PDF Summary:Your Brain on Art, by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross

Look around you right now: What’s the most beautiful thing in your surroundings? A painting? A song playing in your headphones? A tree or animal? A loved one’s face? Whatever it is, it has a direct impact on how you think and feel. In Your Brain on Art, Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross dive into neuroarts—how art and aesthetics affect the brain and body—tracing its influence from the moment we began to love art as a species to the concrete benefits it still provides us today.

In our guide, we’ll explore how art spurred humans’ development as a social species. Then we’ll discuss the principles of neuroarts, the benefits of art, and how you can use the arts to flourish. Finally, we’ll add historical and scientific context for Magsamen and Ross’s ideas, as well as perspectives and advice from other experts in neuroscience, psychology, and art.

(continued)...

However, in Transcend, Scott Barry Kaufman offers a modified version of Maslow’s hierarchy, dividing needs according to whether they provide security or whether they enable growth. Safety (both physical and emotional) is the most foundational level of this hierarchy, and Kaufman says emotional safety requires us to feel secure with the people around us. Since Magsamen and Ross say art led our species to associate social interaction with safety, Kaufman might consider art to be a need in the same way food and rest are.

Additionally, as Magsamen and Ross note, mental illness can threaten a person’s safety and survival through outcomes like divorce, addiction, and suicide—so making or experiencing art might help stabilize their emotional well-being and fulfill a need during periods of crisis.

In this section, we’ll examine four areas in which the arts can improve our lives: emotional regulation, stress management, childhood development, and geriatric health.

Benefit #1: Art Helps Us Manage Emotions

As we’ve seen, art is processed in the brain through functions like sensation, neurological reward, and assigning meaning. Magsamen and Ross explain that since the brain is also where emotions are processed, we can use art as a tool for managing our emotions by deliberately exposing ourselves to artistic and aesthetic experiences.

The authors explain that humans have a massive capacity for emotion—some scientists theorize that we may be able to experience more than 30,000 emotions. Psychologist Robert Plutchik suggests that we have eight core emotions: joy, sadness, acceptance, disgust, fear, anger, surprise, and anticipation. According to him, these manifest in different combinations and intensities to give rise to thousands of other emotions.

(Shortform note: Plutchik also suggests that the eight core emotions are four pairs of opposites: Joy is the opposite of sadness, acceptance is the opposite of disgust, fear is the opposite of anger, and surprise is the opposite of anticipation. To clarify how different intensities give rise to other emotions, you can view each core emotion as a spectrum. For example, manifestations of fear can range from timidity to terror. For an example of how core emotions can combine to form secondary ones, fear and surprise can combine to create a sense of awe. Understanding these spectra and combinations may help you identify your more complex emotions and use art to manage them.)

Magsamen and Ross say these emotions are central to our experience as human beings and were vital for our ancestors’ evolution. However, society sends us messages that our emotions are wrong, pushing us to suppress, repress, avoid, or control them. But it’s impossible to eliminate emotions, and the authors argue we shouldn’t try to do so. Instead, we should prevent ourselves from becoming mired in emotions by learning to process them more effectively—and art can be a powerful tool in this pursuit.

(Shortform note: In Mind Your Body, Nicole J. Sachs echoes the sentiment that society tells us our emotions are wrong, and she elaborates on some of the consequences of trying to eliminate our emotions. For instance, when we experience socially unacceptable emotions like rage or despair, we suppress them, channeling them into socially acceptable emotions like frustration or regret. However, those original emotions remain, tamped down in our psyches, and eventually they overflow, overwhelming our nervous system and activating the stress response. As a result, our suppressed emotions manifest as physical symptoms like chronic pain. Sachs recommends using mindbody journaling to process emotions more effectively.)

Using Art to Think Better and Treat Trauma

Magsamen and Ross highlight the benefits of using art to improve thinking and emotional processing. Research has found that drawing and coloring activities light up the prefrontal cortex, the region that aids concentration and meaning-making. Even idle drawing like doodling sets off the reward system, and people who do it often can think more analytically and remember information more easily. Drawing also activates the left hemisphere of the brain, where verbal processing takes place. Because of this, drawing activities can help people express difficult experiences in words, making it a useful tool in the uncovering and treatment of trauma.

