The contemporary field of “Neurocognitive Poetics” represents one of the most revolutionary scientific developments within the interdisciplinary academic arena. It was established as an epistemological bridge connecting three major domains that were traditionally separated by thick methodological barriers: linguistics, modern literary criticism, and psychological and neuroscientific studies. Historically, classical psycholinguistic reading research and cognitive psychology focused on what can be termed the “cold processing” of informationโa processing that centered almost exclusively on word recognition speed, oculomotor control, and the comprehension of simple syntactic structures, while completely overlooking the emotional and aesthetic-affective dimensions that constitute the core of the literary experience. Conversely, literary critical theories and poetics remained characterized by an impressionistic and interpretive nature that lacked objective, replicable, and verifiable measurement tools.
From this epistemological divergence, “Cognitive Poetics” and “Cognitive Criticism” emerged as initial attempts to borrow models from cognitive psychology (such as mental schema theory and text world theory) and apply them to literary texts. Although this movement successfully shifted the focus from the isolated, static text to the active, dynamic interaction between the text and the reader’s mind, it still lacked a neurobiological grounding. Here entered “Neurocognitive Poetics” as a contemporary empirical field, leveraging the massive technological revolution in brain imaging and physiological recording equipment.
Neurocognitive poetics is founded on the premise that reading is a complex, non-innate process; biological human evolution did not develop a neural system exclusively dedicated to literature or even to reading per se. Instead, the human brain relies on the technology of “neuronal recycling,” whereby it repurposes cortical cells and networks that originally evolved for other purposesโsuch as vision, audition, and spoken languageโto serve this artificial aesthetic linguistic activity. This cognitive mechanism operates according to a hierarchical predictive system directly influenced by the stylistic features of the artistic text to reorganize the predictive schemas of the self and the world.
Arthur Jacobs formulated the “Neurocognitive Poetics Model of Literary Reading” to serve as the foundational theoretical framework for explaining the dual-processing mechanisms of literary texts. This model proposes two complementary and cognitively/neurally competing pathways through which the brain processes poetic and narrative linguistic stimuli:
This pathway pertains to the processing of “backgrounding” elements in the text, which are linguistic and semantic structures characterized by high conceptual consistency, syntactic ease, and stylistic familiarity. When exposed to a narrative text with a familiar structure, a rapid, automatic pathway is activated within the reader, characterized by “cognitive and affective fluency.” This fluency facilitates the construction of “familiar situation models” in the mind and pushes the text and its language to recede behind the wall of conscious awareness, thereby allowing the emergence of advanced states of “immersion,” “mental absorption,” and “emotional identification” with characters. In this pathway, the brain registers activation within the default mode network and regions associated with affective empathy.
Empirical studies have demonstrated that features such as “semantic cohesion and consistency” within micro-linguistic units or short poems decisively aid in accelerating access to a unified concept, reducing the variance of interpretive differences among readers. The activation of semantic consistency features as backgrounding elements facilitates the formation of mental imagery and imaginative simulation, affording the reader a fluent affective experience devoid of obstructive cognitive effort.
This pathway becomes active when the reader encounters elements of “foregrounding” and the deliberate defamiliarization of linguistic convention (ostranenie). Foregrounding elements manifest across multiple linguistic levels: phonological (such as alliteration and meter), syntactic (such as inversion and disorienting enjambment), and semantic (such as innovative metaphors and structured ambiguity). This stylistic deviation causes temporary cognitive disfluency, compelling the brain to break its automatic reading mechanism and direct heightened, conscious attention toward the physical structure of the text itself.
The activation of this slow, analytical pathway evokes “art-piece feelings” associated with aesthetic appreciation, awareness of stylistic craftsmanship, and a deep cortical revision of habitual cognitive schemas. Furthermore, one of the profound contributions of neurocognitive poetics lies in its attempt to depersonalize verbal aesthetic judgments by subjecting vocabulary to quantitative narrative analysis. This approach seeks to model linguistic features to predict what is termed “aesthetic potential” or the “intrinsic beauty of words.” The model proposes a quantitative narrative analysis matrix consisting of dimensions encompassing 16 functional cells that cover the phonological, semantic, morphological, and distributional properties of verbal stimuli. Based on data from the Berlin Affective Word List, models were designed to predict the beauty of single words based on eight core variables. Results of mathematical modeling using random forest algorithms exhibit high predictive accuracy in classifying words as beautiful or ugly.
