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Roula Khalaf, FT Editor, picks her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
I think I must be old. I started wanting to know the names of trees, birds and wildflowers. I have become fascinated with the changing seasons. I found myself in the local woods at 6 a.m. not because I was still in a “forest frenzy” from the night before, but because I wanted to immerse myself in nature after waking up, to catch the light the bright morning, the dew on the leaves and the singing of birds in all its commotion.
Or maybe I’m just tapping into a part of my nature that I’ve repressed – or at least not realized – until now; that makes me love, appreciate, and even desire all of these things. Perhaps the colors, sounds and textures of nature are things that even those of us who live in cities are conditioned to find beautiful and inspiring. And maybe all of this is an important but underappreciated component of our health.
That’s what some thinkers in the emerging interdisciplinary field who emphasize the importance of art, beauty, and nature for our mental and physical health would argue, anyway.
Neuroaesthetics – a term first coined by Semir Zeki, a neurobiologist at University College London, in 1999 – is a subfield of both applied aesthetics and cognitive neuroscience , studies the brain’s response to different forms of aesthetic experience. Its proponents argue that engagement with art and nature should not be seen as a “nice to have,” but as a necessity.
It would be tempting to attribute such ideas to the amorphous world of “attention” that we are all told that it is good and important for us (I am a fan of this world myself, though not of its name). But Susan Magsamen, founder and director of the International Mind + Arts Lab at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-author of the book. Your Brain on Art: How Art Transforms Us, tells me that recent neurological research shows that the aesthetic experience is much more than that. She argues that it is indeed helpful in allowing us to feel more present and quiet the incessant chatter in our minds, but neuroaesthetics, in and of itself, constitute a “completely new path”.
“We learned about nutrition, we learned about sleep, we learned about exercise, we learned about mindfulness,” Magsamen said. “What we’re looking at now is how essential art and aesthetic experience are to the human condition.” She explains that although some of these experiences Maybe provides similar benefits to “mindful” activities – by reducing the brain’s stress-related amygdala activation, reducing cortisol and putting us in a “rest and digest” state. Parasympathetic – neurological scans suggest that there is more to the aesthetic experience than this.
Perhaps the most extraordinary thing, study Zeki’s work has shown that, although we may all have different ideas about what constitutes beauty, the same brain region – the “medial orbitofrontal cortex” or “mOFC” – is bright. rises when we feel something beautiful. This is true regardless of whether we are talking about visual beauty, music, mathematics, or even morality.
There is also a lot of evidence to support the argument that participation in the arts has a positive impact on health. ONE learn by researchers at UCL, using data from more than 6,000 adults over 50, taking into account economic, health and social factors, found that people who engage in “artistic activity” months or more had a 31% lower risk of death during follow-up (median 12 years).
Studies have repeatedly shown benefits of music for patients with dementia and other neurodegenerative disorders. Other research also shows that dance may help people with Parkinson’s disease by increasing neural plasticity and stimulating multiple layers of the nervous system.
It is important to point out that we do not need to be exceptionally talented in a certain area of art to benefit from it. “Whether you are good or not has absolutely no bearing on neuroaesthetic benefits,” Tara Swart, a neuroscientist and lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, told me. But while we were all creative as children – we drew, we danced, we banged pots and pans – many of us stopped pursuing art after being told that we really weren’t. very good.
According to neuro-aesthetic experts, that was a mistake. In fact, if you happen to be blessed with some artistic ability — one that you’ve made a career of — you may not enjoy the same benefits when your livelihood depends on it. . Your brain may have shifted from a free, creative state to a more judgmental, choosy “control state,” as Swart calls it. So get out there and create some terrible art. Or if you prefer, just expose yourself to something beautiful. Your brain will thank you for it.
