. Specifically, the middle-aged groups had relatively more concerns about the application of NTP, compared with the young participants. Although this cannot be inferred conclusively from a qualitative study, this finding is consistent with previous studies ,20 whichMoreover, cross-cultural variation was observed in participants’ views across the six European countries. It seemed that participants from Spain, Denmark, and the Netherlands were more interested in NTP and more open to learning how it works, compared to Italy, Serbia, and Germany. This might partly depend on the food culture and the status of food safety in different countries ,32,33,34Besides information on NTP specifically, information associated with product quality and environmental impacts caught the most attention, including product origin, date of packaging and expiration, presence of certifications, ingredients and nutrients table (for F&V derived products), storage instructions, and recyclability of the package.In addition to the conventional traceability information , participants who were especially interested in sustainable development wished to know more environmental information  of F&V products. The literature suggests that the perceived environmental friendliness, inferable from traceability information, enhanced the perceived quality of food products , and ourHowever, it should be noted that sustainability labeling, at present, may still not play a significant role in the majority of consumers’ food choices. Moreover, due to social desirability bias, the extent to which consumers’ general concern about food sustainability can be turned into actual behavior is unknown ,40. FurtProviding information on storage and cooking instructions was found to be potentially beneficial to F&V waste reduction through influencing consumers’ household behaviors. Our results showed that participants’ knowledge of F&V storage was not always optimal. Storage as well as cooking instructions, e.g., usage of F&V in different ripeness levels, could be inspiring to consumers.Consumers’ role within the issue of food waste is especially crucial, as recently emphasized by the new “Farm to Fork” strategy of the EU Commission . Food suIt could be interesting to further explore the effects of interactive NTP  on household F&V waste reduction. Participants saw the benefits of freshness-indicator with respect to convenience, food safety, and waste reduction aspects, especially for products for which it is difficult to tell ripeness from appearance. However, it was reported that freshness indicators and other similar intelligent devices might push consumers to purchase only newly displayed foodstuffs and increase the number of unsold items ,46. The This study explored factors that influenced consumers’ perceptions and purchase willingness of non-thermally processed F&V products, in six European countries: Denmark, Italy, Serbia, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands. Lack of basic knowledge and trust among consumers was identified as the major potential impediment to their acceptance of non-thermally processed F&V products. Consumers have difficulties in assessing relevant benefits and risks, which engenders concerns and impedes the establishment of social trust. These findings suggest that an increase in public interest in novel NTP and non-thermally processed F&V products may be a long-term process. Consumer-oriented communication and education are necessary to enhance social awareness and trust. Information that incorporates benefits for the consumers could affect consumers’ purchase willingness positively, especially when the information is concise and from trusted sources and the benefits are directly related to product quality and safety. Furthermore, consumers had a higher willingness in consuming F&V processed by more environmentally-friendly technologies which could save energy and provide benefits in terms of F&V waste reduction.


In reading, we identify aisthesis in how prereflective judgments punctuate the flow of engagement with written documents. While the study of reading often begins with “texts,” we start with how written artifacts are put to use. We use cognitive ethnography to trace reading to how fine multiscalar coordination enables readers to engage with written artifacts such as books. Our ethnography of reading provides descriptions of how readers use sensorimotor activity to integrate understanding with saccading and actual or imagined vocalization in ways that show how reading connects sensorimotor schemata with highly skilled use of written artifacts. By pursuing the power of rapid multiscalar dynamics, we complement views of reading as slow-scale subjective experience. Rather than focus on interaction between a reader and an imagined author, we turn to coordinating with an affordance-rich environment. Human prereflective judgments demonstrably use collective experience with written signs. In fine-grained analysis of authentic data, we therefore track kinesthetic experience to how a child’s vocalizations beget understanding and, at once, imagining. These observations show how engagement brings life to written signs by connecting other peoples’ pasts with the use of gaze, gesture, voice, and touch. While describing saccades and bursts of vocalizing, we reach beyond analogies with interaction and, in so doing, the multiscalar approach takes enactive-ecological work beyond the slow interactional and social scales or reported experience. Imagining arises as readers use multiscalar happenings to bind the anticipated, the seen, and collective aspects of experience.We trace reading to an embodied synthetic process that drives the rapid scales of imagining. As sensorimotor engagement with written artifacts permeates experience, it sharpens the sensibility that brings forth understanding. We thus trace material engagement with written artifacts to fine control over saccadic eye movements and voicing that draws on humans or what the Greeks knew as  As via language, inscriptions, and other tools that are results of human material engagement. Material engagement is thus an embodied condition for the establishment of human culture  that are traced to multiple sensibilities as well as to functional sociocultural values and norms. Following Dehaene, such a multitemporal scope is necessary, as reading draws on an ontogenetic history that rewires the brain and, as we suggest, uses a primate history of engaging with artifacts. Our argument is based on an evolutionary model of human material culture that helps us understand the enigma that when we read highly sophisticated and human-made marks on paper and screens, we use “a primate brain originally designed for life in the African savanna” , p. 4. T culture .how reading allows for imagination (or imaginings) and understanding without making appeal to classical functionalism. Even neuroscience reaches bedrock in the attempt to explain how understanding emerges because it lacks an account of how experience and cultural norms and values impact here-and-now sensations and the local judgment that enables synthesis and opens up imagination. Further, a reader also draws on experience that cannot be described from a standard linguistic meaning-making perspective. By that, we mean that a reader has lived experience, which matters for continuous judgments of the written page. The reader’s skilled eyes and body “give life to what would otherwise remain a dead letter” and thus involves something very different from decoding letter–sound correspondences. Different from nonprimate material engagement, such as nut-cracking behavior, reading is not just functional and hedonic. Rather, we argue that it involves overall human sensibility, a set of ever more refined prereflective abilities that Even though radical embodied cognitive research is opening the domain of what happens during reading, approaches continue to lack an account of appreciate certain perceptions from a history with storytelling and reading that involves more than just functional judgments. While we do not know how or when nonfunctional and nonhedonic judgments arose, There are almost no human societies that do not practice some form of drawing or engraving, be it on rock, mud or the human body. These forms were already amazingly well mastered by our ancestors in the upper Paleolithic age” : it was a reflective judgment or felt reaction see, . Felt reormation  that resormation . While tTalking draws on pico-dynamics that draw on experience, expectations, and ways of orienting to a situation (and artifacts). We claim not only that reading is a mode of action but that it also draws on aesthetic judgments that integrate histories that draw on many temporal scales. Where rendered aloud, these are enacted in vocal modulations (or prosody) that are part of flow, shape, and felt reactions. These are the hallmark of aisthesis, which, while having a “subjective” aspect, is too subtle for first-person description because the judgments are too culturally complex and far too fast to be conceptualized in real time. This view is important for the current debate of agency within ecological psychology and enactivism. No appeal to a person level of description, an organism–environment system, or autonomy can capture this multiscalar depth. In observing a reader, we emphasize that humans are strikingly heteronomous.Further, it has often been within psychology that we find models that treat reading as individual and computational. With a recommendation from neuroscience to study the cultural, anticipatory, and experiential basis for reading, we thus challenge this view. By example, Accordingly, as in the enactive-ecological tradition, we reject approaches that trace reading to the use of verbal structures . We fully endorse Popova’s epistemological challenge to individualistic views where narratives reflect “autonomous and self-contained worlds” , p. 322.Our human world is a social world and it takes place in large measure outside of our brains, in the common shared activity that is life”  that ultimately defines who we are. We too recognize that a “social world” unfolds outside of our brains and that reportable experience is important. It is thus no part of this paper to challenge the descriptive value of her rich account – just as we endorse literary readings that look beyond code views to pursue relevance