Multiple stepwise regression analysis revealed that the beauty of a single word is strongly tied mathematically to two main variables that account for the largest proportion of variance in aesthetic judgments: “positive emotional valence” and “word familiarity.” Conversely, elements such as physiological arousal or visual imagery capacity do not serve as direct linear predictors of verbal beauty outside specific artistic contexts.
Through hierarchical cluster analysis of the most aesthetically rated words, two primary semantic patterns were identified that elicit an innate sense of artistic beauty:
Encompasses words describing nature and its living and non-living elements (e.g., gentle animals, blossoms, rainbows). This group is characterized by high positive valence and high imageability, accompanied by a marked decrease in physiological arousal.
Encompasses words associated with feelings of warmth, physical comfort, and psychological well-being (e.g., warmth, intimacy, luxury).
These findings support the concept of the “one-word poem” (inspired by Roman Jakobson’s theses), scientifically demonstrating that isolated words, even outside a lyric-metrical context, possess affective and embodied properties capable of activating the poetic function and evoking deep aesthetic and somatic emotions. This is partially attributable to Karl Bรผhler’s 1934 concept of the “semantic field aura” or “spheric fragrance of words,” which indicates that lexical items are not abstract symbols but embodied stimuli capable of automatically invoking senses of smell, taste, motion, and color within the brain (for instance, a word like “radish” can instantly trigger red and white visual impressions, crunchy auditory feedback, and earthy olfactory cues that mentally transport the reader to a garden or dining table).
These verbal levels integrate to formulate the “multimethod/multilevel hypothesis” of the neurocognitive model. This hypothesis predicts that aesthetic pleasure and preference do not result from a simple linear factor; rather, they are the product of complex, non-linear dynamic interactions occurring across multiple, simultaneous textual levelsโsuch as the intersection of sub-lexical phonological features (acoustic resonance and phonological fluency) with supra-lexical structures at the sentence and poetic line levels.
To connect the linguistic component with the neural component, the neurocognitive poetics model relies empirically on three explanatory hypotheses that define the nature of psychological and neural responses during the appreciation of literature:
The “fiction feelings hypothesis” draws upon the formulations of Miall and Kuiken as well as Zwaan regarding narrative emotions and simulation affective states. It posits that literary and narrative texts with dense emotional content invite readers to transcend the role of a neutral observer and act as affective participants through the activation of cognitive and emotional empathy networks in the brain.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies conducted on children and adults reading emotional narrative stories have confirmed that such texts directly correlate with significant activation in the bilateral and medial orbitofrontal cortexโregions in the human brain associated with processing emotional rewards, moral evaluation, and social-affective empathy.
The “Panksepp-Jakobson hypothesis” offers a strong evolutionary neuroscientific explanation for the relationship between language and emotion. It posits that the heightened affective and aesthetic responses experienced during the reception of artistic and poetic language (Jakobson’s poetic function) rely entirely on the stimulation and co-optation of deep subcortical emotional systems that humans evolutionarily share with all other mammals, as identified by neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp (such as the PLAY, SEEKING, PANIC/GRIEF, and LUST systems).
Since biological evolution lacked sufficient time to forge entirely new neural circuits for appreciating culturally recent literary arts, aesthetic pleasure, emotional tears, and bodily chills accompanying the reading of poetic masterpieces represent a physiological re-activation of these ancient instinctual emotional systems via modern linguistic technologies.
The “mood empathy hypothesis” specifically addresses the reception of lyric poetry. It assumes that poems lacking a explicit narrative arc, relying instead on the depiction of deep affective states, moods, or emotionally charged landscapes, prompt the reader’s mind to simulate and internally resonate with this atmospheric frame.
