What physiological changes and cerebral traces tell us about adhesion to fiction during theater-watching?

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.

Consciousness and the Invention of Morel

“…Most of these features may relate to changes in regional brain activity and in functional connectivity between brain regions (Maquet et al, 2005; Massimini et al, 2010). The ability of the brain to accept a fictional reality it creates as an actual one (adhesion), and thus alter the state of its own perception, is related to activations of the left ventral inferior frontal gyrus and left posterior superior temporal sulcus (Metz-Lutz et al, 2010). Interestingly enough, both regions display increased activity during sleep compared to wakefulness (Braun et al, 1997; Dehaene-Lambertz et al, 2002; Kaufmann et al, 2006).…”

Du théâtre à l’amphithéâtre : pour une extension du concept d’adhésion à la neuroscience éducationnelle

“…Il a été montré que l'adhésion à une réalité fictionnelle est très dépendante de l'intention du metteur en scène (Bressan, 2012;Metz-Lutz et al, 2010). Il convient donc que le CM intègre de manière claire et repérable l'intention de l'éducateur de faire adhérer les étudiants.…”

“…L'adhésion sera confirmée s'il y a convergence des événements subjectifs et des variations du rythme cardiaque avec au moins deux messages mis en scène. Les zones cérébrales activées seront identifiées et comparées à celles décrites par Metz-Lutz et al (2010).…”

“…Une expérience interdisciplinaire a permis de déterminer les corrélats neuronaux et physiologiques de cette adhésion du sujet-spectateur (Bressan, 2012;Metz-Lutz, Bressan, Heider et Otzenberg, 2010). Pour cette expérience, un dispositif théâtral a été recréé en laboratoire (mise au noir, lumières, etc.).…”

Phenomenal, bodily and brain correlates of fictional reappraisal as an implicit emotion regulation strategy

“…A handful of neuroscientific works have explored the neural underpinning of the distinction between real and fictional events. These studies reported that appraising an event as fictional engaged the lateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex (Abraham, von Cramon, & Schubotz, 2008;Altmann, Bohrn, Lubrich, Menninghaus, & Jacobs, 2012;Metz-Lutz, Bressan, Heider, & Otzenberger, 2010), involved in cognitive control and ER (Ochsner & Gross, 2005;Ochsner, Silvers, & Buhle, 2012). On the other hand, reality engaged, to a greater extent, the cortical midline structures (Abraham et al, 2008;Han, Jiang, Humphreys, Zhou, & Cai, 2005;Hsu, Conrad, & Jacobs, 2014), known to be involved in autobiographical memory and self-referential processing (Martinelli, Sperduti, & Piolino, 2013;Northoff, 2005).…”