Aesthetic Anhedonia and Psychotic Hyper-Meaning: Dysregulated Symbolic Closure Dynamics.
Integrative psychological & behavioral science April 15, 2026 Seyed Kiarash Sadat Rafiei, Mahsa Asadi Anar 2 citations
Aesthetic anhedonia—a reduced capacity for pleasure and meaning from art—and psychotic hyper-meaning—where neutral events take on excessive significance—are typically studied separately. This paper argues they are opposite dysregulations of a shared process governing how meanings stabilize over time. The authors propose a framework of symbolic closure dynamics: aesthetic anhedonia reflects hypo-closure, a failure to reach or sustain convergence of meaning, while psychotic hyper-meaning reflects hyper-closure, premature or misanchored convergence on insufficient evidence. The framework bridges reward-based models, aberrant salience, predictive processing, and network theories, offering testable predictions about timing, stability, noise sensitivity, and revisability of meaning formation. Aesthetic stimuli are highlighted as sensitive probes of these dynamics.