This occurs through the interplay of backgrounding elementsโwhich present familiar situational models that open the door for identificationโand foregrounding elements that direct attentional energy toward the emotional dimension underlying the words, fostering complete physiological resonance between the recipient’s mind and the text’s emotional outlook.
The application of functional magnetic resonance imaging has provided researchers with the opportunity to empirically test the defamiliarization and foregrounding hypothesis, moving beyond static rhetorical literary theory to a rigorous neuroscientific formulation that deconstructs the relationship between levels of linguistic complexity and aesthetic preference. Empirical research in this domain faced three cognitively competing theoretical frameworks explaining how levels of cognitive effort impact aesthetic judgments:
Assumes that the human brain prefers easy, familiar stimuli requiring low cognitive effort, where cognitive fluency directly correlates with an automatic, rapid positive affective evaluation preceding conscious awareness.
Assumes the exact opposite: texts with high linguistic complexity and stylistic deviations evoke a deeper and more aesthetically pleasing affective response because they compel the reader toward active cognitive reflection and aesthetic contemplation.
Posits an inverted U-shaped relationship between cognitive effort and aesthetic preference, where the brain prefers texts offering a moderate, enjoyable degree of novelty and defamiliarization without reaching a level of ambiguity that hinders comprehension or excessive familiarity that induces boredom.
Neuroscientific studies provided a decisive breakdown of these mechanisms by comparing brain processing of familiar proverbs against their unexpected stylistic modifications across two distinct levels of defamiliarization:
Involves formulating variations of popular proverbs that profoundly alter their semantic and conceptual meaning while strictly preserving the structural and phonological architecture of the original proverb. This level revealed exceptional activation in brain regions associated with self-referential emotional evaluation, emotional memory retrieval, and cognitive rewardโspecifically the medial prefrontal cortex, medial orbitofrontal cortex, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. This neural pattern supports the optimal innovation hypothesis and foregrounding theory, as the brain receives this unexpected semantic shift as a valuable reward signal worthy of expending effort to resolve cognitive incongruity and construct new, creative meaning.
Involves replacing the original words of a proverb with exact semantic synonyms without altering the deep conceptual structure. This level displayed no activation within affective or emotional networks. Instead, the brain directed its resources entirely toward the “cold cognitive evaluation, error detection, and cognitive conflict monitoring network.”
The neural response recorded significant activation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, left frontopolar cortex, right inferior parietal lobule, and left fusiform gyrus. This indicates that the brain treats such superficial alterations as syntactic or linguistic errors requiring cognitive monitoring and verification, rather than as aesthetic innovations worthy of affective appreciation.
Joint neural analysis of both types of defamiliarization compared to literal formulations revealed a unified activation pattern encompassing the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus and bilateral inferior occipital gyrus. These neural regions mark the reader’s formal entry into the “aesthetic mode of perception,” where defamiliarization and foregrounding draw attentional resources to consciously contemplate linguistic structure. Despite entering this mode, behavioral metrics confirm that excessive or semantically unjustified defamiliarization remains incapable of eliciting aesthetic ratings higher than those given to traditional proverbs, owing to the dominance of bodily cognitive fluency and the brain’s affinity for familiarity as a source of immediate pleasure.
Metaphors represent the richest and most tested tools of stylistic foregrounding in studies of neural localization and hemispheric lateralization. A vast corpus of theoretical and empirical literature addresses how metaphorical processing is distributed between the two cerebral hemispheres:
Proposed by Jung-Beeman and colleagues, this theory posits that the left hemisphere is wired for fine, narrow semantic coding, rapidly activating central, direct meanings closely tied to the primary concept, which serves direct literal language processing.
Conversely, the right hemisphere possesses a coarse, broad semantic coding system that activates distant, widespread semantic fields and establishes links between disparate concepts sharing no obvious semantic features (such as linking “respect” and “precious gem” during metaphorical processing).
Consequently, comprehending novel metaphors relies preferentially on the right hemisphere’s semantic capacity, contextual integration, and ability to derive distant meanings.
