Many of us don’t have to look much further than our family, circle of friends or colleagues to know someone who has been touched by a neurological disorder like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or Alzheimer’s disease. And that doesn’t take into account the acute daily stress we all experience, sometimes reaching toxic levels.
In fact, one in four people will be affected by a mental health problem or psychological disorder at some point in their life, anxiety and depression being the most common. Neurological conditions are the leading cause of ill health and disability worldwide, with cognitive disabilities It affects approximately 14 percent of the US population.
Fortunately, just as our brains and bodies respond negatively to trauma, stress, and disease, they also respond positively to arts and aesthetic experiences. Over the past 30 years, advances in technology have allowed scientists to enter our minds non-invasively, allowing us to prove what artists and art lovers have intuitively known for millennia: we are wired for art.
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A late evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson He made us want to create and remember our lives through artistic expression at the time when humans began to take advantage of fire. He believed that what may have begun as a gathering around a nightly fire grew into the creation of stories, songs, dances, myths and cave drawings that connected us like nothing else. Over the following millennia, these gatherings around fire have evolved into the incredibly diverse range of cultures that span our world.
Recent research and insights into humanity’s artistic past have led to a new scientific discipline known as neuroaesthetics, so named by neuroscientists. Semir Zeki In the late 1990s. Neuroaesthetics examines how the arts and aesthetic experiences measurably change our brain, body, and behavior and how this knowledge is translated into practices that advance health, well-being, learning, and flourishing. The discipline operates at the intersection of arts, health, medicine, science and technology, and is highly interdisciplinary.
In 2023 Ivy Ross, Google’s director of consumer device design, and I published Your brain about art. Now in its 11th printing, the book is the culmination of four years of writing and interviewing over 120 researchers, artists, community organizers, and more with the goal of bringing information about the power of neuroaesthetics to the public. We wanted to share that the arts are accessible, immediate, and affordable, and importantly, that no talent or gift for any form of art is necessary to reap significant benefits from the arts. Working on an art project for just 45 minutes, regardless of your skill level, can and has been proven to reduce stress. reduce cortisol levels by up to 75 percent of people.
One of the book’s chapters focuses exclusively on restoring mental health through neuroaesthetic principles and delves into brain mechanisms for processing stress and trauma, chronicling how a traumatic event can trigger PTSD. Dutch psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk used fMRI studies Showing how Broca’s area of the brain (one of the regions responsible for language and speech) shuts down in response to a traumatic experience, making it very difficult or impossible for the person experiencing the episode to talk about it. Art interventions can help traumatized people make sense of what happened and restore their ability to share their memories with less emotional dysregulation.
Such an intervention program is designated Creative Force, 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 a so-called intensive, month-long program creative art therapy for service members with traumatic brain injury and PTSD.
Among the creative art therapies offered, the program includes mask making, an ancient art form that has proven to be an effective form of art therapy. In these projects, service members make masks that represent aspects of an experience they want to explore, allowing them to vent their thoughts in a non-judgmental environment. The finished masks depict a variety of feelings, not only symbolically representing dead friends, but also battle wounds and patriotic icons. Making these artworks allows service members to open up to their families, talk about their experiences, reduce flashbacks, and recover the sense of the badl To be able to process their darkest and most painful memories and not let those memories take over their present life.
Another art-related therapy involves dance, which can have significant benefits for physical and mental well-being, even for a person diagnosed with or at risk of a neurodegenerative disease. In a study, researchers looked at the effects of 11 different types of physical activityincluding cycling and swimming, but only dancing reduced the risk of dementia in adult participants. According to the researchers, dancing may come from the fact that music stimulates the brain’s reward center and activates sensory and motor movements.
They also found that dancing combines mental effort with social interaction. Unlike other types of movement, dance involves the whole body and requires the brain to coordinate all muscle groups at the same time to perform a certain movement sequence. Dance can make a special difference in the lives of those with movement disorders. An example is the Mark Morris Dance Company Dance for PD program, a global initiative that invites people with Parkinson’s and their families to participate in free virtual or face-to-face dance classes. Neuroesthetics research findings in more than 40 peer-reviewed journals have shown how dancing can help people with Parkinson’s improve their gait, mood, sleep and cognition.
Singing, playing and listening to music can help people with dementia improve cognition and quality of life. For those in the early to mid-stages of dementia, engaging in arts and aesthetic experiences can reduce agitation and other behavioral problems.
Since 2020, there has been a steady increase in the number of scientific articles on neuroaesthetic research—from 700 articles in 2020 to 900 three years later, according to data collected at the University of Pennsylvania. (KS3) And neuroaesthetics is gaining more and more recognition. I worked with the Aspen Institute and a diverse team of researchers and professionals to get it up and running NeuroArts blueprint In 2021, to promote awareness of the field and expand research and funding.
Ultimately, the arts offer transformative benefits that are available to anyone, regardless of skill. By adopting an “aesthetic mindset”—full of curiosity, sensory awareness, and play—each of us can experience the profound effects that art and aesthetics can have on our well-being. These practices are just as important as exercise, sleep and good nutrition.
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author(s) are not necessarily their own. American scientific.
