Instant Genius - How the arts can keep our bodies and brains healthier for longer

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

For many of us, consuming or making art – be it listening to music, playing an instrument, reading a book, painting a watercolour or attending a dance class – is seen as a pastime or hobby, a fun way to spend an evening or Sunday afternoon. But according to the latest scientific thinking, engaging with the arts can have a profound effect on our mental and physical well-being, and may even help us to live longer, healthier lives. In this episode, we’re joined by Daisy Fancourt, a professor of psychobiology and epidemiology and head of the Social Biobehavioural Research Group at University College London, to talk about her latest book, Art Cure – The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health. She tells us what happens in our brains and bodies when we make, perform or interact with art, how engaging with the arts may even have a beneficial effect our genes, and how medical professionals are increasingly prescribing art therapies to improve our overall health in almost every way, whether you’re three years old or 103. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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For many of us, consuming or making art, be it listening to music, playing an instrument, reading a book, painting a watercolour or attending a dance class, is seen as a pastime or hobby, a fun way to spend an evening or a Sunday afternoon. But according to the latest scientific thinking, engaging with the arts can have a profound effect on our mental and physical well-being

and may even help us to live longer, healthier lives. In this episode, we're joined by Daisy Fancourt, a professor of psychobiology and epidemiology and head of the social bio-behaviorial research group at University College London. To talk about her latest book, Art Cure, the science of how the arts transform our health. She tells us what happens in our brains and bodies when we make, perform or interact with art,

how engaging with the arts may even have a beneficial effect on our genes, and how medical professionals are increasingly prescribing art therapies to improve our overall health in almost every way, whether we're three years old or 103. So Daisy, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joy. joining us. It's a pleasure to be with you. So today we're talking about your latest book, Art Cure, the science of how the arts transform our health. And in the book, you mentioned the definition of art that you're working with. It's wider than just the traditional practices of, say,

you know, painting, music, literature, etc. So can you first off, can you explain what you mean by that? So to me, arts can be anything that have the kind of core ingredients that we typically think of in creative activities. So that might be aesthetics, imagination, multi-sensory stimuli, for example. And that means that we don't just have to think about performing arts or visual arts or literary arts as well, but we can include in that things like culinary arts, like baking, for example, or horticultural arts, like growing and arranging flowers as well. And I think that expanded definition is so important and it's really appreciating creativity and all of its forms. So also you talk a lot about what you term a sort of art experience or experiencing art.

So before we get into the sort of meat of stuff, can you tell us what an art experience is? Arts experiences have kind of got these two components because one part of it is the ingredients that we would all receive in the same way. So if you and I both went to the same pop concert, we might both hear the same music. We'd see the same things on stage, for example. we'd be dancing probably in similar ways. But actually, we'd also have our own personal response to that. That art experience, that pop concert, might be something that one of us loves and one of us hates based on our own personal preferences, our past experiences, for example.

So I think we've got to appreciate that more objective and that more subjective side of every art experience. Yeah, so let's have a look at some of the effects that you talk about of having an art experience. So let's start with happiness. I think that's a nice place to start. likely or use a bit more happiness in our lives, especially these days. So, you know, what do you mean by that? What's, what do you mean by happiness? What's going on in our brains when we experience

pleasure? Well, let's say you're reading a book that you love or listening to a favourite song, or when we have those experiences, this actually activates pleasure and reward networks in our brains, actually the same networks that are activated by really fundamental behaviours like food and sex, for example. And actually we often get this release of dopamine, this pleasure hormone in response to engaging in the arts, which gives us those feelings of joy. What's quite interesting, though, is we don't just get this from happy arts. We actually also get this from things like sad books or scary films, for example, because we can have a co-experience of the pain and the pleasure together. And our brains actually really enjoy it when we have those more negative

emotional experiences as well, because it gives us a little bit to think about, to imagine how we might respond to those scenarios, and we sort of enjoy that. We find it even more memorable as an experience. So let's have a look at some of the ways that you talk about that art triggers these emotions. So you talk a lot about the role anticipation plays in this, which I think is really interesting.