Formulated by Rachel Giora, this hypothesis opposes restricting right-hemisphere specialization strictly to metaphors. It posits that the decisive factor determining brain lateralization is the degree of conceptual salience of the linguistic stimulus within the mental lexicon, rather than whether it is literal or metaphorical per se. The hypothesis clarifies that highly salient meanings (easily accessible, familiar, conventional) are processed rapidly and entirely in the left hemisphere, regardless of whether they are strictly literal or dead conventional metaphors stored as familiar lexical entries (e.g., “fell in love” or “the city died last night”).
In contrast, when the brain encounters low-salience linguistic stimuli (such as novel, highly artistic poetic metaphors), the right hemisphere activates intensively to support the cognitive operations of the left hemisphere, attempting to decode the novel metaphor through inference and complex contextual integration.
Right-hemisphere engagement in metaphor processing is decisively influenced by three dynamically integrated factors:
Conventional metaphors are left-lateralized, whereas creative metaphors demand right-hemisphere support.
Metaphors embedded in long narrative texts or extended poems require immense integrative effort from right-hemisphere regions to connect the semantics of distant textual units.
Right-hemisphere activation rises significantly when the experiment requires an explicit judgment regarding semantic association compared to simple lexical decision tasks.
To construct a comprehensive and persuasive map of the literary reading process, contemporary empirical research pairs high-temporal-resolution techniques (electroencephalography and event-related potentials) with techniques measuring direct physiological behavior (eye-tracking and pupillometry):
Electrodynamic signals recorded from the scalp reflect the detailed temporal dynamics of semantic and pragmatic decoding of metaphors and poems through three major event-related potential (ERP) components and their spectral oscillations:
A negative wave peaking between 300 and 500 milliseconds post-word presentation, serving as the primary neural index of semantic lexical access effort and the degree of word congruence with contextual predictions. Novel literary metaphors show a sharp increase in N400 amplitude with a topographical distribution concentrated over frontal and central sites compared to literal and conventional expressions, indicating the processing load required to retrieve conceptual knowledge and perform initial semantic mapping. Notably, the N400 amplitude elicited by literary metaphors within their natural artistic context is unaffected by metaphor familiarity or strangeness, indicating that the brain responds to the poem as a holistic entity that continuously elevates semantic search expectations.
Directly follows the N400 component, sustained across the 500 to 900 millisecond window (or 600 to 900 milliseconds) over frontal electrode sites. This sustained negativity reflects the active maintenance of open, multiple meanings and the exploration of additional connotations and unclosed semantic shades that generate pleasure and poetic effect, aligning with relevance theory regarding the processing of weak implicatures. Unlike the N400, sustained negativity is strictly modulated by metaphor familiarity; novel and ambiguous metaphors evoke a deeper amplitude and longer duration of sustained negativity due to the effort to resolve stylistic defamiliarization.
Traditionally linked to syntactic processing and pragmatic reanalysis, appearing in conventional or contextually isolated metaphors following the N400 (a biphasic N400-P600 pattern) to signal the brain’s arrival at a unified, closed metaphorical meaning. In natural literature and poetry, the P600 component frequently disappears, replaced by an “N400 followed by sustained negativity” pattern without a late positive discharge. This neural absence confirms that literary texts prevent the brain from prematurely closing meaning or settling on a singular interpretation, keeping consciousness in an open, continuous state of semantic and aesthetic engagement.
Frequency analyses demonstrate intense engagement of fronto-centrally distributed delta bands and parieto-occipitally distributed theta bands during the decoding of literary metaphors, reflecting the demands of focused attention and the cognitive re-coordination of conceptual maps.
Eye-tracking serves as a vital tool for revealing real-time attentional shifts and cognitive load during the natural reading of poetry and prose. Research utilizing advanced eye-tracking systems (such as EyeLink 1000 Plus, capable of integrating eye movement and pupillometric readings with high precision) reveals fundamental distinctions separating the physiology of reading poetry from prose:
Poetry reading is associated with a significant increase in the number of visual fixations per line, alongside longer single-fixation durations compared to semantically equivalent prose. Physiologically, this slowdown reflects the brain consuming additional cognitive resources to process phonological and rhythmic dimensions interwoven with semantic layers.
