The theatrical stage setting: A tool for neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscienc

Abstract

The field of live performance offers to cognitive neuroscience precious resources and novel experimental designs with unsuspected potential. Based on an innovative interdisciplinary experiment realized in 2008 at the Laboratory of Imaging and Cognitive Neurosciences, Strasbourg hospital, in partnership with the National Theatre of Strasbourg, this chapter narrates how such an experimental protocol tightly mixing neuropsychology and live performance allows obtaining disturbing and meaningful results and paves the way towards other experimental protocols. In this experiment, direct intervention of the stage director into the theatrical story carried out by the comedian induced correlated changes in neurological and physiological states. Moreover, the specific neuropsychological activations were similar to the ones observed in hypnotic states. Thus, this chapter shows how much staging, from a systemic and interdisciplinary perspective, offers fertile fields of investigation for cognitive science and neuropsychology.