Vignesh Chander

22 March 2018
ENGW3307
Project 2, Final Draft
Neuroaesthetics of literary art
Documentation Style: APA
Word Count: 3885
Abstract
This review examined recent progress on the neuroaesthetics of literary art. Nine research papers
from the last five years were chosen. They used fMRI, EEG, and biometrics to examine the
neurological basis for an aesthetic response to word-based art. Frontal and limbic regions of the
brain were often implicated, with the importance of auditory or visual elements depending on the
mode of testing. Limitations included that most of the studies used German speakers between the
ages of 18 and 30 as participants. There remains a lack of literature, and little overlap between
studies, limiting the generalizability of results.

Keywords: Neuroaesthetics, fMRI, EEG, literary art, poetry, prose

Neuroaesthetics of literary art

Introduction

Neuroaesthetics is the study of the underlying biological causes of aesthetic experience; that is,
what processes are responsible for the perception of beauty in reaction to a stimulus. While
aesthetic experiences can occur in response to the observation of natural beauty, current studies
have tended to focus on the visual arts, music, and dance (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2014). These
have all been subjected to more neuroaesthetic research than the field of literature. The temporal
difficulties of imaging a brain response to a novel, or longer section of prose, perhaps explain
some of that lack. More fruitful study has been accomplished with poetry and single words.
Present progress is aimed at understanding reactions to poems (Liu et al., 2015; Obermeier et al.,
2016; Vaughan-Evans et al., 2016; Wassiliwizky et al., 2017), perceptions of beauty in single
words (Jacobs, 2017; Zhang et al., 2016), and emotional cues, auditory or visual (Briesemeister
et al., 2014; Brück et al., 2014). The conclusions tended to be narrow, but most studies showed
small, but significant effects of the experimental stimuli on behavior and brain imaging data.

The value of studying neuroaesthetics lies in understanding more closely what makes artistic
endeavor meaningful and stimulating to human beings. It also helps to isolate processes that play
key roles in social engagement and cultural processes. While literary art has not been as
thoroughly investigated as other fields, the ability of language to evoke emotional responses is
undeniable, and understanding the basis of those responses can help in determining what
precisely makes such art effective.

Methodology

Study inclusion
The studies selected were found using a Web of Science search, using the keyword
“neuroaesthetics,” limited to the last five years. The 53 results were sorted manually to find peer-
reviewed academic papers that focused on the topic at hand. No keyword was applied to specify
for text-focused studies was because the field is narrow and very new and specification in the
initial search may have removed results. “Neuroaesthetics” was also searched using
Northeastern University’s ScholarOne tool. Studies meeting the above criterion were excluded
on the basis that the findings were tangential to the focus.
Each of these studies gathered data from participants for statistical analysis, save Jacobs (2017),
who’s research has involved many related concepts, but the included paper was specifically
focused on creating a new predictive measure. It was included because it summarizes significant
elements in predicting the beauty of words, some drawn from older studies.

Methods of measurement
Of the studies examined here, six used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
(Briesemeister et al., 2015; Brück et al., 2014; Hsu et al., 2014; Liu et al., 2015; Wassiliwizky et
al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2016), two used electroencephalograms (EEG) (Obermeier et al., 2016;
Vaughan-Evans et al., 2016), two used self-report methods (Knoop et al., 2016; Wassiliwizky et
al., 2017) and one proposed a machine-learning based mechanism for predicting the beauty of
words (Jacobs, 2017).

Table 1: Summary of research methodologies, procedures, and participants.

