The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA.
Prog Brain Res. 2013;205:41-53. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-444-63273-9.00003-4.
Marcel Proust's famous madeleine experience, in which a man recalls his past through intense concentration after he tastes a cake dipped in tea, has been dubbed the "Proust Phenomenon" by researchers in the neurosciences. The passage in Proust's novel, however, has been systematically misread in the scientific literature due to the complexity and the ambiguity built into the text. A review of work by neuroscientists, popular science writers, and literature scholars suggests that the most productive interdisciplinary research occurs not where two disciplines converge (the madeleine as olfactory memory cue), but rather where they diverge (phenomenal description over quantitative analysis). This chapter argues that researchers in neuroscience and neuroaesthetics should forget the madeleine in Proust to investigate not only the other cognitive insights offered by Proust's vast novel, In Search of Lost Time, but also the ways in which Proust's novel seeks to bridge the distance between autobiographical experience and critical analysis.
神经科学研究者将马塞尔·普鲁斯特（Marcel Proust）著名的“玛德琳蛋糕体验”，即品尝一块蘸着茶水的蛋糕后，通过高度集中的注意力唤起过去的记忆，称为“普鲁斯特现象”。然而，由于文本的复杂性和模糊性，普鲁斯特小说中的这一段在科学文献中被系统性地误读。对神经科学家、科普作家和文学学者的研究工作的回顾表明，最富有成效的跨学科研究不是发生在两个学科交汇的地方（玛德琳蛋糕作为嗅觉记忆线索），而是发生在两个学科分歧的地方（现象描述与定量分析）。本章认为，神经科学和神经美学研究人员应该忘记普鲁斯特的玛德琳蛋糕，不仅去研究普鲁斯特那部鸿篇巨制《追寻逝去的时光》所提供的其他认知见解，还要研究普鲁斯特的小说如何试图弥合自传体经验与批判性分析之间的距离。
