"Your Brain on Art": Exploring the bold new world of neuroaesthetics

By Tom Hall,

Teria Rogers, Rob Sivak, Malarie Pinkard-Pierre

Published March 22, 2023 at 12:13 PM EDT

Michelangelo's "Adam's Creation" -- one of the painter's ceiling panels in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel -- depicts the Biblical origin tale, with a bearded male God floating with his cherubim in a billowing cloth whose shape conforms to the anatomical outline of the human brain. New research in the burgeoning field of neuroaesthetics shows that the brain not only creates and perceives art, but is fundamentally transformed by it, suggesting that the arts have enormous healing potential. (image credit Michelangelo via Wikipedia) — A photo of Michelangelo's "Adam's Creation," one of the 16th-century artist's ceiling panels in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel. In this famed depiction of the Biblical origin tale, God appears as a bearded male floating with a group of cherubim on a billowing cloth whose outlines conform to the anatomical shape of the human brain. In the burgeoning field of neuroaesthetics, we're learning how the brain not only creates and perceives art, but is also transformed — and healed — by it. (image credit Michelangelo, via Wikipedia)

Today on Midday, a conversation about the arts: Not just about how they provide beauty, or an escape, or a thought-provoking experience that makes you think differently about the world, but how the arts, in a very real way, can make you healthier.

The arts are now used as treatment for any number of conditions. When you strum your guitar, or read a poem, or color inside or outside the lines, you are reducing your stress level, lowering your anxiety, and strengthening your cognition.

The research in this area comes from a relatively new scientific discipline called neuroaesthetics, which is the subject of a new book by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross called Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us.

Susan Magsamen is the founder and director of the International Arts and Mind Lab Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics in the Pederson Brain Science Institute at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She’s also the co-director of the NeuroArts Blueprint….

Ivy Ross is vice-president of Design for the Hardware Product area at Google. She is also a jewelry designer whose work is exhibited in the permanent collections of 12 international museums…

Ivy Ross and Susan Magsamen join Tom in Studio A.

"Your Brain on Art" co-authors Ivy Ross (left), vice-president of Hardware Design at Google; and Susan Magsamen (right), director of the International Arts + Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. (Photo by Ben Krantz)

Tom Hall will join Ivy Ross and Susan Magsamen at the Baltimore Museum of Art tonight (Wednesday, March 22) from 6-8pm to continue their discussion with a panel that will include some of the folks featured in the book. The event is free but registration is encouraged. For more information, click here.