Abstract
Live theater is typically designed to alter the state of mind of the audience. Indeed, the perceptual inputs issuing from a live theatrical performance are intended to represent something else, and the actions, emphasized by the writing and staging, are the key prompting the adhesion of viewers to fiction, i.e., their belief that it is real. This phenomenon raises the issue of the cognitive processes governing access to a fictional reality during live theater and of their cerebral underpinnings. To get insight into the physiological substrates of adhesion we recreated the peculiar context of watching live drama in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, with simultaneous recording of heart activity. The instants of adhesion were defined as the co-occurrence of theatrical events determined a priori by the stage director and the spectators’ offline reports of moments when fiction acted as reality. These data served to specify, for each spectator, individual fMRI time-series, used in a random-effect group analysis to define the pattern of brain response to theatrical events. The changes in this pattern related to subjects’ adhesion to fiction, were investigated using a region of interest analysis. The results showed that adhesion to theatrical events correlated with increased activity in the left BA47 and posterior superior temporal sulcus, together with a decrease in dynamic heart rate variability, leading us to discuss the hypothesis of subtle changes in the subjects’ state of awareness, enabling them to mentally dissociate physical and mental (drama-viewing) experiences, to account for the phenomenon of adhesion to dramatic fiction.
Highlights
According to Aristotle, theater results from a human disposition for storytelling and imitation,“one instinct of our nature” (Aristotle, 350 B.C.E)
The instants of adhesion were defined as the co-occurrence of theatrical events determined a priori by the stage director and the spectators’ offline reports of moments when fiction acted as reality.These data served to specify, for each spectator, individual functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) time-series, used in a random-effect group analysis to define the pattern of brain response to theatrical events. The changes in this pattern related to subjects’ adhesion to fiction, were investigated using a region of interest analysis.The results showed that adhesion to theatrical events correlated with increased activity in the left BA47 and posterior superior temporal sulcus, together with a decrease in dynamic heart rate variability, leading us to discuss the hypothesis of subtle changes in the subjects’ state of awareness, enabling them to mentally dissociate physical and mental experiences, to account for the phenomenon of adhesion to dramatic fiction
With respect to the kind of theatrical events, 40% of subjective events matched with textual theatrical events, and 60% with direction-related markers unambiguously defined in the list of instructions provided by the stage director to the theatrical team
Summary
According to Aristotle, theater results from a human disposition for storytelling and imitation,“one instinct of our (human) nature” (Aristotle, 350 B.C.E). Transition from the reality grasped from sensory information to the represented reality is made possible owing to the potency of the phrasing and acting, promoted by the stage director’s artistic concept and envisioning of the drama In his Poetics, Aristotle emphasized the key function of both writing and staging, and the distinction between theater and narrative; “tragedy, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative” (Aristotle, 350 B.C.E). According to Coleridge (1817) who coined the notion to support non-realistic elements in literature, the “willing suspension of disbelief ” necessitates “to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth” to enjoy a fantastic story
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