For many of us, we need look no further than our family, friends, and colleagues to know someone affected by a neurological disease such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or Alzheimer’s disease. And that doesn’t even take into account the acute daily stress we all experience, sometimes to toxic levels.
In fact, one in four people will suffer from a mental health problem or psychological disorder at some point in their life, with anxiety and depression being the most common. Neurological diseases are a leading cause of poor health and disability worldwide, and cognitive impairment affects approximately 14 percent of the U.S. population.
Fortunately, just as our brains and bodies respond negatively to trauma, stress, and illness, they also respond positively to art and aesthetic experiences. Over the past 30 years, advances in technology have allowed scientists to non-invasively get inside our heads and discover what artists and art lovers have intuitively known for thousands of years: that we can Now you can prove that it is wired.
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The late evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson traced our desire to create and commemorate our lives through artistic expression to the time when humans first began using fire. He discovered that what began as a nightly rejuvenating gathering around the fire grew into the creation of stories, songs, dances, myths, and cave paintings that connected us like nothing else. I believed it would come. Over the millennia that followed, people gathered around fires developed into incredibly diverse cultures spread across the globe.
Recent research and insights into humanity’s artistic past have led to a new scientific field known as neuroaesthetics, named by neuroscientist Semir Zeki in the late 1990s. Neuroaesthetics is the study of how art and aesthetic experiences produce visible changes in our brains, bodies, and behaviors, and how this knowledge is translated into practices that promote health, well-being, learning, and thriving. This is to study whether it will be done. The field is highly interdisciplinary, operating at the intersection of arts, health, medicine, science, and technology.
In 2023, Ivy Ross, Google’s Chief Design Officer for Consumer Devices, and I. your brain on art. The book, now in its 11th printing, is the result of four years of writing and interviews with more than 120 researchers, artists, community organizers, and others, with the goal of informing the public about the power of neuroaesthetics. It is the culmination of. We need art to be accessible, readily available, and affordable, and importantly, it takes artistic talent and talent of any kind to reap great benefits from engaging with it. I wanted to share what I don’t have. Regardless of your skill level, working on an art project for just 45 minutes has been shown to reduce stress and lower cortisol levels in up to 75% of people.
One of the book’s chapters focuses exclusively on restoring mental health using neuroaesthetic principles, providing a detailed explanation of the brain’s mechanisms for processing stress and trauma, and It documents how events cause PTSD. Dutch psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk used fMRI scans to discover how the brain’s Broca’s area (one of the areas responsible for language and speech) shuts down in response to traumatic experiences. We’ve shown how it can be very difficult or impossible for someone going through that episode. To talk about it. Arts interventions can help people who have experienced trauma understand what happened to them, allowing them to recover the ability to share memories while reducing emotional dysregulation.
One such intervention program is named Creative Forces, Developed jointly by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and state-supported arts agencies. Creative Forces was launched in 2010 as an intensive, month-long program of so-called creative arts therapy for military personnel with traumatic brain injuries and PTSD.
Among the creative art therapies offered, the program includes mask making, an ancient art form that has been proven to be an effective art therapy. These projects create masks that represent aspects of the experience that service members want to explore, allowing them to externalize their thoughts in a non-judgmental environment. The finished masks express a wide range of emotions, from symbolic representations of fallen friends to representations of battle wounds and even patriotic icons. By creating these works of art, service members can open up to their families, talk about their experiences, reduce the occurrence of flashbacks, process their darkest, most frightening memories, and gain a sense of control over those memories. Now you can get it back. their current life.
Another arts-related therapy involves dance, which has great benefits for the physical and mental health of people at risk of or even diagnosed with neurodegenerative diseases. may result in In one study, researchers looked at the effects of 11 types of physical activity, including cycling and swimming, but found that only dancing reduced the risk of dementia in older participants. The researchers pointed out that the effect may come from the fact that dance involves both music, which stimulates the brain’s reward centers, and movement, which activates sensory and motor circuits.
They also observed that dancing combines mental effort with social interaction. Unlike other types of movement, dancing requires your entire body and requires your brain to coordinate all muscle groups at once to perform a specific sequence of movements. Dance can especially make a difference in the lives of people with movement disorders. One example is Mark Morris Dance Company’s Dance for PD program. This is a global initiative that invites people with Parkinson’s disease and their families to participate in free virtual or in-person dance classes. Neuroaesthetic research findings published in more than 40 peer-reviewed journal publications show how dance can help improve gait, mood, sleep, and cognition in people with Parkinson’s disease.
Singing, playing, and listening to music can also help improve cognition and quality of life for people with dementia. For people in the early to middle stages of dementia, participating in art and aesthetic experiences may reduce agitation and other behavioral problems.
Since 2020, the number of scientific papers related to neuroaesthetics research has steadily increased, from 700 in 2020 to 3 years later, according to data compiled by the University of Pennsylvania. The number has reached 900. (KS3) And there is also a growing awareness of neuroaesthetics. In collaboration with the Aspen Institute and a diverse group of researchers and practitioners, I launched the NeuroArts Blueprint in 2021 to raise awareness and expand research and funding in this field.
Ultimately, the arts offer transformative benefits that are accessible to everyone, regardless of skill. By embracing an “aesthetic mindset” steeped in curiosity, sensory awareness, and playfulness, each of us can experience the profound impact that art and aesthetics have on our well-being. These habits are just as important as exercise, sleep, and proper nutrition.
This is an opinion and analysis article and the views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of the author. scientific american.
