It is a common experience—and well established experimentally—that music can
engage us emotionally in a compelling manner. The mechanisms underlying these
experiences are receiving increasing scrutiny. However, the extent to which
other domains of aesthetic experience can similarly elicit strong emotions is
unknown. Using psychophysiology, neuroimaging and behavioral responses, we
show that recited poetry can act as a powerful stimulus for eliciting peak
emotional responses, including chills and objectively measurable goosebumps
that engage the primary reward circuitry. Importantly, while these responses
to poetry are largely analogous to those found for music, their neural
underpinnings show important differences, specifically with regard to the
crucial role of the nucleus accumbens. We also go beyond replicating previous
music-related studies by showing that peak aesthetic pleasure can co-occur
with physiological markers of negative affect. Finally, the distribution of
chills across the trajectory of poems provides insight into compositional
principles of poetry