FreshAIR Lab - Cognition + Creativity

Cognition + Creativity

original research on minds in motion

Mindful Wayfinding: Desire Paths as Embodied Creative Practice

presented at SFNC2026 - "Liberty to Create" hosted by

the Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity | Philadelphia, Penn.

Emerging Insights

Desire paths — informal routes worn into landscapes through repeated use, are usually framed as efficiency-driven deviations. Our research advances an aesthetically driven theory: desire paths may also be traces of mindful, creative attention, where people exercise their liberty to create by shaping relationship with place through beauty, curiosity, and restoration.

In our initial pilot at Pease Park in Austin, Texas, participants were invited into an immersive wayfinding experience. They began at a point of uncertainty adjacent to a public greenspace and were given a simple prompt: “Take the best route.” The initial study followed eight participants, with one researcher pilot case analysed separately. Participants completed a T0 reflection on their typical day-to-day emotional state, passively recorded a GPS trace, actively captured 5–10 photos of real-time decision cues and environmental influences, and completed a T8 reflection on their emotional state after the walk.

Through triangulation of movement traces, participant photographs, and semantic shifts in reflection language, we developed an initial framework for scenic route wayfinding: attention-led movement that privileges aesthetic and restorative cues over efficiency or speed. This pilot generated early Attention Signatures — patterns in what participants noticed, photographed, and moved toward during open-ended wayfinding.

Across T0 → T8 reflections, the strongest emerging pattern was a directional shift from activation, friction, and role-bound cognition toward embodiment, regulation, and reflective presence. Given the small pilot sample, we treat this not as a conclusion, but as an invitation for deeper inquiry.

This pilot reframes desire paths as early-stage design intelligence: observable signals of collective attention that may inform biophilic, regenerative infrastructure for wellbeing, ecological care, and people-planet flourishing. Future work will expand sites, cohorts, durations, and in-situ biometric or neuroaesthetic measures.

Abstract - FreshAIR Lab / Scenic Route Studios

Desire paths — informal routes worn into landscapes through repeated use, are usually treated as efficiency- or safety-driven deviations. Our research advances a complementary account: many divergences may be traces of mindful, creative attention, where people exercise liberty to create their relationship with place by following beauty, curiosity, and restoration.

We call this scenic route wayfinding: attention-led choices that privilege restorative cues over speed, revealing collective preference.

Across Texas sites where formal and informal routes coexist (parks, trail systems, greenspaces, and transit-adjacent public landscapes), we will map desire paths and code ecological and sensory affordances relevant to biophilic design and soft fascination, nature’s captivating detail that restores directed attention. Using a brief field-audit rubric, we will record water cues, canopy shade and dappled light, vegetation richness and seasonal color, prospect-refuge, curvature/mystery, and microclimate comfort. We build evidence through behavioral observation paired with photo/GIS traces and public datasets.

Emotional intercepts seek perceived motives, linking subjective experience with observable patterns. We hypothesise that, when safety and efficiency are comparable, aesthetic affordances predict the scenic route choice; and visible traces function as an aesthetic-social invitation, accelerating adoption via perceived legitimacy and shared authorship.

Regeneratively, desire paths become early-stage design intelligence: signals for shaping infrastructure that invites dynamic participation and fosters respect for nature - putting ecodiplomacy in motion for people + planet. Future work could explore field neuro/physiological measures to test mechanisms.

About Liberty to Create, SFNC 2026

The Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity hosts the premier academic conference on the neuroscience of creativity. Now in its 11th year, the annual meeting serves as a forum for sharing new data, methods, and theory on how creativity arises from the human brain, intersects with cognition, and shapes emotional, motivational, and intellectual experience.

SFNC2026 took place June 1 to 3, 2026 at FringeArts in Philadelphia, with a deliberate return to creative expression in the arts. The conference brought together research scientists, artists, and practitioners across education, healthcare, technology, and creative industries interested in understanding and enhancing human creativity through the lens of neuroscience.

Conference Objectives

Create a forum for presenting the latest research in creativity neuroscience, broadly defined, including new empirical findings, methods, and theoretical developments.
Encourage collaboration between researchers, artists, and practitioners working across neuroscience, cognition, education, healthcare, technology, and the creative industries.
Recenter the arts as essential to creativity research, not only because art may support health, wellbeing, or economic value, but because artistic expression holds intrinsic human value.
Advance conversations that connect empirical clarity with lived, expressive, emotional, and aesthetic dimensions of creativity.

Programme

SfNC2026 was designed as “a meeting place for scientists and artists,” inviting participation from both researchers and creative practitioners. The programme is intended to create a collaborative setting where people working across creativity research and artistic practice can learn from one another and spark conversations that move the field forward.

This year’s theme places special emphasis on the subjective, expressive, and emotionally complex dimensions of creativity involved in both the production and experience of artistic work. SfNC frames this as an invitation to balance empirical clarity with the capacity to be challenged, delighted, and inspired by the arts.

The theme also situates creativity within Philadelphia’s civic and cultural history. In the birthplace of American independence, during the nation’s 250th anniversary, SfNC2026 invites participants to reaffirm the role of artistic freedom, expression, and imagination in what it means to be human.

With thanks to the Organizers

We are grateful to have been part of this rich exchange, made possible through thoughtful curation by the SfNC2026 organizing committee co-chairs: Christine Chesebrough, Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, and Hannah Merseal, Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics, Organizing Committee Co-Chairs, and visionary leadership by Indre Viskontas, President of SfNC President and Professor at University of San Francisco.

SfNC Mission

"For a decade, SfNC meetings have focused on creative thinking: insight, idea, generation and evaluation, and other elements of creative cognition. This year, we're recentering creative self-expression and the why behind creative work."

—Indre Viskontas, Pres. the Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity

"The Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity (SfNC) seeks to foster advances in all areas of creativity research and to provide a forum for communicating this research so that it has maximal impacts for innovation, education, health, industry, policy making, and the arts. SfNC’s vision extends from areas of focus on neural and cognitive bases of creativity to all influences, contexts, applications, and outcomes of creative processes in individuals, organizations, artificial intelligence, and social systems."

Cognition + Creativity

original research on minds in motion

Mindful Wayfinding: Desire Paths as Embodied Creative Practice

Shared Futures