ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Perception Science
This article is part of the Research TopicAt the Borders of Movement, Art, and Neurosciences- Volume IIView all 7 articles
Cognitive and Emotional Responses to Viewing Mummies in an Egyptian Museum
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Psychology, Faculty of Medicine and Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
- 2Department of Architecture and Design, Polytechnic University of Turin, Turin, Piedmont, Italy
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A recent subfield of neuropsychology is the study of people's reactions to visiting a museum and observing artworks. However, museums do not only contain artworks or archeological finds, and some of them exhibit human remains, such as mummies. A growing debate concerns the ethical issues of such exhibitions, but the psychological and physiological reactions of visitors when viewing mummies have not yet been measured. In this study, 33 subjects (40.3±14.4 years old) participated in two experiments conducted at the Egyptian Museum of Turin (Italy). In the first experiment, they were asked to observe an empty sarcophagus, an opened sarcophagus with a mummy inside, and an open sarcophagus with the mummy placed between the cover and the coffin of the sarcophagus. Subjects wore an electroencephalographic (EEG) system on their heads, electrodes on their fingers to measure skin conductance levels (SCL) and wore eye-tracking glasses. In the second experiment, they visited the room of the “Three Sisters” with two completely bandaged mummies and one partially unbandaged. The indices extracted from EEG and SCL signals were compared before and after they noticed the partially unbandaged mummy. Cognitive workload was found to increase due to the presence of the mummies in the first experiment, whereas an increase in emotional arousal (SCL) was observed in the second experiment after participants saw that partially unbandaged mummy.
Keywords: Archaeology, cognitive workload, Cultural heritage, emotion, Mummies, museum, neuroaesthetics
Received: 22 Apr 2025; Accepted: 15 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Iosa, Scaramozzino, Benente, Minucciani and Franzò. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Marco Iosa
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