Drawing and Doodling Benefits: Context Matters

Research indicates that doodling and drawing can be more beneficial in certain contexts than in others. It can help you stay focused during boring tasks when your mind might naturally wander or tune out. It can also be useful as a stimming behavior for neurodivergent people, like those with autism or ADHD, helping them concentrate, lower stress, and self-soothe. However, when you need to pay attention to a visual stimulus, doodling and drawing can be distracting and result in poorer recall. Structured doodling (like coloring in shapes) may also be more helpful for information retention than freehand drawing.

When it comes to treating trauma, some evidence suggests that bilateral drawing (drawing with both hands simultaneously) can be especially effective, possibly because it activates both hemispheres of the brain.

Writing is another artistic way to treat trauma and conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). People often feel they need to keep their traumatic experiences secret, and this self-inhibition causes stress that leads to both physiological and psychological symptoms. Writing about your experiences can reduce this stress and its accompanying symptoms. Scans show that it triggers activity in the mid-cingulate cortex, where negative emotions are processed. Therefore, writing about your emotions can help you identify them and come to terms with what’s happened to you. It can improve your coping skills and relationships, and it also has physiological benefits that include reducing pain, stress hormones, and blood pressure.

(Shortform note: In Mind Your Body, Sachs recommends a mindbody journaling practice (which she calls JournalSpeak) as a treatment for chronic pain and other physical symptoms. Her rationale matches what Magsamen and Ross say: Repressed emotions and traumatic experiences manifest as physical and mental symptoms, and writing practices like JournalSpeak can help dig up those feelings and memories so they no longer cause stress. However, Sachs emphasizes that this type of writing is difficult and painful, and it can leave you feeling vulnerable—which is why her practice includes a 10-minute meditation session after the journaling to teach your brain that you’re safe and to regulate your nervous system.)

Magsamen and Ross say that when trauma is so severe that we can’t put words to it, art can still be an avenue for expression and relief. Extreme trauma can impede the functioning of the Broca’s area—the part of the brain responsible for speech and lanuage—shutting down your ability to verbally communicate. In these cases, creating visual art can be a way to express your trauma to others, making it easier for them to empathize with your experiences and to support you in your healing. It can also help facilitate verbal expression and reduce PTSD symptoms like flashbacks.

(Shortform note: In Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman outlines three stages of trauma recovery: regaining a sense of safety, reviewing the details of the trauma and mourning the loss it resulted in, and reestablishing a more normal life. Reviewing the details of the trauma must be done in a safe environment, so it’s essential to regain a sense of safety before moving on to the later stages. So while writing can facilitate that second stage, it might do more harm than good if you haven’t ensured that your brain feels safe. This may mean that creating visual art is better suited to facilitating a sense of safety before you can move on to the next stages.)

Benefit #2: Art Helps Us Manage Stress

Magsamen and Ross state that while emotions can cause stress, stress itself is not an emotion. Rather, stress is a physiological response to a perceived threat in our environment. It starts with a sense of alarm, which causes the body to release stress hormones and activate the fight or flight response. If the stressor continues, the body goes on releasing stress hormones to adapt to the ongoing threat. When the threat resolves, the body returns to its previous state to recover from the experience.

While this response can help us survive short-term dangers, it becomes harmful when we stay in it too long. It drains our energy and depresses our mood, which can lead us to unhealthy coping mechanisms like substance use and disordered eating. Part of the mental health crisis discussed earlier is due to people becoming stuck in this stress response. But because art has inherent stress-relieving effects, we can use artistic experiences to escape from the stress response cycle, so our brains and bodies can recover.

Sound can be particularly effective for this, because it doesn’t require conscious effort to take in. As a result, it can work almost automatically to bring our bodies and minds back into a recovery state. Magsamen and Ross also suggest that the vibrations in sound waves directly alter the physical movement of our body’s cells, making sound even more powerful. You can use this knowledge to seek out specific sounds that you know make you feel better.

Can Water Provide the Same Benefits as Art?

In Blue Mind, Wallace J. Nichols characterizes the state of being stuck in the stress response as “Red Mind,” contrasting it with “Blue Mind”: a calm, peaceful, contented state similar to that achieved by meditation. He suggests that proximity to and engagement with water can shift us from Red Mind to Blue Mind (which gels with Magsamen and Ross’s suggestion that nature can provide similar benefits to art, which we’ll discuss later). Nichols also explains that water has a powerful sensory appeal (much like art) and that it contributes to creative inspiration. So, not only can you access some of the same benefits art offers by spending time near or in water, you can also use it to enhance your artistic practice.

