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  1. The emotional power of poetry: neural circuitry, psychophysiology and compositional principles

    It is a common experience—and well established experimentally—that music can engage us emotionally in a compelling manner. The mechanisms underlying these experiences are receiving increasing scrutiny. However, the extent to which other domains of... more

     

    It is a common experience—and well established experimentally—that music can engage us emotionally in a compelling manner. The mechanisms underlying these experiences are receiving increasing scrutiny. However, the extent to which other domains of aesthetic experience can similarly elicit strong emotions is unknown. Using psychophysiology, neuroimaging and behavioral responses, we show that recited poetry can act as a powerful stimulus for eliciting peak emotional responses, including chills and objectively measurable goosebumps that engage the primary reward circuitry. Importantly, while these responses to poetry are largely analogous to those found for music, their neural underpinnings show important differences, specifically with regard to the crucial role of the nucleus accumbens. We also go beyond replicating previous music-related studies by showing that peak aesthetic pleasure can co-occur with physiological markers of negative affect. Finally, the distribution of chills across the trajectory of poems provides insight into compositional principles of poetry.

     

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    Content information: free
    Source: CompaRe
    Language: English
    Media type: Article
    Format: Online
    DDC Categories: 800
    Collection: Max-Planck-Institut für empirische Ästhetik
    Subjects: Neuroästhetik; Nucleus accumbens; Lyrik; Ästhetik; Musikästhetik
    Rights:

    creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

    ;

    info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess