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Neurophysiological Characteristics of “Transferring” the Metaphorical Meaning of Images into Original Titles

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Abstract

In this study, we aimed at finding differences between event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with creating titles for artistic images different in content and style. We had 36 adolescents (16 males and 20 females aged 15.9 ± 1.1 years) take part in two studies and used images from three categories (“caricatures,” “story sketches,” and “paintings”) full of metaphors and symbols as the stimuli. We considered creating titles for caricatures and story sketches of modern artists as a convergent creative task, whereas creating the titles for paintings was viewed as a more open and divergent creative task. During creating titles for the story sketches vs caricatures, the ERP’s amplitude on intervals 116–208 and 492–656 ms was higher in parietal-occipital and frontal, central, and parietal areas of the left hemisphere, respectively. While creating titles for the paintings in the author’s style vs realistic paintings differences in the ERP’s amplitude were found in occipital areas (152–264 ms), frontal and occipital areas bilaterally (208–440 ms), and in frontal, temporal, central, and parietal areas with maximum in the left hemisphere (544–600 ms). A late positive wave was found in two studies: story sketches vs caricatures (with the latency of 492–656 ms) and author’s style vs realistic images (with the latency of 544–600 ms) and may be connected with the extraction and analysis of the metaphorical meaning and symbols in the images for creating the verbal interpretations (titles). Only in performing a convergent creative task (closely related to the interpretation of the artist’s idea), finding the answer was accompanied by a smaller amplitude of late differences in the interval of 1300–1650 ms (more than 1500 ms before the moment when the answer was marked as found), whereas there were no significant differences between finding and not finding the answer in the second study. With the same instruction, the authors suggested that in the first study, finding an answer was accompanied by a more pronounced process of comparing one’s own ideas with a certain (implied by the artist) meaning, which was expressed in late differences between the conditions for finding and not finding answering, while in the second study, in the context of a divergent task, the process of comparing one’s own meaning and inherent one was less pronounced and was not reflected in a number of later differences.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors express their gratitude to the participants of the study and the artists who provided digital copies of their works for use in the research. The authors are also grateful to Yu.G. Potapov for advice when working with art material.

Funding

The study was carried out as part of state task no. 075-0152-22-00.

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  1. Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Zh. V. Nagornova, V. A. Galkin & N. V. Shemyakina

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  1. Zh. V. Nagornova
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  2. V. A. Galkin
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Correspondence to Zh. V. Nagornova.

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Ethical standards. All studies were carried out in accordance with the principles of biomedical ethics, formulated in the Declaration of Helsinki of 1964 and its subsequent updates, and approved by the Ethics Committee of the National Educational Establishment of the Academy of Talents, St. Petersburg (Minutes no. 1 dated September 9, 2021 GB NOU Academy of Talents, no. 2 dated September 20, 2021 GB NOU Academy of Talents).

Conflict of interest. The authors declare no obvious or potential conflicts of interest related to the publication of this article.

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Nagornova, Z.V., Galkin, V.A. & Shemyakina, N.V. Neurophysiological Characteristics of “Transferring” the Metaphorical Meaning of Images into Original Titles. Hum Physiol 49, 251–263 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0362119723700263

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