Nichols suggests you can use water to manage stress by purposely activating the stress response: Extreme sports like surfing can trigger stress, but because you’re doing it in a controlled, deliberate way, it helps you learn how to manage the stress you experience from less dangerous activities. This may also be why people enjoy art that elicits negative emotions, such as horror movies. Inducing those emotions in a safe context can make it easier to deal with them in real life.

In addition, water, like sound, doesn’t require conscious effort to take in. Looking at water (even in pictures), listening to water, and floating in water are all passive activities that engage your involuntary attention and let your conscious mind rest. We can even see a resemblance between sound and water in their physical behavior: Sound travels via waves that create a ripple effect, not unlike waves in the ocean.

Benefit #3: Art Enhances Children’s Development

Magsamen and Ross write that from childhood, we have an inborn thirst for knowledge about the world around us, and we acquire it by forming connections and associations within the brain. Artistic experiences trigger the creation of these connections, making them highly effective facilitators of learning. Artistic practice from an early age also teaches skills and behaviors that translate across different fields, meaning that learning through the arts can improve abilities unrelated to art.

(Shortform note: Other experts also highlight humans’ inborn thirst for knowledge: In Brain Rules, John Medina explains that babies are born with intense curiosity and demonstrate early use of the scientific method, using exploration to learn about the world. Additionally, research indicates that infants are capable of creative thinking from an early age. The neural connections that support learning and creativity continue forming throughout life, but they’re especially active during certain time spans in childhood development, called critical periods. Some studies suggest that psychedelic substances, when combined with aesthetic experiences, may help reinitiate such critical periods, facilitating rapid neural growth in adults.)

For example, visual arts enhance children’s observational skills, visual imagination, self-expression, critical thinking, perseverance, and their ability to learn from mistakes. Music has specific benefits, too: The authors cite research in which brain scans of musicians show more gray matter (the tissue in which the brain’s processing takes place) than those who don’t play music. Scientists believe this is because the process of becoming proficient with an instrument creates more neural connections in the brain, which requires it to grow more mass. This neural growth then helps the brain function in areas unrelated to music.

(Shortform note: The correlation between artistic engagement and improved brain function in unrelated areas can also work in the inverse: Practicing non-artistic skills may improve art skills. For example, strength training like weightlifting can improve the fine motor skills needed for things like creating visual art. Playing video games can also improve fine motor skills, as well as rhythm and timing abilities, which are crucial to playing an instrument.)

Magsamen and Ross say the arts can also aid greatly in children’s development of executive functions, the brain processes responsible for planning, making decisions, and executing tasks. These functions require coordinated activity across many different brain areas. The arts can stimulate this same type of coordinated activity, improving the brain’s ability to carry out these operations.

According to the authors, research also suggests that art can enhance our development and growth throughout childhood and young adulthood. Regular arts participation in childhood is linked to fewer social problems in teens, as well as better mental health, healthier relationships, and improved decision-making. The authors point to one study showing that children who read fiction several days a week were less likely to engage in substance use and more likely to eat healthy food.

Poverty: A Variable in Arts-Outcomes Correlation?

While there’s evidence that arts activities can result in major benefits, it’s important to be aware of the difference between correlation and causation when considering data. The connections between arts participation and the better outcomes referenced by the authors may or may not reflect a causal link.

For instance, experiencing poverty is associated with poorer outcomes for children and teens, including social problems, mental illness, inadequate nutrition, executive functioning problems, and substance use. Arts participation can also be costly: Between musical instruments, art supplies, out-of-school classes, and private lessons, extracurricular activities can cost hundreds of dollars, and many children are less able or unable to participate in the arts because their families don’t have the money. In some cases, poverty may cause both lower arts participation and poorer outcomes for children and teens, rather than lower arts participation alone causing poorer outcomes.

Benefit #4: Art Protects Us in Old Age

Arts engagement is also linked to longer lifespans and less cognitive degeneration in old age, say the authors. Music in particular can provide immense benefits to people with dementia. Because of the diversity of stimulation music provides—tone, rhythm, harmony, pitch, volume, and more—it increases activity across many different areas of the brain. Listening to or making music can spark sudden recollections or greater lucidity in dementia patients.

Arts-based therapies are also highly beneficial for people nearing the end of their lives, as art can trigger the release of hormones like dopamine and oxytocin that help people feel better. Making artwork about one’s life can help people make meaning of their pasts and leave something of themselves behind after they pass. Songwriting lets them communicate with others, reducing loneliness. Tactile activities like making music, dancing, and massage provide oxytocin, which can improve sleep and blood pressure.

