Neuroesthetics is a research field that investigates the neurobiological correlates involved in the experience of artwork.
The field of study has mainly focused on the figurative arts, but it recently has also been extended to literary art as well.
At the University of Rome "La Sapienza", science meets art and literature to give life to a Neuroaesthetics project: NeuroDante, with the technological support of BrainSigns.
During the project, which lasted several years, research was also carried out at the Library of the Accademia dei Lincei, where preliminary results were presented to the President of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella, and the then President of the Chamber of Deputies Laura Boldrini.
The aim was to evaluate whether expert participants, i.e. university students from humanities courses, and non-expert participants, i.e. university students from scientific disciplines, showed different reactions in terms of cognitive and emotional involvement when listening to some passages from the Divine Comedy.
The results showed greater cerebral involvement in the expert students and greater emotional involvement among the non-experts.
The researchers also observed, in both more and less experienced groups, an unconscious tendency toward a cerebral response of appreciation while listening to the Divine Comedy passages directly proportional to the cognitive effort involved in listening and understanding the literary work.
Almost as if there was a basic and natural physiological mechanism for appreciating beauty: you don't need to be an expert to admire the great poet's most famous literary work at this level.
Given the interest in the first results, the researchers have already begun an in-depth follow-up study involving the actress Lucilla Giagnoni.
The aim is still to study the emotional response to listening to passages read by female and male voices.
The results are being processed and will be published on the BrainSigns blog as soon as they are available.