Authors Date of Journal of Methods/Procedure Participants
Publication Publication
Briesemeister, B. B., 15 November Cognitive, fMRI data were acquired on a 3T scanner; Participants 20 right-
Kuchinke, L., Jacobs, A. 2014 Affective, & had to distinguish between a correct German word or a handed
M., & Braun, M. Behavioral nonword with the appropriate button press, and were native
Neuroscience not to press any buttons for fillers. German
speakers,
mean age =
23 years.
Brück, C., Kreifelts, B., 5 January Social Cognitive fMRI data were acquired on a 3T scanner. Stimulus 22 native
Gößling-Arnold, C., 2014 and Affective material was 78 text samples of face and voice German
Wertheimer, J., & Neuroscience descriptions from German narratives/novels. Task 1 speakers,
Wildgruber, D. was rating if the emotion communicated by the text mean age =
was highly positive, positive, negative, or highly 24.95 years.
negative. Task 2 was rating how well the texts were
written in gradations of very well, well, poorly, and
very poorly.
Hsu, C., Conrad, M., & 3 December Neuroreport fMRI data were acquired on a 3T scanner. Participants 24 native
Jacobs, A. M. 2014 were presented short text passages from Harry Potter German
that represented either fear-inducing or neutral speakers,
moments. Afterward, they rated how immersive the mean age =
passages were on a scale from 1-7 (essentially not 23.17 years.
immersive to completely immersive)
Knoop, C. A., Wagner, V., June 2016 Poetics Paper and pencil survey with the instructions to write 1544
Jacobsen, T., & down terms used to describe the aesthetics of literature, German
Menninghaus, W. only using adjectives, over a period of two minutes. students,
The word “literature” was replaced by “poems”, mean age =
“novels”, “short stories”, “plays”, or “comedies” 23.5 years.
depending on the subsample. Resulting data was
subjected to statistical analysis and comparison.
Liu, S., Erkkinen, M. G., 29 May 2015 Human Brain fMRI data were acquired on a 3T scanner. Subjects 30 native
Healey, M. L., Xu, Y., Mapping were given two, 10-line poems to memorize a week English
Swett, K. E., Chow, H. M., before scanning occurred, as well as ten single sentence speakers,
& Braun, A. R. facts about the authors. 6 tasks were performed during mean age =
the scanning: reciting the memorized poem, generating 31.62 years.
a new poem, revising the new poem, generating
random typing motions, generating non-memorized
facts, and reciting memorized facts. An independent
panel of three experts blindly rated the poems for
elements of craft, linguistic creativity, and revision.
Obermeier, C., Kotz, S., 16 April 2016 Cognitive, EEG recordings were acquired from 59 Ag-AgCl 18 native
Jessen, S., Raettig, T., Affective, & electrodes. The original material was 100 4-line stanzas German
from 19th-20th century German poetry, from folk songs. speakers,
 Koppenfels, M., &
Menninghaus, W.
Vaughan-Evans, A., Trefor,
R., Jones, L., Lynch, P.,
Jones, M. W., & Thierry, G.
Wassiliwizky, E., Koelsch,
S., Wagner, V., Jacobsen,
T., & Menninghaus, W.
Zhang, Wei, Lai, Siyan, He,
Xianyou, Zhao, Xueru, &
Lai, Shuxian.
Behavioral For each of these 100 stanzas, 4 different versions were mean age =
Neuroscience produced. One was the original (metered and rhyming), 24.9 years
one was metered but nonrhyming, one was nonmetered
but rhyming, and the fourth was nonmetered and
nonrhyming. The participants rated the stanzas for
rhythmicity and liking on a 5-point scale.
25 November Frontiers in EEG data was recorded from 23 Ag/AgCl electrodes. 25 native
2016 Psychology There were 36 sets of 4 experimental sentences. 25% of Welsh
these sentences followed the rules of Cynghanedd, an speakers.
ancient form of Welsh poetics, while the other 75% Mean age
was split into violating the rules for consonantal unspecified.
repetition, stress pattern, or both. Participants were
asked to indicate whether the sentence sounded good or
not by pressing the designated button. Afterwards, the
subjects were given a list of the 36 sets and asked to
rank the 4 sentences in decreasing preference order.
28 April 2017 Social Cognitive 27 native
and Affective A 10-channel bioamplifier was used to acquire various German
Neuroscience biometrics. A goosecam was used to capture footage of speakers,
piloerection. The stimuli were recordings of five poems mean age =
from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries selected by the 24.2 years.
experimenters as well as 3-5 emotionally powerful
poems self-selected by the participants. Participants
were asked to push a button whenever they experienced
a ‘chill’ for the duration of the chill while listening to the
audio recordings of the poems.
fMRI data was acquired on a 3T scanner. Two
experimenter-selected poems were replaced to test
novelty effects. During scanning, the participants
pushed a button to indicate the ongoing experience of a
chill while listening to audio recordings. They also
pushed a button to indicate neutral periods during which
there was no chill present.
15 May 2016 Behavioral Brain fMRI data were acquired on a 3T scanner. There were 16 Chinese
Research three types of stimuli: pictographs referring to natural speakers.
objects, object images, and grey squares. During the Mean age =
task, participants had to press one of two buttons to 22.19.
indicate whether each stimulus beautiful or ugly. This
task was only conducted with the pictographs and the
object images. The grey squares were used for a control
condition, where the luminance of the squares was
rated as high or low.