Reading poetic structures shows elevated rates of regressive saccades (returning to read previously encountered words or lines). These backward movements are driven by the reader’s desire to monitor syntactic, phonological, and poetic coherence at line breaks or rhyme scheme junctures, confirming that the brain processes poetry through a non-linear, continuously fed-back mechanism.
Eye-tracking systems allow the measurement of micro-changes in pupil diameter (detecting variations under 1%). Pupil dilation serves as a precise index of heightened physiological arousal, cognitive engagement, and emotional resonance triggered by encountering striking stylistic innovations in poetic texts.
Neurocognitive poetics research sheds critical light on how specialized populations process artistic language. Studies applying the “eye-tracking in the visual word paradigm” method to adults with dyslexia reveal notable interdisciplinary insights:
Individuals with dyslexia demonstrated accuracy fully equivalent to neurotypical controls in comprehending and interpreting novel metaphors, proving their intact creative cognition and deep semantic processing pathways.
However, dyslexic readers recorded significantly longer fixation durations and extended response latencies to reach the target interpretation.
These findings indicate that the core difficulty for this population does not lie in generating or inhibiting initial metaphorical meaning (which remains intact and equivalent to controls in early processing stages regardless of metaphor familiarity); rather, the bottleneck arises during the phase of “meaning construction, integration, and consolidation within complex, extended contexts” (such as long academic or narrative texts dense with metaphor), opening new avenues for designing targeted educational strategies focused on streamlining contextual integration for these individuals.
The future of contemporary neurocognitive poetics is driven by a technological integration revolutionโspecifically, the simultaneous, real-time co-registration of electroencephalography (EEG) and eye-tracking. This dual setup overcomes the inherent limitations of using either technique in isolation:
While EEG offers millisecond-level temporal resolution, it cannot pinpoint the exact visual stimulus or specific word the reader is fixating on within a printed page.
Conversely, eye-tracking precisely identifies fixation locations and durations but provides no direct data regarding how the brain processes visual information at the exact moment of fixation.
When co-registered with high temporal synchronization (at the millisecond level), researchers can deploy advanced paradigms such as “fixation-related potential” (FRP) and “eye-movement-contingent boundary tasks.” These techniques allow specific ERP components (such as N400 amplitude) to be tied directly to the precise moment the reader’s gaze lands on a target word.
This integration yields rich data on cognitive load distribution and pinpoints attentional lapses or cognitive disfluencies with extreme precision. Implementing this dual approach requires rigorous technical management to eliminate ocular artifactsโsuch as eye movements and blinksโthat would otherwise distort EEG signals recorded from scalp electrodes.
Mohsen El Belasy
A multi-disciplinary artist and researcher with extensive experience in surrealist literature and visual arts. Founder and leader of several international cultural platforms, specializing in translation, cultural journalism, and the curation of global art exhibitions.
Key Leadership Roles
Executive Director & General Secretary of the International Cooperative for Arts, Sciences and Technology ( I COAST )
- CEO & Founder: Sulfur Editions.
Website: sulfur-surrealist-jungle.com
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- Editor-in-Chief: The Room Surrealist Magazine.
- Co-founder: Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Surrealist Group.
- Co-founder: Chrysopoeia Surrealist Union
Professional Experience
Cultural Curator & Organizer
- Main Director: International Exhibition of Surrealism (Cairo / Saint-Cirq-Lapopie).
- Lead Curator: Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism and Maze of Games and Dreams (Alexandria).
- International Coordinator: ECHOS SURRรALISTES CONTEMPORAINS (Luxor / Saint-Cirq-Lapopie / Budapest / Alabama), held in collaboration with the French Ministry of Culture.
- Interwoven Voices Cairo festival (1/2)
Translator & Cultural Journalist
- Expert in translating literary and philosophical texts, with a focus on surrealist thought.
- Contributor to various international cultural journals, covering art movements and contemporary creative trends.
- Organizer of high-level cultural and artistic events both within Egypt and internationally.
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