NeuroDante: Poetry Mentally Engages More Experts but Moves More Non-Experts, and for Both the Cerebral Approach Tendency Goes Hand in Hand with the Cerebral Effort

Abstract

Neuroaesthetics, the science studying the biological underpinnings of aesthetic experience, recently extended its area of investigation to literary art; this was the humus where neurocognitive poetics blossomed. Divina Commedia represents one of the most important, famous and studied poems worldwide. Poetry stimuli are characterized by elements (meter and rhyme) promoting the processing fluency, a core aspect of neuroaesthetics theories. In addition, given the evidence of different neurophysiological reactions between experts and non-experts in response to artistic stimuli, the aim of the present study was to investigate, in poetry, a different neurophysiological cognitive and emotional reaction between Literature (L) and Non-Literature (NL) students. A further aim was to investigate whether neurophysiological underpinnings would support explanation of behavioral data. Investigation methods employed: self-report assessments (recognition, appreciation, content recall) and neurophysiological indexes (approach/withdrawal (AW), cerebral effort (CE) and galvanic skin response (GSR)). The main behavioral results, according to fluency theories in aesthetics, suggested in the NL but not in the L group that the appreciation/liking went hand by hand with the self-declared recognition and with the content recall. The main neurophysiological results were: (i) higher galvanic skin response in NL, whilst higher CE values in L; (ii) a positive correlation between AW and CE indexes in both groups. The present results extended previous evidence relative to figurative art also to auditory poetry stimuli, suggesting an emotional attenuation “expertise-specific” showed by experts, but increased cognitive processing in response to the stimuli.

Electroencephalography Correlates of Well-Being Using a Low-Cost Wearable System

“…Wearable EEG technologies make the collection of large datasets of diversified and under-represented populations more feasible and offer promising new applications for both clinicians and researchers in the long term (Cannard et al, 2020). These applications include brain monitoring in naturalistic settings and in real-time (Hu et al, 2015;Jebelli et al, 2017), brain-computer interfaces (BCI; Park et al, 2020), neurofeedback interventions (Angelakis et al, 2007;Quaedflieg et al, 2016;Brandmeyer and Delorme, 2020a), neuromarketing (Cartocci et al, 2018;Ramsøy et al, 2018), or neuroaesthetics research (i.e., the science studying the biological underpinnings of aesthetic experience; Cheung et al, 2019;Cartocci et al, 2021). While these EEG systems can have inferior hardware capacities than conventional ones, recent technological and algorithmic advancements make the detection and measurement of mental states increasingly reliable (Wu et al, 2017), with as few as a single EEG channel (Umar Saeed et al, 2018;Arpaia et al, 2020;Mahmoodi et al, 2021).…”

A Review on the Role of Affective Stimuli in Event-Related Frontal Alpha Asymmetry

“…Frontal alpha asymmetry as a tool to monitor motivational processes related to emotion would be desirable in a variety of application fields, such as marketing (including evaluating public service announcements, e.g., Inguscio et al, 2021), product design (e.g., cosmetics-Gabriel et al, 2021, human-computer interfaces, gaming and the diagnosis of affective disorders (Briesemeister et al, 2013). Another upcoming application and research area where frontal alpha asymmetry is highly relevant, is neuroesthetics (Babiloni et al, 2015;Cartocci et al, 2018Cartocci et al, , 2021Daly et al, 2019). However, it is important to realize that frontal alpha asymmetry is not specific for motivational processes, but is also moderated by e.g., unilateral hand contractions (Harmon-Jones et al, 2010) and seating position (Baldwin and Penaranda, 2012).…”

Virtual and Reality: A Neurophysiological Pilot Study of the Sarcophagus of the Spouses

“…Concerning the correlations between EEG-based indices and declared data, the correlation between Approach–Withdrawal in the last 10 s of observation and familiarity ratings, suggesting increasing approach tendency with increasing familiarity, could be explained by the processing fluency theory, which predicts higher liking linked to higher successful recognition of the stimulus [ 65 ]. This response has already been suggested in neuroaesthetics studies concerning poetry both for declarative [ 54 ] and EEG-based data [ 66 ]. Indeed, there was a link between ratings concerning liking and recognition of a poem’s excerpts [ 54 ] and also a correlation between event-related potential data (N400 and P600) and the ratings for aesthetic liking, supporting “perceptual-fluency-enhanced aesthetic liking” [ 66 ].…”

“…This response has already been suggested in neuroaesthetics studies concerning poetry both for declarative [ 54 ] and EEG-based data [ 66 ]. Indeed, there was a link between ratings concerning liking and recognition of a poem’s excerpts [ 54 ] and also a correlation between event-related potential data (N400 and P600) and the ratings for aesthetic liking, supporting “perceptual-fluency-enhanced aesthetic liking” [ 66 ]. This is in accordance with the theory postulating that the higher the fluency the perceiver uses for processing an object, the more positive will be his or her aesthetic response, in particular with the Perceptual Fluency component of processing fluency, a component that is apparently increased by object familiarity [ 67 ].…”

“…[ 53 ]). Such a difference between expert and not-expert participants was also shown to influence the dynamics of the art experience, in which the first and last seconds of observation elicited a different response in experts and not-experts [ 54 , 55 ]. The decrease in workload levels from the first 10 s to the last 10 s that occurred only in the museum condition—whereas for the lab condition the Workload levels were almost constant and always lower than the museum—could be explained by a physiological decrease in workload levels throughout the execution of the task in the case of tasks “more difficult to be processed”, such as the museum condition in comparison to the lab condition in the present study.…”