Findings

Poetry: Beauty in perception and conception

Poetry proves to be one of the better vehicles for studying the neuroaesthetics of literary art
because of its tendency towards brevity when compared to forms such as the short story or novel,
but also because it can be highly structured and rhythmic, sharing qualities with music. The
adjectives used to describe the aesthetic appeal of poetry overlap greatly with those used for
music (Knoop et al., 2016).
Figure 1. A two-dimensional scaling solution that clusters adjectives by frequency of usage together. Clusters were coded by
color and the subsamples were noted by black text. Adapted from “Mapping the aesthetic space of literature ‘from below.’” by
Knoop, C. A., Wagner, V., Jacobsen, T., & Menninghaus, W, 2016, Poetics, 56, 35-49. Copyright © 2016 by the authors.
Reprinted under Creative Commons license.

Knoop’s (2016) results show how words used to describe poems tend towards the musical, with
such words as rhythmic, harmonious, or melodious being employed. In comparison, more plot-
related words were used to describe forms such as novels, plays, and short stories.

Poetic harmony can also be implicitly noticed by the brain, without conscious awareness and by
novices (Vaughan-Evans et al., 2016). EEG results noted significant differences in response to
the presence of poetic features, even though the subjects could not consciously differentiate
between samples. The ease of processing poetry, noted by a smaller change in voltage on ERP
measurements, relates to the inclusion of specific poetic features, such as rhyme, repetition, and
meter (Obermeier et al., 2016). In addition, poetic elements work better in combination rather
than in isolation; when poetic rules were followed, there were higher proportions of ‘good’
responses and increased ‘liking’. (Vaughan-Evans et al., 2016; Obermeier et al., 2016). These
data suggest that the structured elements of poetry together play a role in how the brain identifies
and reacts to the art form. Aesthetic appreciation was found to be significantly correlated to the
ease of processing (Obermeier et al., 2016). Ease of processing only references the cognitive
load of mental processing, which is not necessarily related to the difficulty of consciously
comprehending the material.

Similar brain regions may play a role in reacting to both poetry and music, given the importance
of the structural elements, though the highest activations for poetry-evoked chills were shifted to
the back of reward-related brain regions compared to those for music-evoked chills.
(Wassiliwizky et al., 2017). Brain regions implicated specifically in the response to poetry-
related chills were the precuneus and the supramarginal gyrus (SMG), which play roles in
scenario visualizations and social cognition, respectively (Wassiliwizky et al., 2017). That social
dimension may be a point of divergence from more abstract art forms, and specifically from
music-related chills.
Figure 2. A whole-brain map comparing imaging of the brain during a chill to the brain in neutral, and comparing the prechill to
the chill period. Chill-specific activations showed in the caudate nucleus, the putamen, and mediodorsal thalamus. Prechills
showed bilateral activations in the ventral striatum, including the nucleus accumbens. Adapted from “The emotional power of
poetry: Neural circuitry, psychophysiology and compositional principles.” by Wassiliwizky, E., Koelsch, S., Wagner, V.,
Jacobsen, T., & Menninghaus, W, 2017, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(8), p. 1234. Copyright © 2017 by the
authors. Reprinted under Creative Commons license.

The medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) showed varying
levels of activation during the act of generating poetry (Liu et al., 2015). The former is thought to
be involved in motivation, while the latter is thought to be involved in self-regulation and
inhibitory behaviors. Successful poems in the study, as rated by the expert panel, resulted from
individuals who showed connectivity to the precuneus and the PCC (Liu et al., 2015). The role of
visualizations as highlighted before could thus play a role.

Figure 3. Overlaid brain activity of generation of new poems by experts and novices for A (activations) and B (deactivations).
Colors show unique activations from one or the other, or shared activations. Adapted from “Brain activity and connectivity
during poetry composition: Toward a multidimensional model of the creative process.” by Liu, S., Erkkinen, M. G., Healey, M.
L., Xu, Y., Swett, K. E., Chow, H. M., & Braun, A. R., 2015, Human Brain Mapping, 36(9), p. 3361. Copyright © 2015 by the
authors. Reprinted under Creative Commons license.
Liu’s (2015) results demonstrate how significant differences can be seen on average in the
overall generation networks of experts and novices, despite the large shared activations.

Aesthetic appreciation of single words

Another subset of studies has found success in examining the aesthetic reaction to single words,
and whether said words are beautiful or ugly. As with poetry, there is a question of the weighting
of auditory and visual processing; however, unlike poetry, which skews towards the auditory via
its relations to music, when a word is studied in isolation, the appearance of its referent plays a
deciding role (Jacobs, 2017; Zhang et al., 2016). A referent is that thing to which a given word
refers. In the case of single German words, the most beautiful words related to natural
phenomenon, while the ugliest ones involved genitalia (Jacobs, 2017). Similarly, pictographs
whose referents were beautiful were rated as more beautiful, while pictographs with ugly
referents were more often rated as ugly (Zhang et al., 2016). There was activation of the occipital
lobes and orbitofrontal cortex, which implicates visual elements more strongly as well (Zhang et
al., 2016). Interestingly, judgements of beauty engaged a wider network of cognitive regions,
including emotion/reward processing while ugliness only activated perceptual regions (Zhang et
al., 2016).

Pictographs do differ from words in other languages; while they are a type of language symbol,
they are naturally given to visual interpretation because they look like the object to which they
refer. This likely influenced the results observed. It also means that the study could not consider
how the sound of the word affects aesthetic perception, though Jacobs (2017) did show that the
sonority could positively correlate to aesthetic appreciation for a single word.

Jacobs (2017) and Briesemeister (2014) refer to the BAWL (Berlin Affective Word List), which
is a set of standardized stimuli with well-mapped ratings regarding emotional arousal, valence,
and imageability. This set has been used in many German-based research papers on cognition
over the past decade.

Emotional cues in text

Looking at judgements of positive valence in words, it was found that happiness was not
necessarily associated with positivity (Briesemeister et al., 2014). Distinct networks were
involved, with directly emotional elements involving the amygdala to a greater degree, and the
orbitofrontal cortex. Positive valence, however, engaged a wider network including the
precuneus (Briesemeister et al., 2014).

Reaction to emotional voice cues in text engaged middle brain regions such as the anterior rostral
medial frontal cortex (arMFC), the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and the cerebellum (Brück
et al., 2014). The cerebellum was also implicated in some emotional meaning processing
(Briesemeister et al., 2014).

Auditory mental imagery is associated with activations in the temporal voice area (TVA), which
responds to human voices, and could thus play a role in generating the ‘inner voice’ when
reading (Brück et al., 2014).
The aesthetic response to the emotional cues likely varies based exactly on the perception. It
seems that there is an effect caused by the positive or negative perception of an emotion in terms
of the aesthetic processing, especially in terms of what brain regions become active.

