Pop Culture
![Susan Magsamen - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B0BLJ25Z3G.jpg)
![Ivy Ross - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B0BN2LPY4T.jpg)
Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us
A life-altering journey through the science of neuroaesthetics, which offers proof for how our brains and bodies transform when we participate in the arts-and how this knowledge can improve our health, enable us to flourish, and build stronger communities.
"This book blew my mind!"-Angela Duckworth, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Grit
Many of us think of the arts as entertainment-a luxury of some kind. In Your Brain on Art, authors Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross show how activities from painting and dancing to expressive writing, architecture, and more are essential to our lives.
We're on the verge of a cultural shift in which the arts can deliver potent, accessible, and proven solutions for the well-being of everyone. Magsamen and Ross offer compelling research that shows how engaging in an art project for as little as forty-five minutes reduces the stress hormone cortisol, no matter your skill level, and just one art experience per month can extend your life by ten years. They expand our understanding of how playing music builds cognitive skills and enhances learning; the vibrations of a tuning fork create sound waves to counteract stress; virtual reality can provide cutting-edge therapeutic benefit; and interactive exhibits dissolve the boundaries between art and viewers, engaging all of our senses and strengthening memory. Doctors have even been prescribing museum visits to address loneliness, dementia, and many other physical and mental health concerns.
Your Brain on Art is a portal into this new understanding about how the arts and aesthetics can help us transform traditional medicine, build healthier communities, and mend an aching planet.
Featuring conversations with artists such as David Byrne, Renée Fleming, and evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson, Your Brain On Art is an authoritative guide neuroaesthetics. The book weaves a tapestry of breakthrough research, insights from multidisciplinary pioneers, and compelling stories from people who are using the arts to enhance their lives.
"This book blew my mind!"-Angela Duckworth, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Grit
Many of us think of the arts as entertainment-a luxury of some kind. In Your Brain on Art, authors Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross show how activities from painting and dancing to expressive writing, architecture, and more are essential to our lives.
We're on the verge of a cultural shift in which the arts can deliver potent, accessible, and proven solutions for the well-being of everyone. Magsamen and Ross offer compelling research that shows how engaging in an art project for as little as forty-five minutes reduces the stress hormone cortisol, no matter your skill level, and just one art experience per month can extend your life by ten years. They expand our understanding of how playing music builds cognitive skills and enhances learning; the vibrations of a tuning fork create sound waves to counteract stress; virtual reality can provide cutting-edge therapeutic benefit; and interactive exhibits dissolve the boundaries between art and viewers, engaging all of our senses and strengthening memory. Doctors have even been prescribing museum visits to address loneliness, dementia, and many other physical and mental health concerns.
Your Brain on Art is a portal into this new understanding about how the arts and aesthetics can help us transform traditional medicine, build healthier communities, and mend an aching planet.
Featuring conversations with artists such as David Byrne, Renée Fleming, and evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson, Your Brain On Art is an authoritative guide neuroaesthetics. The book weaves a tapestry of breakthrough research, insights from multidisciplinary pioneers, and compelling stories from people who are using the arts to enhance their lives.
Editorial Reviews
"This book blew my mind! An authoritative yet practical guide to neuroarts-a term that, if you haven't heard it before, is even more reason to join these brilliant coauthors on a romp through the latest science on how art transforms the brain and the body."-Angela Duckworth, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Grit
"Your Brain on Art will change how you think about the creative world, both around you and within you."-Charles Duhigg, author of the bestsellers The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better
"This wonderful book demonstrates that art is essential for health, healing, community, and bliss. Your Brain on Art is well researched and well written. I couldn't put it down."-Mary Pipher, author of Women Rowing North and A Life in Light
"Your Brain on Art explores the new science of neuroaesthetics, a way of reimagining how to live that includes art as an essential part of the human experience and an unexpected doorway to healing."-Mark Hyman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Young Forever
"A groundbreaking book on the science behind humanity, joy, and creativity. ‘Art' is the word we use for the magic that makes us better."-Seth Godin, New York Times bestselling author of This Is Marketing
"In this wonderful new book, Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross show us how the experience of art helps to build connections and pathways for mental health."-Thomas Insel, former director of the National Institute of Mental Health and author of Healing
"Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, through extensive interviews and research, have created something beautiful and affirming with their book. Its pages provide proo...
