Instant Genius - Art and the brain, with Susan Magsamen

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

At one time or another it’s likely that we’ve all experienced the profound effect that engaging with art can have on us. Be it listening to a favourite song, reading a moving poem or walking around a much-loved gallery. But is there more to these experiences than mere entertainment? We speak to Susan Magsamen the founder of the International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab), at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine about the new book she has co-authored with Google’s Vice President of Design Ivy Ross, Your Brain on Art. She tells us exactly what is going on in our brains when we engage with art and how these powerful effects can be used to boost our health and wellbeing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So you can experience exceptional sound at home. Music just as the artist intended. Visit name audio.com to learn more. Hello and welcome to Instant Genius, a bite-sized masterclass in podcast form. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor at BBC Science Focus magazine. At one time or another, it's likely that we've all experienced the profound effect that engaging with art can have on us, be it listening to a favourite song, reading a moving poem, or walking around a much-love gallery.

But is there more to these experiences than mere entertainment? We speak to Susan Magsamen, the founder of the internet, International Arts and Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University's School of Medicine. She speaks to us about the new book she has co-authored with Google's Vice President of Design, Ivy Ross, Your Brain on Art. She tells us exactly what's going on in our brains when we engage with art and how these powerful effects can be used to boost our health and well-being. So you're a researcher in a field called neuroaesthetics.

So I think a lot of people won't have heard of that before. So first off, can you give us, give the listeners a definition of why? exactly that is. Sure. Yeah, neurostetics is one of those words that you kind of scratch your head on, right? But in reality, it's really very simple. It's the study of how the arts and aesthetic experiences measurably change the brain, body, and behavior. And then for us, how this knowledge is translated into specific practices that advance health and well-being. So researchers study neuroesthetics and we call the field neuro arts, which includes practitioners and artists and other folks that are actually using this work to help change the lives of people. Yeah, so you mentioned

that an aesthetic experience. So what exactly are we talking about when we're talking about an aesthetic experience? So there's some really interesting work done by Anjan Chatterjee, where he created something called an aesthetic triad. And I think it's a really nice model to try to explain what we mean by an aesthetic experience. So, you know, we bring the world in through our senses all the time. That's really the only way we can. So sound, light, smell, touch, all of those things are coming into our bodies. But you can't possibly process all of those extraordinary stimuli. So our brains decide what's important to us, and they do that through sort of what we call salient experiences. And those salient experiences are things that are often very practical for us or highly emotional. So Anjan created

a theoretical model that looks at three different things. One is sort of the sensory component, how and what you choose to bring in, what kind of knowledge and meaning you have. So where you come from, your lived experience, even your genetics, how that affects what you feel. And then the last part is really around feelings and reward. What gives you pleasure? What excites you? What moves you? And those three kind of circles, if you will, intersect in the middle to create an aesthetic experience. And sometimes those are peak experiences, highly memorable experiences that change, move you in a way that nothing else can and does. And I think it's also interesting that salient experiences or peak experiences,

all of these ways that we feel and move and change are highly individualized. So no one has the same brain. We're very, very unique. And I think sometimes we think that, oh, everybody thinks things the same way. And in fact, you know, you have very unique aesthetic. experiences. So what I might think of as a beautiful painting, you might say, oh, that's beautiful, too. I love that. But my beauty could come and does come from very different source based on my lived experience, as yours is as well. Yeah, so that's really interesting. So I was going to ask,

what do we know about what affects people's tastes in art? Because they're so different, you know, I might like the Rolling Stones, you might like the Beatles, I might like Monet, you might like, I don't know Mark Rothka or something. Do we know anything about that? I mentioned earlier that we bring the world in through our senses, but our lived experiences, our childhood experiences, the way that we are wired genetically, all influence who we are. And so as we bring sound and scent and other sensory experiences into our bodies, our bodies are processing those in extremely unique ways. And also we're of a time, right? So when I love the Rolling Stones and I love the Beatles, I know young people today who don't even know who the Rolling Stones are or who the Beatles are

because culturally and historically it wasn't their period, it wasn't their time. And so I think that all of lived experience, the time we're living in, all of those variables really help to develop that unique fingerprint. We also, there's a part of our brain called the default mode network. And this is the part of our brain that begins to activate when we're quiet and when we aren't bringing in the world. And it's the part of the brain that's called the sort of seat of self. And it's the area where we daydream, we mind wander, but we also make these decisions about what we like and don't like and what we think is important and not important. And so I think beyond the cultural context or lived experience, that's the part of our brain that really starts