theory. Rather, in rejecting the focus on an autonomous agent or person “level,” we turn to necessary conditions for expectations and judgments that shape, draw on, and, ultimately, ground a reader’s competence.Our concern is ethnographic and far from offering explanation or philosophical argument; we present reading as based on primate intelligence and skill with material artifacts and finally how humans rely on prereflective judgments that draw on forms of sensibility that we ascribe to aisthesis. These arise as we use eyes, voice, and hands (and imaginings) in the scales of saccading or making/imagining rapid speech bursts  of around five to eight syllables. Our focus on rapid activity and prereflective shifts in action/attention is intrinsic to socially derived forms of human understanding and imagining. The claim is, emphatically, not that the aesthetic somehow “causes” what is reported at a person “level”: rather, aesthetic skills and sensibility are part of what a person is such that, in Noë’s terminology, one can “do conscious experience” that has proto-phenomenological and prereflective aspects.can choose to perceive such artifacts in terms of “material symbolic patterns” and, to the best of our ability, treat them as “products of linguistic bodies acting symbolically.” However, in presenting ethnographic work, we show that just as talk-in-interaction does not reduce to language use, textual interpretation is one aspect of whole-body activity – it is only partly “linguistic.” Again, we assume that, as a primate, a reader has hedonic and functional concerns that draw on a history of responsive understanding, the resulting expectations and experience of epistemic modes of action (“play”). By that we mean that, as primates, we draw on observation-based learning in discovering cultural techniques.Our focus is not on careful reading or how, if well trained, one construed arrangements of digital artifacts as texts. We concur, in the terms of improve their babbling.As material engagement, reading too depends, in part, on intrinsic motivations that are action and other-oriented, that is dialogical . For inspolyphony by drawing on preconceptual judgments that, we contend, are not just functional and hedonic but at once draw on other forms of sensibility – ones that are associated with aisthesis.Hence, we regard early ontogenesis as functioning, above all, in discovering a world of what Linell calls “interdependencies that do not reduce to outer cause–effect relations” , p. 2. Ifor an observer  exists independently of a given animal, that it contains meaning, and that this is the appropriate scale at which to investigate human and animal behavior […] The umwelt of an individual organism is neither “pre-given” nor a mental construction; it is enacted during the individual’s history of development and learning” , p. 12. observer . We can observer  with theobserver  that enaEmbodied Reading, conducted at the University of Southern DenmarkWe explore these rapid scales in single cases from a pilot study for an ethnographic research project, In the first case, a 5-year-old boy is trying to bring learned procedures to what he sees. As one would expect, lack of experience prevents him from seeing meaningful “text.” Despite school experience with pragmatic or goal-directed strategies, he battles to render the written patterns out loud. Indeed, in zooming in on a few seconds, he is observed to switch between five embodied strategies. (1) He reads word-by-word; (2) he also reads by letter-and-syllable; (3) he looks for visible prompts in the book; (4) he uses both index fingers interchangeably (one for the left and right pages in the book respectively) to maintain attention on digits; and (5) he brings forth a more conventional talk-like burst. Given such embodied reading strategies, we show below that prereflective judgment underpins these striking shifts in ways of attending. This observation is important because those who begin with texts often appeal to “coding” and, by so doing, completely overlook, not just observables but the importance of material engagement. That is, the code metaphor deflects interest away from why and when looking and voicing are put to use. On our view, by contrast, the boy’s evolving capacity for judgment brings forth experience that rests heavily on prosody and bodily expression. The following excerpt shows the strategies in play in decoding, he relies on tracking or monitoring his own vocalizations. In seeking something appropriate, he again draws on aisthesis (and his own experience). We see that as he repeats [nu:], he also seeks visible cues from mother  out loud.In line 1, the boy fails to assimilate “to the cows” with his own articulatory habits by voicing syllables in staccato and not connected vocalizations. Rather than finding digital wholes, he relies on entities with quasi-phonetic or “word-like,” properties. From classroom observation, we know that this technique is favored within in the school’s cognitive ecosystem. In making use of the strategy, he shows its advantages and weaknesses. As he goes to the next page, having lost sight of the just read “cow,” seconds later, he fails to recognize “now” (line 2). Being unable to utter “now,” we will describe how he draws on aisthesis as he adopts a “letter-and-syllable” way of looking. As he changes strategy – and his way of perceiving – he uses prereflective understanding to bring forth expectations and actions as described below. First, he vocalizes [n] and seeks associations. He then treats “ow” as inviting, first [oʊ] and, when this result fails to help, he shifts to [u:] (line 2). Far from using a phonetic alphabet in as “the word cow.” We track that result to how his talk and gesture invite repeating, in ways that allow simple alphabets to shape phonological models. Further, as he says “now,” he uses a marked and very loud tone (^NOW^) as if announcing ownership of what he has brought forth. By focusing on vocalizing, the boy has no need for procedural knowledge (“decoding”) or interpreting (as in seeing “meaning” in the text); rather, he relies on aisthesis to trigger prereflective judgments and felt reactions. The output (^NOW^) enacts not a phonological structure but a phonetic event that resonates with positive experience . In that way, his embodiment reveals feelings and the enactment of satisfaction at solving a problem as is displayed by a self-involving dialogical smileIndeed, our observations are also consistent with how “spreading activation”  might beHaving solved the problem, the next saccading sets off more fluent vocalizing. In what follows, we present a different strategy that, like the one above, depends on prereflective judgments or techniques of nature.listens to what he vocalizes while looking at the page and, in this case, construing “the said” as text. Failure to glean [sæi:] “sai” seems to have triggered a negative felt reaction and, subsequently, synthesis of a familiar sound pattern (as [sed] is matched to “said”).First, the boy slowly sounds out [mɑ:k] (line 4) and, then, breaking with “word-by-word” or “letter-and-syllable” strategies, shifts to an unmarked burst of talk-like vocalizing: “Mark milks” (line 4). Here, the alphabetic signs become (phonetic) words that echo the digital patterns . Although there is no knockdown argument against appeal to the use of computational decoding rules, all such models ignore intelligent and unhidden judgments. Decoding only posits looking-based processing and not, as demonstrably occurs, activity that meets collectively defined goals. Based on the analysis, we regard the boy’s reading as aesthetic activity manifest in viable, prosodically structured wordings. The boy does not expect to be faced with nonsense, even when he only generates “quasi-words.” In short, to remain engaged, he trusts the social organization that gave digital shape to what appears on the page. As argued above, we trace this skill to expertise and making prereflective judgments as he uses the language stance and vocalizes and tracks his voice. As he does so, he creates expectations, and when they are not successful, he changes strategies and draw on how skills with the language stance prompt him to come up with possibilities. In time, he learns to articulate written marks on the paper in ways that correspond to teachers view of “text.” However, this skill, we contend, is not the basis for reading; rather, like all activity, reading has a sensorimotor basis.Appeal to decoding and text interpreta (or linguistic bodies) simply ignores a whole-bodied mix of strategies, judgments, and reliance on expectations of, in a word, the directedness of reading. Further, in ignoring the rewards of aisthesis, one fails to clarify why the boy The power of the collective is such that, at times, children trust it too much. For instance, in the case of another primary school boy – not yet a reader – he relies on emulating his older brother. In doing so, the boy organizes the reading practice, including his own position as a reader, because he can rely to only a limited extent on the social practices that are anchored in using books. This engagement is visualized below in as featuring “words.” Although the page does not afford rendering out loud (to him), he engages by pretending to read. In emulating his brother’s activity, his engagement is itself aesthetic. As argued above, tracing reading to how sensibility uses collective experiential imagination enables individual based heteronomy to draw on historical attunement and self-dialog. Even beginning readers shift strategies as they engage with marks that they are still not able to see as “texts.” We ascribe these shifts to prereflective promptings whose outcomes are not just functional or hedonic by arguing that they have an aesthetic basis that is, from a third person perspective, aesthetic and/or axiological. In adding value to the shifts in movement, a reader constantly monitors vocalization and, in so doing, confirms the findings of The little boy gazes in the book and, like a skilled reader, places his hands on the page to avoid the page from turning; indeed, he even synchronizes his page turning to his brother’s pace. While drawing on aesthetic judgement in attending to the page, he cannot yet perceive it Turning to our second exemplar, we show how readers use a second-person perspective in the rapid