This Is Your Brain on Art: How Music, Dance and Poetry Can Help Your Brain : Shots

A growing body of research is investigating the effects of the power of art on the brain.

DrAfter123/Getty Images

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DrAfter123/Getty Images

A growing body of research is investigating the effects of the power of art on the brain.

DrAfter123/Getty Images

To understand difficult science, Michael Kofi Esson often turns to art.

Music and poetry can serve as anchors when we struggle to understand the immune system and rare diseases.

“It calms me down and helps me be proactive about what to focus on,” says Esson, a sophomore at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Born in Ghana, Esson played the trumpet and where do you feel.

“There has to be some kind of greater connectivity. [art] It affects the brain,” says Esson.

This idea that art has a measurable impact on the brain and its structure is being embraced by a growing number of people. scientific research.

“Creativity is about making new connections, new synapses,” says Ivy Ross, vice president of hardware design at Google and co-author of the new book. Your Brain on Art: How Art Changes Us.

Ross co-authored with Susan Magsamen, director of the International Arts and Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Magsamen says the effects of art on the brain are most dramatic in children.

“Children playing music actually change the structure of their brains, and their cerebral cortex actually grows,” Magsamen says..

of your brain on art, Magsamen and Ross describe how a person’s neural circuitry changes in response to activities such as learning a new song, learning a new dance step, or the way a character is played on stage.

They also explain why a growing number of researchers believe these changes lead to brains that are better prepared to master a wide range of skills, including math and science.

brain trained to bend

Music, dance, painting, storytelling—all have been part of human culture for tens of thousands of years. As a result, “we’re really into art,” Magsamen says.

And when we make art, she says, we increase brain plasticity — the ability to respond and adapt to new experiences.

“Children who engage in art are better learners,” says Ross. “A student who gets an art education is five times less likely to drop out of school and four times more likely to be recognized with high grades.”

Art can also teach brain skills that are unlikely to be acquired in the classroom, says Ross.

“I’ve been a dancer for 12 years and really think it’s given me a sense of form and negative space,” she says.

These brain circuits, she says, have likely served her in a wide range of careers, including design. jewelry It is part of the Smithsonian’s permanent collection.

Dancing also appears to improve mental health, Magsamen says.

“Even just 15 minutes of dancing can reduce stress and anxiety,” she says, noting that the activity releases “feel good” hormones such as endorphins, serotonin and dopamine from the brain. .

Art effect measurement

The link between arts and academic performance has long been noted by educators. But it’s only in recent decades that technology has allowed scientists to understand some of the changes in the brain.

For example, in 2010, scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging to help professional musicians had greater plasticity than nonmusicians in the hippocampus, a region involved in information storage and retrieval.

“Arts provide children with a very important type of brain development for building powerful neural pathways,” Magsamen says.

Medical student Esson may have used some of these pathways when he found new ways to study difficult concepts in chemistry.

“I wrote [poems] About acid-base reactions,” he says with a laugh.

poor grades in school arts

Activities such as music and painting are becoming less popular in education and in our culture, despite growing evidence that the arts can enhance performance in many other areas. says Ross.

“We optimize productivity and put art aside,” she says. “We thought we could be happy, but we weren’t.”

So people like Michael Kofi Esson are trying to find a balance.

Now at the end of his second year of medical school, Esson is devoting his days to science. But he still writes poetry, sometimes late into the night. It also includes a poem that ends with a thought about how art and the brain create their own realities.

deception is an art,
An art mastered by the brain.
Art is a lie,
that’s the truth about the brain
art is deception,
It’s a brain reality.
the brain is a lie,
A very beautiful lie, that’s art.

Esson hopes one day to write a poem about the patients he treats. But for now, he’s still mostly an observer.

“I can talk to them. But at the end of the day, they come for the doctor, not me,” he says. I would like to take it in.”

And perhaps bring some poetry to his patients.