"Your Brain on Art will change how you think about the creative world, both around you and within you."-Charles Duhigg, author of the bestsellers The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better
"This wonderful book demonstrates that art is essential for health, healing, community, and bliss. Your Brain on Art is well researched and well written. I couldn't put it down."-Mary Pipher, author of Women Rowing North and A Life in Light
"Your Brain on Art explores the new science of neuroaesthetics, a way of reimagining how to live that includes art as an essential part of the human experience and an unexpected doorway to healing."-Mark Hyman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Young Forever
"A groundbreaking book on the science behind humanity, joy, and creativity. ‘Art' is the word we use for the magic that makes us better."-Seth Godin, New York Times bestselling author of This Is Marketing
"In this wonderful new book, Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross show us how the experience of art helps to build connections and pathways for mental health."-Thomas Insel, former director of the National Institute of Mental Health and author of Healing
"Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, through extensive interviews and research, have created something beautiful and affirming with their book. Its pages provide proo...
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1
The Anatomy of the Arts
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. -Martha Graham, dancer and choreographer
We made a bold assertion in the Introduction. We told you that arts and aesthetic experiences will improve your health and well-being and enhance your ability to learn and flourish.
So let's lay the groundwork for why that's true.
We're going to start by showing you some foundational science and offering a quick tour through your body to illuminate the ways in which you are wired for the arts. By first showing you what is going on inside of you, you'll better appreciate all that follows in the book, which is how the arts and aesthetics affect your body and mind. You can think of this chapter as your arts anatomy cheat sheet.
Knowing how your senses work is key to understanding the transformative nature of the arts and aesthetics in your life. If you took the aesthetic mindset survey prior to this chapter, you have a better idea of how you experience the arts and the extent to which you tune in to your aesthetic surroundings. Let's expand on that with an exercise to connect you to the sensory experiences you are having right now.
To begin, get comfortable where you are. Breathe in through your nose. What do you smell? Close your eyes and concentrate on this one sense. Maybe there's a cup of your morning coffee, a glass of red wine, or a candle nearby with a familiar scent. Keep breathing. What do you notice next, beyond those first impressions? If you were trained as a sommelier or a perfumer, you would know those initial smells are the top notes, and you would identify numerous others that exist just below them. Perhaps there's a musty odor from a dusty bookshelf, or the distinctive smell of petrichor through an open window, that incredible earthy scent that comes when a rain drenches a dry landscape.
Smell is one of the oldest senses in terms of human evolution. Your nose can detect 1 trillion odors with over 400 types of scent receptors whose cells are renewed every thirty to sixty days. In fact, your sense of smell is so good that you can identify some scents better than a dog can.
Microscopic molecules released by substances around you stimulate your scent receptors. They enter your nose and dissolve in mucus within a membrane called the olfactory epithelium, located a few inches up the nasal cavity from the nostrils. From here, neurons, or nerve cells, which are the fundamental components of your brain and nervous system, send axons, which are long nerve fibers, to the main olfactory bulb. Once there, they connect with cells that detect distinct features of the scent.
Here's where it gets interesting: the olfactory cortex is located in the temporal lobe of your brain, which broadly affects emotions and memory. This is why smell instantaneously and potently triggers physical and mental responses in you. For instance, the scent of a newborn baby releases the neuropeptide oxytocin, which activates bonding, empathy, and trust, appropriately earning oxytocin the nickname "the love drug." A single sniff of a certain perfume or cologne can bring you back to a long-forgotten relationship. Several chemicals released when grass gets cut stimulate the amygdala and the hippocampus, helping to reduce stress by lowering cortisol. That's all because of the olfactory cortex–temporal lobe connection.
Like scent, taste is also a chemical sense: The foods you eat trigger your 10,000-plus taste buds, generating electrical signals that travel from your mouth to an area of the brain called the gustatory cortex. This part of the brain is also believed to process visceral and emotional experiences, which helps to explain how it is that taste is among the most effective sensations for encoding memory. It's why nutmeg, clove, and cinnamon taste like the fall and winter holidays for those living in America and Europe, while the herbaceous and citrusy marigold flower tastes like celebration in India, where the edible blooms are routinely part of wedding ceremonies. It explains why Susan makes her grandmother's chicken-and-dumpling recipe when she wants to feel comforted and why Ivy's go-to is moist chocolate cake inspired by the homemade rich, gooey pudding her grandmother made every Sunday growing up.