scales of engaging with what appears on the page. Further, in anticipating understanding, the reader re-enacts experience of being interdependent with others within a given setting. As explained below, the reader’s use of a language stance permits the taking of multiple perspectives.Evidence for how aisthesis shapes skills in projecting, acting, and judging the results of action are now illustrated by the same boy’s reading 2 months later. In looking and phonological representation, such vocalizing shows a richness of experience that is made inexplicable by appeal to a linguistic model of “text.” Even as an early reader, the boy draws on prereflective judgment to gain prosodic control of, in these cases, connotations that echo verbal structure. Such appropriate utterances can only result from prejudgments that draw on not social or conventional construals but expert felt reactions. Further, in their connotational appropriacy, they attest to not machine-like processing but an aspiration to perform as well as others.Whereas the first excerpt features few “talk-like bursts” such as “Mark milks,” itself a partial repetition, this passage features many such continuants. While some are phrasal, others enact prosodically rich speech bursts of “W↑oaw, said Kipper” (line 1) or “this is my dog Z:og” (lines 2–3). Whereas a standard view invokes Here, we observe that the boy’s mix of strategies is thinning. For instance, he now relies on the left index finger only – and he no longer searches for visible prompts on the pages. Finally, we find only one case of vocalizing letter-and-syllable “Ai:n” (line 2). Indeed, his developing technical skills show that the word-by-word strategy is giving way to the use of saccade-based units. Over time, he has linked experience with rewards that draw on enhanced sensibility. Certainly, were technical, embodied skills are not part of reading, his actions  would be hard to explain. Yet, since they aid in synthesis, we view them as part of the technique. Indeed, not only can saccading and action be synchronized, but also the boy’s vocalizations enact felt reactions. While prosody is unmarked in alphabetic writing, the boy uses it in rich ways . Rather, as he projects connotational meanings onto what he sees as words, the boy’s judgments manifest the other-orientation of dialogicality . Rather become “text for the reader.” The use of socially organized constraints allow uttering to mesh with the child’s nascent imaginary world of spaceships, aliens, and fireballs. Thus, while grounded in aesthetic experience of feeling and judgments, as we describe here, reading also enriches creative imagining. It allows for vicarious experience of emotion such as excitement, dread, etc. that pertain to not life as lived but a fictional domain. In this sense, the text brings forth value that is intrinsically aesthetic and inseparable from how collective domains organize culture and taste. In that sense, reading a book allows experience of dangerous emotions (as in “OH NO”) and exciting ideas while, at the same time, learning about their interrelations.By using cases such as the above to build experience, he gains expertise and sensorimotor experience that, in later life, enrich prereflective judgments in orienting to written artifacts. In spite of the fact that the voice and its surrogates are usually excluded from models of reading, they seem crucial to gleaning even the unfamiliar . The page itself acts as part of the cognitive system in that, through activity, its digital marks is understanding or, in another idiom, coming to act in line with a rule. Imagining is thus a constructive process that, at the best of times, gives rise to a correct outcome. In the latter examples, we see how fluency changes the activity. For example, in reading “an alien” as, first, [æi:ən] and, moments later, [eɪli:ən], the boy draws on collective imagining. He connects with a culture where [eɪli:ənz]  come out of spaceships. In a case such as this, he needs a language stance to treat the utterance as invoking something that belongs to a social domain of languaging. The peculiarities of orthography mask the phonology – ordinarily an initial “al” is pronounced /æl/unless there is a later “e” . The boy’s monitoring of the failed [æi:ən], however, adds value and understanding. In the second case, multisensory activity appears in the fluency of “mark milks” and, above all, how prosody enables him to reach beyond what is said to produce vocalizations like “W↑oaw” in ways that are appropriate to the context.The ethnographic data confirms that the boy’s parents read aloud to him during his early years. As he has heard narratives over and over, he has rich ways of making judgments, using the voice, and in engaging with fictional universes and characters. While he can now see similarities between phrasal expressions, narrative voices in texts, etc., from the very start, reading never reduces to skilled perception of alphabetic characters (“decoding”). Rather, as in making a pot, aisthesis shapes looking, imagining , and acting by tapping into the collective to conjure up affect and imagining. For example, in coming to feel excitement and fear in vocalizing [eɪli:ən], embodied neuropsychological models would suggest that the boy reuses neural networks  that, laIn sum, our case descriptions showcase how the child does conscious experience that grants expertise and enables him to become a readerly self who is open to many perspectives. Over time, we see how he gains flexibility by using a language stance as he renders text out loud by drawing on qualities that derive from prereflective judgments.We now focus on both more goal directed aspects of a reading process and human dialogicality as we focus on how readers bring more fully fledged imaginative powers to material engagement as they unify saccading, silent thoughts, and uttered wordings. In doing so, we open up the discussion of how, in general, reading can be traced to the aesthetic judgments that are necessary to all cases of constructive imagination. The discussion integrates other examples of reading with our ethnography of reading to emphasize that reading is based on experience of  wordings and that familiarity with engaging with written artifacts allows, with experience, for the construction of fully fledged imagined worlds.So far, we have argued that, as part of radical embodied cognitive science, languaging can be traced to perpetual dialog with a collective world. On that view, readers are seen as dialogical agents. Before consolidating the argument that imagining is a constructive process, we return to the prereflective judgments that, as shown above, ground even early reading experience. In so doing, we trace the expert syntheses to felt reactions that rise as reading insinuates aesthetic and axiological dimensions into experience. Just as social coordination uses, not knowing, but sensorimotor empathy , sensoriadding value to the rapid shifts in movement, andmonitoring the results to come up with understanding.In the case of reading, we stress that prereflective judgments engender multisyllabic bursts of vocalization. The skilled embodiment is not only more than speech production but also fits As we talk or read, we use a history of social coordination that is based on linguistic embodiment that evokes, but does not reduce to, “language” or, more precisely, wordings see, . It is bwording or, for the authors, a “vocal arc.” In the case in question, it features “a gradual rise in pitch peaking in ‘VEL-vety’ followed by a slow fall in pitch and a gradual decrease in the intensity of the mother’s vocalizing, during which she turns her head toward the infant” (vel (of velvety) that is far above a normal pitch range at around 300 Hz. As the authors note elsewhere, this high pitch marks “infant-directed speech” (IDS). However, this moment of IDS does not reduce to style or stereotype. At this moment, promptings set off an aesthetic match between the wordings and what is loosely called “tone.” Attention to the sonographic record shows a sprightly rhythm <VE::L:: -vi ti soft> (with similar pitch peaks and range on regularly timed syllables) that is followed by a pause. After a second, the mother and the infant move in synchrony – using, no doubt, shared rhythm – as her voice returns to the top of its range. Next, she allows her voice to fall back to a normal level as she drawls “no:::se.” In our terms, the behavioral shifts are judgments that draw on aisthesis and, almost certainly, make the utterance pleasing. Perhaps attentive readers will find it evocative of touching a tender nose. Indeed, the mother mimics just such a movement as, just 1 s later, she touches the image of a cat in the book. The case show how vocalizing can be used to beget mimetic performance. The mother links expertise with experience to make inscriptions “come alive.” The example aligns with the cases described above in showing how adult readers also rely on more than interpreting digital patterns. Finally, we suggest that this also applies to readers who rely on silent reading – and with this example in mind, this applies especially if they have experience with the right kind of nose. We claim that aisthesis constructs imagining in not only learners but also skilled readers that use written signs. As such, the view is relevant for all kinds of engagement with material artifacts. We now use a final brief example to spell out the point in detail.At the instant noted, the mother vocalizes “velvety soft nose.” The case exemplifies a  infant” , p. 10. Den utrolige historie om den kæmpestore pære (a Danish translation of The incredible story of the giant pear), while his younger brother has often heard the story, the boy is reading it for the first time. They are immersed in a world where an elephant, a cat, and a researcher escape from deputy major (Mr. Kvist) in a giant pear . As shown in the transcription in all that goes on in the 2 s. However, the boy’s stance both enables his imagining of the pear – as he says that he would like to live there – and, as he draws on other-orientation, a shift in gaze to the picture (see picture B). As he looks, he explains: “there is a massive amount of food” (line 13). In arguing that imagination is synthetic and necessarily draws on aesthetic judgements, we have allowed the heard to be amalgamated with the results of gazing