Aging and Sensory Loss

As explained earlier, art and aesthetic appreciation depend on processing information from our senses; however, many older adults experience age-related sensory impairment. For example, hearing loss affects about a third of people between ages 65 and 75, and up to half of those over 75. Research shows a link between hearing loss in older age and an increased risk of cognitive degeneration such as dementia, so those with hearing impairments may be less able to benefit from music in the way Magsamen and Ross describe.

However, people with sensory impairments can still access the benefits of art. For instance, people with hearing loss can still find ways to enjoy and make music: They can often sense the physical vibrations caused by the music, and interpreters can use sign language to convey the meaning of lyrics. You may also be able to treat hearing loss using hearing aids. Likewise, people with visual impairments can make visual art using their sense of touch to detect textures, and existing visual artworks can be recreated in 3D so that visually impaired people can enjoy them.

Experts say most older adults are able to adapt to and compensate for sensory impairments. Additionally, most sensory loss is the result of environmental factors, which means protecting your senses as you get older can help reduce sensory loss. Here are some steps you can take:

• Exercise and eat a healthy diet.

• Protect your ears from loud noise.

• Avoid straining your eyes.

• Avoid smoking.

• Expose yourself to different smells and flavors.

• Use lotion and sunscreen to protect your skin.

How to Flourish Through the Arts

We’ve seen how humans evolved to create and engage with art, as well as how the brain processes art, and we’ve explored many of the benefits that the study of neuroarts has illuminated. Furthermore, Magsamen and Ross suggest that one of the most important findings of this field is how the arts can aid us in flourishing.

Flourishing is a state of presence, authenticity, and fulfillment in life. It also includes compassion for others and a sense of taking part in something greater than yourself. It requires mindfulness, a feeling of purpose, moral values, and gratitude for life. The authors argue that a state of flourishing fosters creativity, a desire to learn about new things and other people, and a sense of optimism. It doesn’t mean your life is going perfectly—rather, it’s a conscious choice to spend your life growing and learning.

Flourishing and Human Needs

Returning to the hierarchy of needs, Magsamen and Ross’s description of “flourishing” aligns with Maslow’s description of self-actualization, the highest tier of the pyramid. Like flourishing, self-actualization involves presence, mindfulness, compassion, gratitude, purpose, and openness. It also involves frequent transcendent experiences, which Scott Barry Kaufman describes in Transcend: These occur when you experience a heightened sense of joy, awe, or wonder, and while they’re most commonly triggered by natural beauty, they can also be triggered by art.

Those who have transcendent experiences on a regular basis may experience transcendence not just as a fleeting moment, but as a sustained state of being. However, this requires having your lower-level needs met, so while flourishing through art (or otherwise) may not require your life to be going perfectly, you may not be able to flourish if you lack safety or are otherwise unable to fulfill your deficiency or growth needs.

According to Magsamen and Ross, research suggests you can take steps to shift your brain toward a state of flourishing, including cultivating curiosity, seeking out enriched environments, getting creative, challenging your self-image, and surprising yourself.

Cultivate Curiosity

The authors explain that curiosity is an evolutionary adaptation that helped us investigate potential threats so we could make decisions that would help us survive. It’s how we learned which foods were safe and which were poisonous, created and used tools, and developed new technology. Finding the answer to a question releases dopamine in our bodies, causing us to feel joyful and gratified. This is the neurobiological reward that drives us to find new knowledge. Our curiosity is fueled even more when that new knowledge surprises or pleases us. You can cultivate curiosity by reveling in things you find beautiful, like art and nature.

(Shortform note: Curiosity can be divided into five forms: The first is deprivation sensitivity—the desire to fill a knowledge gap. Second is joyous exploration—a sense of wonder and fascination about the world. These two comprise the evolutionary motivation Magsamen and Ross describe, but curiosity doesn’t end there: The third form is social curiosity—the desire to learn about others. Fourth is stress tolerance—the desire for new experiences and the acceptance of the anxiety that may accompany them. Fifth is thrill seeking—the willingness to take risks to acquire intense and complex experiences. This means that seeking understanding of others and braving new situations can be additional ways to cultivate curiosity.)