Keeping your eyes closed, refocus your attention to your ears. The hum of electrical equipment, the whirl of a fan in a laptop, the sound of chattering birds. Traffic. What's happening nearby? What can you hear in the distance? Hearing is a complex s...
The Anatomy of the Arts
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. -Martha Graham, dancer and choreographer
We made a bold assertion in the Introduction. We told you that arts and aesthetic experiences will improve your health and well-being and enhance your ability to learn and flourish.
So let's lay the groundwork for why that's true.
We're going to start by showing you some foundational science and offering a quick tour through your body to illuminate the ways in which you are wired for the arts. By first showing you what is going on inside of you, you'll better appreciate all that follows in the book, which is how the arts and aesthetics affect your body and mind. You can think of this chapter as your arts anatomy cheat sheet.
Knowing how your senses work is key to understanding the transformative nature of the arts and aesthetics in your life. If you took the aesthetic mindset survey prior to this chapter, you have a better idea of how you experience the arts and the extent to which you tune in to your aesthetic surroundings. Let's expand on that with an exercise to connect you to the sensory experiences you are having right now.
To begin, get comfortable where you are. Breathe in through your nose. What do you smell? Close your eyes and concentrate on this one sense. Maybe there's a cup of your morning coffee, a glass of red wine, or a candle nearby with a familiar scent. Keep breathing. What do you notice next, beyond those first impressions? If you were trained as a sommelier or a perfumer, you would know those initial smells are the top notes, and you would identify numerous others that exist just below them. Perhaps there's a musty odor from a dusty bookshelf, or the distinctive smell of petrichor through an open window, that incredible earthy scent that comes when a rain drenches a dry landscape.
Smell is one of the oldest senses in terms of human evolution. Your nose can detect 1 trillion odors with over 400 types of scent receptors whose cells are renewed every thirty to sixty days. In fact, your sense of smell is so good that you can identify some scents better than a dog can.
Microscopic molecules released by substances around you stimulate your scent receptors. They enter your nose and dissolve in mucus within a membrane called the olfactory epithelium, located a few inches up the nasal cavity from the nostrils. From here, neurons, or nerve cells, which are the fundamental components of your brain and nervous system, send axons, which are long nerve fibers, to the main olfactory bulb. Once there, they connect with cells that detect distinct features of the scent.
Here's where it gets interesting: the olfactory cortex is located in the temporal lobe of your brain, which broadly affects emotions and memory. This is why smell instantaneously and potently triggers physical and mental responses in you. For instance, the scent of a newborn baby releases the neuropeptide oxytocin, which activates bonding, empathy, and trust, appropriately earning oxytocin the nickname "the love drug." A single sniff of a certain perfume or cologne can bring you back to a long-forgotten relationship. Several chemicals released when grass gets cut stimulate the amygdala and the hippocampus, helping to reduce stress by lowering cortisol. That's all because of the olfactory cortex–temporal lobe connection.
Like scent, taste is also a chemical sense: The foods you eat trigger your 10,000-plus taste buds, generating electrical signals that travel from your mouth to an area of the brain called the gustatory cortex. This part of the brain is also believed to process visceral and emotional experiences, which helps to explain how it is that taste is among the most effective sensations for encoding memory. It's why nutmeg, clove, and cinnamon taste like the fall and winter holidays for those living in America and Europe, while the herbaceous and citrusy marigold flower tastes like celebration in India, where the edible blooms are routinely part of wedding ceremonies. It explains why Susan makes her grandmother's chicken-and-dumpling recipe when she wants to feel comforted and why Ivy's go-to is moist chocolate cake inspired by the homemade rich, gooey pudding her grandmother made every Sunday growing up.
Keeping your eyes closed, refocus your attention to your ears. The hum of electrical equipment, the whirl of a fan in a laptop, the sound of chattering birds. Traffic. What's happening nearby? What can you hear in the distance? Hearing is a complex s...
