TY  - JOUR
A1  - Wassiliwizky, Eugen
A1  - Koelsch, Stefan
A1  - Wagner, Valentin
A1  - Jacobsen, Thomas
A1  - Menninghaus, Winfried
T1  - The emotional power of poetry: neural circuitry, psychophysiology and compositional principles
T2  - Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
N2  - 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.
KW  - Neuroästhetik
KW  - Nucleus accumbens
KW  - Lyrik
KW  - Ästhetik
KW  - Musikästhetik
KW  - neuroaesthetics
KW  - aesthetic reward
KW  - poetic language
KW  - chills
KW  - piloerection
KW  - Empirische Ästhetik
Y1  - 2017
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/46903
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-469033
SN  - 1229-1240
VL  - 2017
SP  - 1
EP  - 12
PB  - Oxford Univ. Press
CY  - Oxford
ER  -