Exploring the power of art on our health and wellbeing
Artistic expression is deeply ingrained in our biology and evolutionary development and is a crucial aspect of human existence. Breakthroughs in neuroaesthetics illustrate the transformative power of arts and aesthetics on neurobiology, impacting our physical and mental health, learning, and community building.
E.O. Wilson, a Harvard evolutionary biologist, beautifully made the case that the arts are essential to the survival of the human species. Beginning with our ancestors circling together around a fire at the end of the day, he explained that they created wholly new forms of community, coming together to tell stories, sing, and dance.
Through these creative human expressions, morals and ethical values were developed. There were celebrations and ceremonies, rituals and traditions. Layers of meaning-making and a sense of belonging emerged between individuals, families and groups. And, through these repetitive creative acts, we humans forged strong social bonds, created trusting relationships and collective transcendence.
There are still over 5,000 indigenous tribes on the planet, many of whom don’t have a word for art because it is simply how they live. And regardless of where we are around the globe, humanity still holds the lasting desire and core need to make a circle and commune together, sharing our voices in what we now describe, in our modern world, artistic expression.
We humans have been both the maker and the beholder since the beginning of time. And the arts and aesthetic experiences, in all their forms, have been used for many purposes – including self-expression, communication, collaboration, reflection, learning, healing and flourishing.
Your Body on Art
In these moments of connection, something else happens as well. Our physiology and biology changes. Cortisol is reduced and dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin increase. These powerful hormones and neurotransmitters are the brain chemicals that enable our bodies to reduce stress, feel a sense of reward and happiness and create strong bonds.
Over the last 25 years, technology has enabled us to non-invasively get inside our head, and researchers are catching up with what the ancients and artists have always known: we are wired for the arts, biologically and evolutionarily. They are our birthright – essential for humanity to thrive.
We bring the world in through our senses and knowing how your senses work is key to understanding the transformative power of the arts and aesthetics. Smell, taste, vision, hearing and touch produce biological reactions of staggering speeds, integrating millions of sensory signals.
The foods you eat trigger 10,000 taste buds; when you hear music, sound waves cause your eardrum to vibrate and trigger thousands of small hair cells that each fire signals to your brain; you have over four million nerve endings in your skin; and you process over twenty-four million visual images in a lifetime, to name just a few extraordinary sensorial facts.
You can’t process all of the sensory stimuli that you are exposed to everyday, but the most salient information that enters your body has an unlimited capacity to change your biology and behavior. Your brain pays attention to what is important to you either because it is practical or emotionally relevant. This process is possible in part due to an area of the brain researchers are now calling the salience network.
This salient sensory information ignites your brain’s neuroplasticity. Each of us is born with 100 billion neurons that connect at a synaptic level. You have quadrillions of these connections in your brain, creating endless neuropathways. These pathways underlie your body movements, emotions, memory – basically everything you do. When you are making a memory or learning something you are actually making some synaptic connections stronger and some weaker through the saliency of your experiences.
Researchers are discovering endless ways the arts and aesthetics change us on a neurobiological level, supporting our physical and mental health, learning, flourishing and community building – which are all essential to our individual and societal survival. The following are five important things to consider.
We Have the Proof
The field of neuroaesthetics brings together neuroscience, cognitive science, the arts, neurology, public health, psychology and many other disciplines to create a highly interdisciplinary field. We now know that arts and aesthetic experiences alter a complex physiological network of interconnected neurological and biological systems including cognition, immune and endocrine, circulatory, respiratory, reward and motor systems – to name just a few.
There Is an Art for That
Arts and aesthetics are not a nice-to-have, they are essential to our very survival. The evolutionary underpinning of the arts is a prerequisite for human growth and development that has continued to expand throughout millennia. The bottom line is that the arts positively impact every area of your life. Some fascinating findings include:
- 20 minutes of art a day is as beneficial as getting enough exercise and sleep.
- 45 minutes of practicing art reduces the stress hormone cortisol
- Playing music increases synapses and gray matter, which supports cognitive skills
- One or more art experiences a month can extend your life by ten years.
Anywhere, Anytime, Anyone
The power of the arts is accessible to you right now, anywhere and anytime, offering immediate dividends for individuals and communities.
Researchers have debunked a huge myth. You don’t have to be “good at it” or a skilled artist to have a significant impact.
Making and beholding the arts are not dependent on resources, age or ability.
The Future is Immersive and Sustainable
- Technology, the arts, health and science are coming together.
- Immersive and interactive exhibitions are dissolving the boundaries between art and viewers, engaging our senses and creating strong emotional reactions.
- We are seeing an expansive growth of immersive arts, an exciting frontier for new forms of expression.
- The implications of immersive arts will impact health, education and other sectors in society.
Change Your Lens, Change Your Life
We are standing on the verge of a cultural shift in which the arts can deliver potent, accessible, proven health and well-being solutions to billions of people. We have been optimizing for productivity since the industrial revolution, pushing the arts aside or making them a luxury, thinking that a focus on productivity would make us happy, but it has not.
Incorporating the arts and aesthetics in your life can be as simple as turning the aperture on a kaleidoscope. Changing your lens in small ways results in new ways to see the world. We each have the agency to take actions that move us toward experiences that give us meaning and purpose and help us heal, learn and thrive. Our daily habits become our lives.
Four Ways to Begin
You can develop an aesthetic mindset that puts you on the path to having deeply rewarding and life-sustaining arts and aesthetic experiences. Here are four basic attributes of this mindset to get you started.
1) Begin each day with a beginner’s mind and an openness for curiosity
2) Move through your world with more playful exploration. In other words, holding off judging or critiquing. Just experiment and engage
3) Open yourself up to all of the amazing sensory and aesthetic
experiences around you. Light, color, scent, texture, touch. Feel your world.
4) Make more art – cook, draw, hum, dance, sing. And put yourself in places to behold the arts of others.
Experience This Work in Person
Ivy Ross and Susan Magsamen will be leading Your Brain on Art: Born to Create, Wired to Flourish next summer in Santa Fe, June 25-28, 2026. This immersive workshop explores what happens when you stop treating vitality as something to earn through productivity and start accessing it the way your ancestors did – through your senses, through play, through creativity.