at the image . In this case, the co-construction is dialogical in two senses: not only do the boys share a fantasy of living in a giant pear but also, importantly, they mesh with collective voices. They echo a unity of aesthetic and moral issues like serving one’s country, not shooting innocent pears and, most explicitly, the joys of inhabiting an edible fruit that can escape from cannon fire. In other words, they participate in a community. In making this claim, our work complements that of Popova and colleagues. While in dialog with the researcher, cat, and elephant, the boys are also at least metaphorically in dialog with the “author,” too . This view opens up new ways of describing how a reader performs as not just a person but also as a skilled participant in socially organized activity. If highly educated, a reader may even come to account for reading – and what is read – in terms of metaphorical “interactions” between her readerly self and the author of a text.We presented fine-scaled analysis to show how reading experience is traced to punctuated bodily movement and, given its anticipatory nature, gives evidence of how readers learn to read by relying on prereflective judgments. Far from relying entirely on functional routines for dealing with “text,” the felt reactions of embodiment shape sensibility that is manifest as reading. Further, the rapid flow of punctuated events attests to the boy’s judgments or what, in Greek, was called his use of the basis for reading, text serves as an ideal result that those who “know” the outward criteria of a given sociocultural order.Reading thus arises because humans are partly open to and for each other. For instance, the boy draws on skills with a language stance to bring forth [naʊ] or [eɪli:ən] in ways that draw on the potential of a collective world. Readers are dialogical and other-oriented as appears in the fantasy of living in an edible pear or, indeed, fine shifts of voice and rhythm that evoke a velvety soft nose. In Dewey’s terms, material artifacts act as written signs that transform eventualities into possibilities. Empirically, we find cases where a mother is moved to mimic touching a velvety nose or when a younger brother comes to share a fantasy about living in the pear. While enabled by what linguists theorize as “text,” they manifestly use synthesis and prereflective judgments whose connotations shape mimetic behavior. Understanding thus emerges in rapid scales when people anticipate, find expectations, and fulfilled expectations (by acting as if following rules). Indeed, over time, reading skills can lead to deep resonance with what one reads, remarkable agreement on “content,” and ultimately to viewing documents as textual entities whose “meaning” appears to a reader or a critic. In our view, far from being Building on the analytical results and extended discussion of the results in relation to radical embodied cognitive science, the paper makes two contributions. First, it traces a synthetic process to rapid dynamics that set off a reader’s prereflective judgments and imagining. Experience is thus enriched by engaging with artifacts and cultural memory that uses, for example, spelling systems, pets, and fantastic pears. Remarkably, the openness of human dialogicality and, inseparably, languaging transform what each of us become and what we imagine. Second, we have emphasized how imagining is traced to enskillment and expert use of sensibility that sets off aesthetic judgements that often draw on the language stance. To the extent that we are successful, we show that cognitive ethnography is a methodological tool that goes beyond first‐ and third-person views by clarifying human openness to the collective. Hardly surprisingly, imagination is like memory: it is a (re)constructive activity that blends felt reactions with others’ voices, both real and metaphorical. This appears in rapid dynamics as how people saccade, vocalize, or enact fine-scale motoric activity. Indeed, by focusing on the lived now, one brings multiscalar depth to cognitive science. Only linguistic embodiment can allow a human to imagine living in a giant pear, and we suggest that this skill requires more than picking up on affordances because one needs a dialogical agent whose felt reactions are infused with collective history. If one is to grasp reading, imagining must connect with the matters of taste that are central to the normative domains of human living.The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin. Written informed consent was obtained from the minor(s)’ legal guardian/next of kin for the publication of any potentially identifiable images or data included in this article.ST designed the study and collected the data. SC and ST wrote both the theoretical framework and analysis. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.


Actinobacteria, underpin the majority of clinically used antibiotics. Unfortunately, only a few new antibiotic classes have been discovered since the 1970s, which has exacerbated fears of a postapocalyptic world in which antibiotics have lost their utility. Excitingly, the genome sequencing revolution painted an entirely new picture, one in which an average strain of filamentous Actinobacteria harbors 20 to 50 natural product biosynthetic pathways but expresses very few of these under laboratory conditions.Microbial natural products, particularly those produced by filamentous  Actinobacteria, underpin the majority of clinically used antibiotics. Unfortunately, only a few new antibiotic classes have been discovered since the 1970s, which has exacerbated fears of a postapocalyptic world in which antibiotics have lost their utility. Excitingly, the genome sequencing revolution painted an entirely new picture, one in which an average strain of filamentous Actinobacteria harbors 20 to 50 natural product biosynthetic pathways but expresses very few of these under laboratory conditions. Development of methodology to access this “hidden” biochemical diversity has the potential to usher in a second Golden Era of antibiotic discovery. The proliferation of genomic data has led to inconsistent use of “cryptic” and “silent” when referring to biosynthetic gene clusters identified by bioinformatic analysis. In this Perspective, we discuss this issue and propose to formalize the use of this terminology.Microbial natural products, particularly those produced by filamentous  Streptomyces species and other filamentous Actinobacteria a well-deserved reputation for their ability to produce a vast array of natural products, many of which have found utility in the clinic. Consequently, these microbes have been an important resource for the pharmaceutical industry. Indeed, some compounds that were developed into drugs  are now considered essential medicines by the World Health Organization  (S. coelicolor A3(2) is relatively inactive in a laboratory setting, with most molecules detected in laboratory culture having been previously identified and linked to biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) (Known Knowns).It is not all doom and gloom, however; we are living in the “Genomics Age” of antibiotic discovery, which began in 2002 with the sequencing of the first S. coelicolor, when the genomes of Streptomyces avermitilis, Streptomyces griseus, and Streptomyces scabies were sequenced and analyzed  which tThe increase in genome sequencing and genome mining studies has, however, led to inconsistency in the terminology used to refer to the “hidden treasures” encoded by the genomes of natural product-producing organisms. In the literature, the use of “cryptic” and “silent” has become pervasive, and these terms are often used interchangeably to describe natural product BGCs for which the genes encoding the enzymes for biosynthesis have been identified but for which no product has been observed during laboratory culture. Inconsistent use of these terms is confusing, especially for newcomers to the field. In this perspective, we disambiguate “silent” and “cryptic” and propose rules for their use when applied to natural product BGCs.kruptós meaning “hidden” and is used widely in biology to describe well-camouflaged species (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cryptic) or where two or more species have been misclassified as a single taxon due to being morphologically indistinguishable but are genetically distinct (cryptic species) (“Cryptic” is derived from the Greek species) . In micrspecies)  is foundStreptomyces genome sequence, and a BGC has been identified that encodes a putative polyketide biosynthetic (PKS) system. Expression of the BGC has not been analyzed, so the use of “silent” is inappropriate. Future experimentation may establish that the PKS BGC is in fact unexpressed, which means the BGC should at this point be described as “silent.” By definition this means that the associated polyketide product is, of course, “cryptic,” because it cannot be produced if its biosynthetic genes are not expressed. We outline various other scenarios for the usage of cryptic and silent in For instance, consider the following scenario and what the description of the BGC and product would be. One has bioinformatically analyzed a The majority of the confusion has crept into literature when discussing the Known Unknowns and the Unknown Knowns. This is where it is important for the term “cryptic” to be used accurately. The use of “cryptic BGC” is appropriate when a natural product has been observed, but where its cognate BGC has not been experimentally identified, i.e., the compound is known, but its biosynthesis is cryptic (Unknown Knowns). Equally, the term “cryptic” can be appropriately used when expression of a BGC has been experimentally validated, but a product predicted from that BGC cannot be observed under laboratory culture conditions (Known Unknowns), i.e., the product of the BGC is cryptic.Interestingly, it is the last category, the Unknown Unknowns, where the real hidden treasures likely lie. Currently, around one-third of all protein-encoding genes in bacterial genomes lack functional annotation . It is wProgress has been made in identifying these kinds of truly cryptic gene clusters using evolutionary mining methods to identify the expansion and repurposing of enzyme families from central metabolism. This is exemplified by the discovery of a BGC for an arsenopolyketide  and an u