to make us who we are and help us discriminate around what we think is beautiful and not beautiful, for example. So in the book, you mentioned something called an aesthetic mindset. So what exactly does that mean? So my co-author and I, Ivy Ross, have spent a lot of time really observing and talking with both researchers and practitioners about this idea of arts and aesthetics and what's the ability for that to really move and change us. And we came up with four basic kind of principles around what we have been describing as an aesthetic mindset. And the first is curiosity, this ability to really be, want to wonder, to be curious, to sort of think about things beyond what you know. The second is the ability to have a playful exploratory mind, so to experiment, to not have an outcome

necessarily, but to just be interested without judgment. And the third is to be aware of the sensory stimuli that are around you. So noticing light, temperature, touch, sound, and being aware of that. And then the last is an appetite for making or beholding. So having an interest in, in listening to music or going to see art or even taking nature walk. We think that nature is the most aesthetic experience. So being able to be in nature certainly checks the box on that. But it's that combination of variables that really start to allow you to bring the world in a way that you might not have been doing. We think that often we've become very transactional and we move through the world not.

being curious, not understanding or acknowledging the amazing sensory inputs that we have, or making or beholding, or moving through the world in a playful way. So it's possible then to develop a more aesthetic mindset, if that makes sense? Totally, totally. I think it's not a set point. And I think there's a huge opportunity to be able to broaden that range of experiences. And we say 20 minutes a day, like you exercise or you think about good nutrition or sleep habits, thinking about this idea of an arts practice to really begin to build that muscle. So you mentioned that, like, and you do several times in the book, the connection between

experiencing art and experiencing nature. So I thought that was a really interesting comparison. So you've mentioned something called an enriched environment. So are you able to explain what you mean by that and what the connection is? Sure. So let me start with the enriched environment and then move into nature. In the 60s, there was a researcher named Marion Diamond, who did some really wonderful work around enriched environments. And her experiment was very simple. She developed a rat cage that had all kinds of interesting, curious, sensory experience, so highly enriched environment. Then she created a space that was an impoverished environment. So

basically nothing there. And then she kind of created an in-between kind of a Goldilocks room where there was just just enough, but not too much. And after only several weeks, she was able to see that in the brains of the rats, the rats that were in these enriched experiences, their cerebral cortex actually grew by six percent compared to the impoverished environments where the rats actually lost brain mass. and then in the ones that were sort of average, you know, sort of steady state. And what she was able to show was the first time that a researcher showed a structural change in the brain, an actual physical shift in what the brain was able to do. And we now know that when there are structural changes in growth in the cortex, that allows for greater neuroplasticity

and more synaptic connection. And that's been proven now in humans through fMRI and other types of non-invasive technology. So we know that enriched environments are really good for us. And, you know, that is also very person dependent or community dependent. So, you know, it's not like you want to overload an environment and overstimulate. But when you create an environment that really feels right for us, we grow. Our brains grow. and that means that we have more capacity. Ultimately, we have more resiliency, and it's really good for us.

So, you know, for humans, we lived in nature historically 99.9% of our species evolution. So it makes sense that we would feel really good in nature because that's where we have come from. And human-built environments have been places that have held us and kept us safe in our containers, where we go to work, where we go to home. But if you look back over where we came from, we understand the horizon line. We have awe with sunsets and sunrises. It turns out that just 20 minutes in nature will create a homeostasis for us, even if we're really stressed and really out of balance. And researchers have seen that cortisol levels reduce with just in very short amount of time, sometimes even between five and ten minutes. And so this connection between

nature and humanity is implicit. It's really where we come from. And I think in architecture and design, we're now seeing biophilic design. So basically bringing the outdoors in because we like it. We feel really good about it. It's something that we really understand and know physiologically from our history. So you mentioned a couple of terms there that. I'd just like to go back to investigate a little bit. So first off, neuroplasticity. So what is that? And why is that such an important thing?

So we are born with 100 billion neurons. And those neurons are the sort of baseline for how we grow and learn and throughout our life. So all of the stimuli that I mentioned earlier, all of the sensory stimuli that come into our brains and bodies connect those neurons. So we build quadrillions of synaptic connections in our brains that create neural pathways. And those neural pathways help us think, learn, move, grow, all of the things that we do just to kind of get around. And so neuroplasticity is really that activation of creating synapses that connect neurons to each other and ultimately create these neural pathways.

So I think pretty much anyone listening will have experienced art making a positive contribution to their well-being in some way, you know, whether it's doing a life drawing class or playing an instrument. What's the connection between experiencing and engaging with art and our well-being? What do we know about that? So I think, you know, we all make art or have experienced that sense of well-being when we have created art. but I don't think we have ultimately made the connection between the value of art, our well-being, and our physical and mental health. And over the last 20 years, as technology has enabled us to get inside our heads to study the extraordinary way that the arts impact us, it turns out that we are seeing these experiences as being almost superpowers to address physical and mental health, learning, flourishing, community building. on an individual and societal level. And in large part, you know, I talk about this work as kind of the elephant in the room.

