In this wide ranging conversation we talk about current views on the subject of 'aesthetics', as covering judgements well outside of the arts (choosing a partner, home etc..) and why studying brain and other physiological responses to individually meaningful poems can be a valuable research tool. We talk about the importance of piloerection responses (goosebumps-shivers) across a wide range of species and the tool Eugen and his colleagues have developed and used to measure this, alongside a range of more traditional measures, some of the studies undertaken, and their results.
Participants:
Eugen Wassiliwizky, Post-doctoral Researcher, Department of Cognitive Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt am Main,
Germany. https://www.aesthetics.mpg.de/institut/mitarbeiterinnen/eugen-wassiliwizky.html
Ken Barrett, visual artist, writer and former neuropsychiatrist.http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk/
Some of Eugen and his colleague's papers:
Wassiliwizky, E., & Menninghaus, W. (2021). Why and How Should Cognitive Science Care about Aesthetics? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(6), 437–449.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136466132100067X?via%3Dihub
Wassiliwizky, E., Koelsch, S., Wagner, V., Jacobsen, T., & Menninghaus, W. (2017). The emotional power of poetry: Neural circuitry, psychophysiology and compositional principles. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(8), 1229–1240.
https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/12/8/1229/3778354
Wassiliwizky, E., Jacobsen, T., Heinrich, J., Schneiderbauer, M., & Menninghaus, W. (2017). Tears falling on goosebumps: Co-occurrence of emotional lacrimation and emotional piloerection indicates a psychophysiological climax in emotional arousal. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, Article 41.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00041/full
Opening and closing music: Prelude to 'Brainland', the opera by Stephen Brown.
Brainland the opera website: www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk
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Sketch by KB
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