Neurocognitive poetics: methods and models for investigating the neuronal and cognitive-affective bases of literature reception.
A long tradition of research including classical rhetoric, esthetics and poetics theory, formalism and structuralism, as well as current perspectives in (neuro)cognitive poetics has investigated structural and functional aspects of literature reception. Despite a wealth of literature published in specialized journals like Poetics, however, still little is known about how the brain processes and creates literary and poetic texts. Still, such stimulus material might be suited better than other genres for demonstrating the complexities with which our brain constructs the world in and around us, because it unifies thought and language, music and imagery in a clear, manageable way, most often with play, pleasure, and emotion (Schrott and Jacobs, 2011). In this paper, I discuss methods and models for investigating the neuronal and cognitive-affective bases of literary reading together with pertinent results from studies on poetics, text processing, emotion, or neuroaesthetics, and outline current challenges and future perspectives.
Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin Berlin, Germany ; Center for Cognitive Neuroscience (CCNB), Freie Universität Berlin Berlin, Germany ; Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion (D.I.N.E.), Freie Universität Berlin Berlin, Germany.
Arthur M
AM
Jacobs
Panksepp-Jakobson hypothesis; absorption; emotion potential; fiction feeling hypothesis; foregrounding; immersion; neuroaesthetics; neurocognitive poetics; neuroliterature; poetic function