Depending upon what you touch, you get a very different experience. So in physical health, for example, researchers have been studying the way that dance can help Parkinson's patients with gait and motor learning, with cognition, with better sleep and better mood. We have seen that singing helps people with Alzheimer's or dementia actually be able to recall memories and connect in a present moment where prior to that singing, they haven't been able to do that. We've actually have now really interesting research with virtual reality and using different types of narrative storytelling with close-loop systems for addressing ADHD and another. kinds of learning differences and also virtual reality for helping to manage pain through again what we think is a distraction network and really being able to you know concentrate on a very compelling story which takes you away from this very specific physical pain also dancing helping with headaches as another example so research as they've been looking at different types of

issues and really, I think of it as solution science, how these different art forms really are addressing physiological but also psychological issues. And then we also can see on the other end of the spectrum that when you're looking at flourishing or thriving or this idea of well-being, that the arts really help to build processes and systems that move you towards that long-term amplification of human potential. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank.

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and tradition with pioneering thinking. Name Audio pushes cutting-edge technology to ensure digital precision whilst sustaining Pratt, pace, rhythm and timing, the elusive quality that makes music feel alive and gives it emotional texture. Today, in partnership with French acoustic specialist's focal, name audio creates systems that deliver a exceptional sound and unforgettable listening experiences at home. Try it for yourself at a focal powered by name boutique. Visit focal powered by name.com for more information. So you mentioned there the link between music and dementia.

I think that's something that perhaps people will have heard before, you know that somebody's not responding. A patient isn't responding very well. And then they'll hear one of their favorite songs and they'll suddenly sort of burst into life and be it singing along with it, things like that. What do we know about what's happening in our brains when that process happens occurs? Yeah, it's fascinating.

I say that when you're with someone that has dementia, my husband and I care for a cousin who has frontal temporal dementia, and we sing with her almost every week. And it's the closest thing to magic to see her come alive and to sing these songs that were part of her. her youth. Oftentimes we sing Amazing Grace, which is a song that is really kind of hardwired for her because she really has sung in her most of her life. So what we know about this and it's it's continuing to emerge is that, you know, when you create a memory and especially something

like a song that was really representational in your childhood, it's, you know, people talk about this idea of autobiographical music or your, your play. list. These are things that are really hardwired, so the meaning that the neuroplasticity that when you created this song has really been ingrained. So memories are initially made in the hippocampus, the short term memories are made in the hippocampus. And when you have Alzheimer's, the hippocampus is one of the very first areas that begins to deteriorate. But after memories are created in hippocampus, with something like music, they distribute to other parts of the brain. So in fact, there are other areas of the brain that the singing is engaging and

igniting. And so when Alzheimer's patients are singing, they're actually not activating the memory part of your brain. They're actually activating other parts of the cortex where think of it as multiple systems. So our brains are laying down multiple storing information in multiple parts of the brain. So we're still able to access that for a really long time. Another sort of common thing that people say about music is that learning an instrument makes you more intelligent. So people that learn an instrument when their children grow up to be more intelligent adults. Is there any truth to that? So intelligence is IQ is a fixed study.

When you look at IQ, it's really about your ability to be able to recall information. that's the definition of an intelligence test. But people that play music, we know that they actually do increase gray matter. They increase the cerebral cortex. They also have greater synaptic connections, which creates resiliency and capacity, ability to be more of a creative thinker, to be able to enhance what's called executive function, which is sort of your orchestra leader in the brain, the sort of decision-making, or judgment, prefrontal cortex. Also, people that play music tend to be better collaborators

and have many more abilities to be able to think outside of the box. And so, you know, I think that when we think about the values of playing music, I think they create sort of greater capacity for many people. And I think that's what you're hearing. I think that's the definite, that's what that's the result of what you're seeing is that there's just more ability to be able to accomplish things that you want to accomplish. You know, there's some interesting epidemiology work coming out of University College London that has been looking at youth that do some form of art. And they see that youth that create art turned out to make better decisions, have better attendance in school, stay in school longer, make better, just make better decisions throughout

their lives. And I think that's really interesting, too, that you can really look at this retrospectively and see how this work from an epidemiological point of view can really make great changes for youth that are using art. So we're talking about young people there, but can we get this advantage at any age, say if I'm 50 years old? Yes, yes, yes. The advantage to using arts and aesthetics is really lifelong and neuroplasticity happens throughout your life. So, you know, There's neurons that fire together, wire together. There is a use it or lose it philosophy. So the more aesthetic experiences you have,

the more you engage in art making or beholding, you're continuing throughout your life to create these strong neural pathways that are really good for you. And I think the other advantage to arts and aesthetic experiences, and this may sound simplistic, but it's fun, it's enjoyable, it's pleasurable, It engages your reward system.

