NeuroDante

The project belongs to the field of research called Neuroaesthetics and arises from the collaboration between researchers in neuroscience and researchers in literature at Sapienza University.

Funder & Duration

  • Funder: Bandi di Ateneo dell’Università Sapienza di Roma
  • Duration: 1 Year- 2015/2016

Objective of the project was to evaluate the emotional and cognitive reaction to the listening of selected pieces of canticas belonging to the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso parts of  the famous Italian XIV century poem the  “Divina Commedia” by Dante Alighieri. In particular, purpose of the study was to investigate wether there was a difference in the reaction expressed by expert (university students of humanistic courses) and not expert (university students of scientific courses) volunteers.

Preliminary results conducted on a reduced sample showed a statistical significance in the interaction between the factors background and the factor cantos for the electroencephalographic indices Approach-Withdrawal and Cerebral Effort. Similar results in terms of statistical significance have been also obtained in the Emotional Index, calculated from the elaboration of the Heart Rate and the Galvanic Skin Response.

Publications 

  • Giulia Cartocci, Anton Giulio Maglione, Enrica Modica, Dario Rossi, Paolo Canettieri, Mariella Comb2, Roberto Rea, Luca Gatti, Carmen Silvia Perrotta, Francesca Babiloni, Roberto Verdirosa, Roberta Bernaudo, Elena Lerose and Fabio Babiloni, The “NeuroDante project”: neurometric measurements of subject’s reaction to literary auditory stimuli from Dante’s “Divina Commedia”, Symbiotic conference proceedings 2016, Padua 29-30 September 2016 – in press