Cultural resonance in the brain: EEG-Based insights into emotional engagement with festive imagery

Festive imagery is fundamental in constructing cultural identity, affective resonance, and collective memory. The neural engagement patterns in Kolkata individuals, upon viewing familiar and unfamiliar festive images, have been studied by using electroencephalography (EEG) as an on-line, non-invasive indicator of neural activity. In particular, the study compares participants' neural reactions to images of the Onam festival of Kerala—a culturally unfamiliar festival—to those of Durga Puja celebrations outside Kolkata, which, although culturally familiar, are not immediately geographically specific. The EEG parameters that were assessed were cognitive load, emotional arousal, neural stimulation, and frontal lobe activation linked to attention and affective processing. Results show that novel but colorful festive images like Onam had greater and longer-lasting cognitive and emotional activation than familiar Durga Puja images. Such increased activation was associated with augmented beta and gamma wave activity, reflecting high arousal and attention, as well as marked frontal lobe activation. The findings indicate that novelty, visual symbolism, and the richness of cultural representations have a central role to play in the modulation of cognitive processing and emotional resonance, even among culturally homogenous populations. The research adds to the growing body of literature in neuroaesthetics and cultural neuroscience by demonstrating how culturally unfamiliar but symbolically dense images can elicit profound cognitive and affective responses. These findings have implications for intercultural communication, visual media design, and festival tourism promotion, where strategic deployment of culturally diverse imagery can increase audience engagement and emotional resonance.