#75: 🧠🎨 Neuroaesthetics: The Beneficial Effects of Art on the Brain
How the arts can be a pathway to enhancing brain health & mental health
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Hey Friends,
I spent most of February and March nesting and decorating my flat.
It was a big project and certainly painful at times. But the result is stunning.
I didn’t realize how much my space was affecting my mood everyday.
Every time I changed a piece of furniture I felt a huge difference.
Especially when I removed or replaced something I hated, with something that I love.
Now, I love every piece of furniture, every decoration and every choice I made in the flat.
As an American, I grew up with what I like to call “landlord trauma.”
Landlords create leases that say “you can’t put holes in the walls,” “you can’t paint,” “you can’t make any changes.”
So, we learn to live with how the flat was given to us.
We even learn to tolerate the big, terrible overhead light that we cannot change.
Then I moved to Germany.
In Germany, when you start a fresh rental lease, sometimes the flat will not come with a kitchen.
And yes, you read that correctly, you have to. BUILD. YOU. OWN. KITCHEN, in a rental apartment.
They also may not give you any lamps, just leave live wires hanging from the ceiling.
Because of this, Germans go all out on customization.
I mean, what the hell, if you have to build a kitchen, you might as well paint the walls, add cool light fixtures and hang up your art.
I’m now fully embracing that lifestyle.
Previously my thought was, if I’m renting, why would I invest money and time into making it nice.
Now, I’ve totally changed my mind.
Why does renting mean that I have to live in a home that is not aesthetically pleasing?
And then live in misery, saving money until I can finally buy a place of my own to customize.
It doesn’t make sense to me anymore, especially because I’ve been renting my entire adult life.
I now believe that every single space, rental or not, is worth customization.
Through this process, I truly felt the impact decor has on me.
This made me curious on how aesthetics and the arts may impact our brain, our brain chemistry and our mental health.
Which led me to the field of Neuroaesthetics.
And that, my loyal readers, is what today’s note is all about.
💬 In this note:
🧠🎨 Neuroaesthetics: The Beneficial Effects of Art on the Brain
📚 Your Brain on Art
⚡️ Amazing Deep Sea Creatures
🧠🎨 Neuroaesthetics: The Beneficial Effects of Art on the Brain
Has a song ever given you goosebumps?
Have you ever been struck with a complete send of awe while watching a performance?
Do you feel a connection between art, your brain and body?
Aesthetic experiences are hard-wired in us.
They are fundamental to our health, well-being and learning.
Aesthetics is a topic traditionally claimed by the humanities.
It’s an area that science has shied away from because it didn’t seem answerable, definable and measurable.
However, with innovations in recent decades, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), this can now give a concrete picture of what’s going on in the brain.
With these tools, scientists can observe and measure parts of the human experience that were previously unmeasurable.
Such as observing art.
Through these advancements in technology a new field of brain research emerged in the late 1990s to study how the arts measurably change the body, brain and behavior.
This field is called Neuroaesthetics.
Neuroaesthetics is a truly multidisciplinary field, bringing together neuroscience, neurology, cognitive science, engineering, psychology, psychiatry, public health, design, education, the humanities and of course, the arts.
The term was first coined by Semir Zeki, renowned neuroscientist and professor at the University of College London whose work initially focused on examining the neural bases underlying how we perceive and judge works of art.
Susan Magsamen, founder, and director of the International Arts + Mind (IAM) Lab Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is expanding the definition of Neuroaesthetics.
Her definition of neuroaesthetics is to embrace not just human response to the arts, but also its broader implications and applications to society.
Neuroaesthetics for Health
Art Therapy
The University of Florida conducted a clinical trial called “Music in Emergency and Trauma Medicine” in which they showed that providing music intervention could reduce both stress and pain in patients.
This could have a tremendous impact on healthcare if a non-pharmacological intervention, like music, could help alleviate a patient’s perceived pain and reduce the need for prescription painkillers and addictive opioids.
In 2020, a report by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) analyzed more than 116 studies that looked at arts-based interventions for opioid-disorders.
The data revealed that listening to music reduces pain, lessening the need for potentially addictive medication and improving readiness and motivation to seek treatment.
Following these studies, doctors in Canada and the United Kingdom have been recently prescribing museum visits and arts activities to their patients, linking patients to community resources to increase health and well-being.
The Healing Power of Art in Military Recovery
Creative Forces: NEA Military Healing Arts Network represents a collaboration between the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Department of Defense, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
This initiative integrates creative arts therapy into a comprehensive treatment plan aimed at helping veterans recover from combat trauma.
Participants engage in art therapy, which includes writing, music and making art, as part of their daily treatment alongside traditional medical approaches.
Research has shown that art therapy can significantly aid in the healing process for individuals dealing with PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury.
Melissa Walker, art therapist and researcher at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence, highlights the practical benefits of art-making in her popular TED Talk, “Art can heal PTSD's invisible wounds.”
She explains how creating art allows service members to tap into deep-seated, pre-verbal parts of the brain, using symbols to express traumatic experiences that are hard to articulate.
Projects like mask-making give them a way to visualize and communicate their trauma, turning their personal struggles into something that can be shared, understood by others, and ideally be overcome.
This approach not only aids in individual healing but also contributes to breaking down the stigma around mental health in the military community.
Enriched Environments
Back in the 1960s, neuroscientist Marian Diamond made a breakthrough discovery on how environments impact the brain.
She placed cohorts of rats in three different types of cages.
Each cage had access to the basics: food, water and identical light levels.
The rats were then divided into three environments.
An enriched environment - a cage that included toys, textures, and objects to explore and play on.
A regular environment - a cage with a standard exercise wheel
An impoverished environment - a space devoid of any exploratory objects or stimulation.
After a few weeks, Diamond studied the rat brains and discovered that the cerebral cortex of the group in the enriched environment was 6% thicker than that of the group in the impoverished environment.
It was the first time that anyone had seen a structural change in an animal’s brain based on its environment.
Marian Diamond became the first scientist to observe neuroplasticity, and she is one of the founders of modern neuroscience.
Since her pioneering work, scientists have seen how our surroundings can have a cumulative effect on us.
The human-built environment has an impact on individuals and communities over time.
Modern neuroscience and biology continue to confirm and advance Diamond’s findings, reconfirming the positive outcomes of enriched spaces.
Clinical Environments
Recently, I attended a seminar by Dr. Prof. John Kraukaer, titled “Clinical Environments 2.0” on the topic of redesigning the hospital.
He started his presentation by stating that society has come up with this idea that when we are ill, we need to feel as terrible as possible, and we have to go into hospitals that make us feel even more dreadful.
Our modern hospitals are designed completely devoid of aesthetics, warmth or comforts.
“Hospitals feel more like mausoleums.” says Krakauer.
They are designed as impoverished spaces.
In the talk, Krakauer discussed Marian Diamond’s work on enriched environments, and also elaborated on more recent animal studies which have shown neuroplasticity such as dendritic growth, new spine formation and synaptogenesis as a result of enriched environments.
So, from what we know about how enriched environments are beneficial to health…
Why do we make hospitals into impoverished spaces?
Especially since hospitals are spaces where patients go to be treated and then recover from a surgery or injury.
Dr. Krakauer, a neurologist and neuroscientist specializing in stroke rehabilitation, emphasized the importance of enriched environments in patient recovery.
He said,
“If you are sick, you might as well enjoy it.”
In particular, he suggests it is possible for an enriched environment to augment our brain’s own repair capacity to improve recovery after a stroke or traumatic brain injury.
Now, it may not be plausible to completely redesign an entire hospital to be aesthetically pleasing, but with new technologies such as VR and immersive rooms, it can be possible to place a patient into an enriched environment without making any physical changes to their surroundings.
Enriching Environments through Immersion
John Krakauer, Omar Ahmad, Promit Roy, and the Kata Design Studio from the Johns Hopkins University, Department of Neurology, jointly created an enriched environment to enhance patient’s recovery through immersive gaming.
The game, originally called I Am Dolphin, has been licensed from Johns Hopkins University to MindMaze SA and is available commercially as the MindPod Dolphin.
To play MindPod Dolphin, the patient comes into an immersive room, where the patient is surrounded by screens and speakers to be transported into a new environment, a beautiful undersea landscape.
In this environment, the patients take on the role of a dolphin in a highly engaging, animated immersive video game to help them regain mobility after a stroke or brain injury.
While in this undersea environment, the patient controls the actions of the dolphin learning to catch fish and dodge sharks.
Through gameplay, the patient relearns how to control movement in their limbs and creates new neural pathways.
Most importantly, the patient has fun playing the game.
Making adhesion to their treatment plan easier and they can see their improvement by progressing through the levels.
Immersive Environments for Burn Victims
Burn patients must have regular wound care to replace their bandages and have their wounds cleaned, but during wound care, they experience severe pain which cannot be controlled by opioids or narcotics.
To help burn patients, researchers Hunter Hoffman and David Patterson from the University of Washington developed SnowWorld, the first immersive virtual reality (VR) designed to reduce pain for burn victims.