So we all want to do things that feel good. And I think sometimes we deprive ourselves of that because we think we have to kind of get to work and toe the line. But in fact, these kinds of experiences make you more productive and more innovative. So we've been talking about creating music a little bit earlier. But how about listening to music? I bet everybody or most people who have heard of the Mozart effect, which was a very popular idea some years.

years ago. But what benefits can we get from listening to music? So as the beholder or listening to music, we know that there are immediate shifts in neurotransmitters. Reward systems are engaged pretty instantly. You know, you can listen to a song first three seconds or first three notes of a song and have an immediate shift in self-regulation or enhanced mood or just a or some kind of very powerful memory. So let's move on to what you mentioned earlier about the Parkinson's sort of dance therapy. I thought that was really interesting because obviously people with Parkinson's, their motor control is limited and things. And it's sort of almost counterintuitive that you'd think that a dance class would help them. So how does that work? So it's interesting.

You know, Parkinson's disease comes on because we're not making dopamine, our brains, have stopped or of reduced making dopamine. And so when you're dancing with Parkinson's, you're actually not making more dopamine, but you're creating things like serotonin and adrenaline and other neurotransmitters and hormones that are actually sort of supplementing the ability to be able to override the fact that you're not making dopamine. So we see dancers during COVID who were not able to get to the dance store. studio, they started to dance online. And this was the first time that we were able to really see dose and dosage in play. So many of the people that had Parkinson's decided to dance online.

They danced more times a week, sometimes more times a day. They also danced with family members who would zoom in and dance with them. And we saw that people's gait increased, their sleep increased, their mood increased, their cognitive capacities also shifted, and that the residual effect turned out to be longer for some of them. So researchers are now looking at this idea of dose and dosage for dancers with Parkinson's. So, you know, you think about a medication that you take every day, thinking about the medical use of dance every day to help to manage a disease state that's not curable, right? Parkinson's is not curable, but it's managed through medication. So now we're looking at how do you manage Parkinson's through dance and medication.

And I think this integrated, complementary approach to arts and medicine is really growing. And we're seeing it with things like adherence, people's ability to be able to continue to take a medication and also have an art form that gives them a sense of pleasure and a sense of meaning. And so in palliative care and even in end of life care, arts experience. experiences are really offering another way to feel vital as they're going through a medical experience. So you sort of touched on something now, for one of a better term, prescribing arts. So what does that look like in practice and sort of what successes of various researchers or practitioners had? So social prescribing, or what's also being called arts on prescription, is growing all over the world. in the UK, social prescribing has been sort of in the works for a number of years, also in Australia,

in Canada, and now in the U.S., we're doing quite a bit of that. It's basically, think of it as the way a doctor prescribes a medication. In this case, a doctor could be a physical doctor, a general doctor, or a psychologist, even a social worker or other professional prescribes an art experience, singing, maybe being in a choir, could be visiting a museum, could be taking a dance lesson. And the person that's being prescribed that literally goes and does that as a form of therapy or form of treatment. And often it's paid in some countries through social medicine or publicly paid medicine. Other countries, it's being covered through health care providers. They see that the benefits to their patients in loneliness, isolation, but also addressing very specific medical issues.

And in a study that was done in the United States with a group called Culture R-X, they found that the prescriber, so the physician or the doctor or the medical worker that was prescribing actually felt better about being able to prescribe something that was so valuable and useful and immediate for their patients. So I thought that was also kind of a double bottom line. Yeah, that's really, really interesting. Another thing that sort of leapt out to me when I was going through your book was the link between engaging with art and longevity.

So what do we know about that effect? What about that correlation? So, again, the epidemiology work that's been done looking at the role of the arts and aesthetic experiences, one of the interesting finding is that people are healthier, but that they also have a 10-year longer life expectancy when doing just one or more art activity a month. And, I mean, that sounds extraordinary. But I think that when you really look at this idea of when you're healthier and when you're mentally fit, it makes sense to me.

Okay. So we're just talking about prescribing then. But sort of by way of summing up, what advice would you give to our listeners who are interested in reaping their benefits to their health and well-being from the arts? Well, I think one of the biggest mythologies that we saw in writing the book is that most people think that you have to be good at the arts, that you have to be talented or gifted or have this, you know, extraordinary mastery of an art. But in fact, you don't. You have significant benefits from the arts just because you're doing them or experiencing them. So my advice to your viewers would be start where you are,

hum in the shower, sing to the radio, dance in your living room, doodle. Doodling turns out to be very good for memory recall, for focus and attention. But really start with doing some things that you love and take the sort of mastery out of the arts and just start doing it. That was the founder of the International Arts and Mind Lab, Susan Maxamy. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius, brought to you from the team behind BBC Science Focus magazine. The current issue of BBC Science Focus is out now. Pick up a copy wherever you buy your favourite magazines or download a digital copy from your preferred app store. You can, of course, also find us online at sciencefocus.com.

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