Seek Out Enriched Environments

As we’ve explained, we take in the world through our senses. This means that the more sensory stimuli we’re exposed to, the greater the potential impact on our brains. Surrounding yourself with diverse sensory inputs that provoke emotion and meaning can help you flourish. Magsamen and Ross suggest that nature is the ultimate enriched environment, so spending time in natural settings is one way to take this step. Surrounding yourself with thought-provoking art is another.

Incarceration: An Environment of Deprivation

Despite the benefits of enriched environments, some people are forced to endure conditions of heavily limited exposure to stimuli, such as incarceration. The US has the largest prison population worldwide—almost 2 million people—and many states lack minimum requirements for prisoners’ access to nature. Additionally, incarcerated people may be subjected to solitary confinement, in which they’re kept in a small cell for as many as 24 hours a day, where they experience extreme social isolation and sensory deprivation. Evidence shows that this practice causes severe psychological harm while also failing to increase safety or reduce recidivism.

Reform programs like the Prison Creative Arts Project, Shakespeare in Prison, and Freedom Reads seek to increase incarcerated people’s access to artistic and aesthetic experiences, which could better provide them with the benefits of art and help them flourish.

Get Creative

Magsamen and Ross also recommend you spend time being creative. They argue that anyone can be creative, regardless of artistic talent. However, we often shut ourselves off from creativity because of self-criticism. To help yourself flourish, engage in creative thinking without judging yourself. You can do this by creating art, coming up with new ways to do things, or engaging your imagination.

(Shortform note: To think more creatively, it may help to use a visual analogy. In Six Thinking Hats, Edward de Bono divides cognition into six categories represented by hats of different colors: Blue is for metacognition, white is for gathering neutral information, red is for emotions, black is for criticism, yellow is for positive feedback and developing solutions, and green is for new creative ideas. The black hat (criticism) relates to judgment, so leave that hat off when you’re trying to get creative. Instead, use the yellow hat by asking questions like “What’s the best possible outcome?” and “How can we make this work?” Next, use the green hat by asking “How can I look at this problem differently? and “What new options can I generate?”)

Challenge Your Self-Image

Another way to flourish is to challenge the way you see yourself. Magsamen and Ross explain that we grow up internalizing things we’ve heard or been told by others, and sometimes those things are negative opinions about us. When we hold on to these negative self-views, we get discouraged and find it hard to flourish. (Shortform note: To avoid internalizing negative opinions about yourself, it may help to practice healthy skepticism—thinking critically about the information you receive instead of immediately accepting it as true.)

You can use the arts to change your perspective and understand yourself in new ways. Regularly doing this changes your brain, which can keep self-limiting beliefs from holding you down. For example, stage acting and other performances often involve taking on a persona different from your own, which can open up alternative ways of interpreting your identity.

Using Art for Self-Reflection and Transformation

More recent acting techniques may be particularly useful for challenging your self-image. In older forms like ancient Greek performances, actors showed emotions through stereotypical expressions and body language, but over the past century, method acting has become more popular. This technique involves fully embodying emotions, not just portraying them visually, and it can give you greater access to other perspectives than just showing an emotion on your face. Other art forms can be useful here as well: Some artists use self-portraits to better understand and change how they see themselves.

To begin using art for self-reflection, consider the following tips: Designate a place and a regular time for you to make art. If you feel intimidated by that prospect, ease yourself into it with a simple activity like art journaling—sketch your emotions or visualize your future to uncover what’s on your mind.

Surprise Yourself

As mentioned earlier, your brain physically changes according to what you do and think. The authors explain that when you do the same thing over and over, your brain gets used to it in a process called habituation, and eventually the activity loses its impact. To encourage flourishing, it’s important to keep your brain on its toes. When we experience something unfamiliar or are surprised, our attentional system kicks in, which primes us for learning and change. So to help yourself flourish, seek out things that are unfamiliar, like new experiences, environments, and artwork.

Surprise Updates Our Mental Models

The link between surprise and learning can be traced back to our brain’s mental models: In A Thousand Brains, neuroscientist Jeff Hawkins explains that to interpret and act on information from your senses, your brain creates mental models of your environment, uses them to continuously make predictions, and compares those predictions to your sensory input.

Every time you shift your gaze or step into a room, your brain unconsciously predicts what it expects to perceive. If nothing’s unexpected, you don’t notice anything. However, surprises—such as awe-inspiring art or natural settings—draw your attention and trigger your mind to update its models. This cycle of prediction, feedback, and adjustment is the neurological basis of learning—one that surprising experiences can kick into high gear.