By wearing a VR headset and earphones during treatments, patients are transported into a calming, wintery scene with soothing music, filled with snowmen, icy lakes, glaciers and penguins, which the patients can throw snowballs at.
The distraction of the VR experience has proven effective, with patients reporting a 35-50% reduction in pain compared to regular treatment.
Patients who used the VR program reported that they actually had some fun.
The use of VR not only lessens pain intensity but also turns a distressing procedure into a more bearable, even enjoyable, experience.
Nature, the Ultimate Enriched Environment
Nature is the ultimate enriched environment, and one that should be considered in the clinical redesign of the future.
I am lucky to work at the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal, a sea-side cancer hospital and research institute dedicated to improving the patient experience.
Recently, a colleague of mine, Lomax Ward, has been undergoing chemotherapy at the Foundation. He told me that when he comes in for chemo, he can take his chemo-drip with him to go sit in the fresh air of the garden, play backgammon and look out to the Atlantic Ocean.
“For my chemo sessions, I park the car, walk through a jaw droppingly beautiful tropical garden, am hooked up to the meds in a comfortable and private booth and then have the option to sit or lie in the sun in a garden next to a fountain, with the smell of the sea and the sounds of the seagulls accompanying me for the three hour infusion. This has allowed me to approach this daunting task with a lot more positivity and I can’t help but feel that that feeds into my immune response and general combat readiness to fight this disease.”
He’s had a speedy and good recovery.
Do you think it might have had something to do with the environment in which he’s getting his treatment?
I certainly do.
Neurodegenerative Disease
As our aging population grows, neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and mental health disorders, depression in particular, are creating a strain on the public health systems, and will continue to do so.
Neuroaesthetics offers researched-based evidence that a variety of arts-based approaches may work to address these disorders, improve quality of life, mobility, mental health, speech, pain, learning and more.
These interventions have the potential to improve the lives of millions of people suffering from chronic disease, neurological disorders and mental health issues.
For example, MedRhythms is a next-generation neurotherapeutics company, leveraging the power of music and technology to redefine what’s possible in brain health. Their pioneering product is designed to improve walking and mobility by using music to improve movement.
Reimaging Healthcare
Neuroaesthetics invites us to reimagine healthcare and recovery spaces where art and nature are just as important as the drug or treatment plan prescribed.
As we continue to uncover how aesthetics affect the brain, we can unlock novel therapies that can heal the mind, body and soul.
The intersection of art, environment and health opens up revolutionary paths for healing, recovery and prevention of disorders and diseases.
📚 Book of the Week
Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us by Susan Magsamen & Ivy Ross
Rating: ★★★★☆
Your Brain on Art is an easy read, written for the layperson, on the recent research in Neuroaesthetics or, as Magsamen & Ross call it, “Neuroarts”.
Throughout the book, they dive into explaining a phenomenon we all feel…
The Awe of art.
The emotions of curiosity, surprise…wonder…
Are all essential for human development.
And we can experience them through making and experiencing the arts.
While pouring through the latest research on how the arts influence and can help our health and well-being, the authors found that just 20 minutes of art a day makes a huge difference in both the creator and the beholder.
In a recent article, written by Colleen Smith, for Art and Object titled “Neuroaesthetics: How Art is Scientifically Proven to Help Brain Health” Magsamen says,
“We have relegated art to only entertainment, or enrichment – not lifeblood or birthright. We want to put art at the center of our lives, not as something that would be nice to have.”
I absolutely agree with her quote. Art is a part of life, not an extra.
I gave the book only 4 of 5 stars not due to any fault of the authors.
More as a fault to the newness of the field.
The impact of this field has the potential to be huge, but we are only scratching the surface.
The studies highlighted in the book, while scientifically-backed, were reports of patients feeling better when art was incorporated into their treatment plans.
While this data is compelling of how revolutionary the arts can be, I was hoping to see more fMRI studies with quantitative increases in neuroplasticity, and a deeper exploration of these links.
⚡️ Check This Out
Until about 150 years ago, the deepest parts of the ocean were thought to be completely uninhabited.
The environment in those depths is freezing, with a complete absence of light, and under enormous pressure.
Scientists assumed that no animal could survive those conditions.
However, scientists now believe that there may be more animals in the ocean depths than here on land, and the creatures are stunningly alien in their appearance.
Bioluminescent fish, transparent jellies, and crabs that can stretch 12 feet from claw to claw are just a few examples.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium is presenting these captivating inhabitants of the deep sea, many on view for the first time ever, in their blockbuster exhibit Into The Deep.
This exhibit is also the first to be offered as a bilingual exhibit online as En Lo Profundo.
Edited by Wright Time Publishing