Text that contained fear-inducing passages were significantly more immersing than text with
neutral passages (Hsu et al., 2014). A main location of effects was the mid-cingulate cortex
(mCC), which showed higher correlation with the immersion experience of fear condition
passages than with those in the neutral condition. This region is a lower motor cortex, so it could
show the engagement of behavioral components of emotion that help the reader become more
emotionally connected.

Figure 4. fMRI data showing (a) a contrast of activations in the Fear and Neutral conditions, (b) the mid-cingulate gyrus showing
significant difference in correlation between immersion ratings and the BOLD response when comparing conditions, and (c) the
response strength of peaks for either condition. Adapted from “Fiction feelings in Harry Potter: haemodynamic response in the
mid-cingulate cortex correlates with immersive reading experience.” by Hsu, C., Conrad, M., & Jacobs, A. M, 2014,
Neuroreport, 25(7), p. 1360. Copyright © 2014 Wolters Kluwer Health. Reprinted under Neuroreport Usage Statement.

Discussion

Summary
Recent work done on the neuroaesthetics of literary art implicates several frontal and limbic
brain regions, primarily, which makes sense considering the importance of said regions to
executive judgement and emotional processing. The importance of auditory and visual elements
to the aesthetic appreciation of a given text also varies depending on the method of testing and
the form. Prose may have a greater visual component as compared to poetry, which shares some
qualities with music, especially as far as aesthetic interpretation goes.
Limitations
The generalizability of fMRI and EEG data is questionable, and while there was occasional
overlap between the studies in terms of brain regions activated, the varying subject matter tended
to result in differing activations, especially as far as specific regions went.

Another issue of note is that six out of the nine studies included in this survey used German
language speakers. The remaining three were Chinese, English, and Welsh. Seven of the studies
also used only individuals ranging from 18-30 in age, and the remaining two did not specify the
ages.

The language element is of particular concern. Cultural elements could play an important role in
the results given the subjective nature of some of the studies. While the generalizability could be
good for German-speakers, more testing needs to be done to assure that the results remain valid
when translated to another language.

The demographics of the participant population could also affect the results gathered, partly
because of the perceptions of beauty in youth perhaps differing from those in the elderly.
Whether this would be a significant effect has yet to be shown, but it should still be considered.
In addition, since the participants tended to be university students or more highly educated, their
perceptions might be skewed by similar biases. Other populations should be tested to validate the
current results.

More importantly, none of the imaging studies included used more than 30 participants. Despite
significant effects being demonstrated by each, the small sample size further limits the
generalizability of the results to larger populations.

Only two of the studies examined looked at prose samples in a meaningful way; the others
examined poetry, single words, or studied the terminology used to describe various fields. Thus,
there is not enough data to draw meaningful comparisons between how poetry and prose might
be processed.

Standard operating procedure in these imaging studies is the preparation of a specific stimulus,
and then the presentation to the subjects who must then interact with the stimulus in some way,
either rating it while being imaged, or afterwards, or both. This method helps to isolate specific
activations as meaningful by comparing data gathered, but it does limit the ability of researchers
to test the effects of longer-form literary art.

Conclusion

The literature on the neuroaesthetics of the literary art is still lacking in comparison to that on
other topics within the arts. While the studies reviewed here demonstrate some progress towards
better understanding the mechanisms of aesthetic appreciation of prose/poetry, each is focused
towards its own niche. The work has started to show interesting results about how aesthetic
appraisals occur, and how these are connected to emotional reactions, but more research needs to
be done before larger conclusions can be drawn about the semantic or aesthetic networks in
general.

There have been no studies of the long-term effects of literature or of aesthetic responses to
lengthier texts. This reflects the limitations of current imaging technologies and methods. A
study could be conducted to check changes in activation as an individual became more familiar
with a longer set of text, for instance.

More interdisciplinary work should also be included, especially as it can provide contextualizing
information. Knoop (2016) was useful in showing associations held by a very large sample of the
demographic typical to the imaging studies.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Professor Musselman for her feedback and patience, as well as my
classmates Abigail Vogelaar and Peijie Qing for their helpful criticisms.

References:

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