So people often, when they talk about music, they'll talk about fiction writing or something, the notion of tension and release being really important in this experience. So what can we say about this, the role that anticipation plays. Well, so think about your favorite detective novel, for example. There's always that moment when you're building up to like working out who the murderer was. And you can have this anticipation about, is it going to be this character?

And when you sort of discover that you're right, that gives an enormous feeling of release, that tension has then finally been let out and you get that pleasurable sensation. But actually what was discovered by neuroscientists a few years ago was that we actually also get the pleasurable response and the dopamine release in our brain. in anticipation of that pleasurable moment, knowing that it's coming. And actually, even if we're wrong, even if we've got the wrong murderer

and we realize we've been thwarted, that actually heightens the pleasure even more. We're either building up to them thinking, well, who on earth is it if it wasn't that character? So that repeated sense of tension and resolution that we get, whether it's in stories or in songs when we're waiting for that chorus to come back, that's one of those fundamental components of the arts

that means they're so good for our happiness. So almost on the other side of the coin of this, you say that arts can help to give us a sense of control in what's an increasingly unpredictable chaotic world. So what do you mean by that? How does that work? Anybody who makes art, I'm sure, can attest to the fact that when they're painting, when they're crafting, when they're making up songs, it's actually a chance that you get to call the shots. You're the one that decides what this is going to look like, what the experience is going to sound like. And we often, as you say, are facing these situations in our own lives where we're not really in control. Sometimes people don't get a sense of control through work or people can feel like they're living in an uncontrollable world.

But being able to control even these small things like an arts or crafts experience is actually giving our brains what we need. It's fulfilling one of our core psychological needs for control and also for mastery. Yeah, and you also talk about something known as the sense of self. So what exactly is that? And how does that fit into this idea? So we all have a sense of identity about who we are. We'll often actually find that we categorize ourselves in certain ways, like as a runner or a mother or a yarn bomber or whatever. So there are these different categories that we can put ourselves into, which actually shows that our identity isn't just individual. It's actually social. And when we're engaging in the art, that can

be another identity. It's that creative activity that we can then think, I am a reader, I am a I am a performer. This can actually be really good for us. Having identities like this makes us feel like we're not alone. We're part of that social group, even if it's a solo activity. But also then when we're facing stressful situations, let's say we're getting illness, for example, we're not just a patient. We're also a patient and we're still that yarn bomber or whatever. We've got those other creative identities, for example, that we can still draw on. And that's really important for psychological resilience. Yeah, so you talk in sort of coming off the back, of that, you talk about the effect on the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system.

So first off, can you briefly describe what that is, how important it is, and how our experience can have a positive effect? So the parasympathetic nervous system is part of our overall stress response. So when we're feeling stressed, we tend to have a predominance of what's called our sympathetic nervous system and when we're feeling more relaxed, a predominance of our parasympathetic nervous system. And we actually know that arts engagement is a really good way of modulating these different systems, sort of deciding which one comes into play more. And sometimes we actually want to increase our arousal levels, our stress levels to a certain extent. Like actually listening to invigorating music when we're going for a run can be a way to keep our heart rate up,

to keep ourselves motivated. That can be a brief activation of that sympathetic nervous system. But also, there are times when we're feeling stressed, we just want to chill out. And that that's been actually arts engagement that is calm, that might have a slow beat if it's music, or it might be a kind of calming picture that we're looking at, a relaxing film. These are things that can then actually help our parasympathetic nervous system to take over and our whole bodies to downregulate their stress response. So this is the way in which you talk about the book, or one of the ways, that engaging with the arts can help us with emotional regulation.

Is that right? I'm sure everyone has had moments when they're feeling out of control of their thoughts, or not sure how to respond to events. And at that point, we're really relying on our brains to be able to regulate whatever emotions we're feeling. So to calm down feelings of anger or to lift ourselves up if we're feeling a bit blue or down, for example. Arts engagement is a really clever way

that we can actually modulate our emotions. So if we decide that we want a mood boost, we want to feel a little bit more uplifted, then those more activating arts experiences like getting involved, making some music, doing some craft, something that's going to sort of get us up and about, can be a really effective way of doing that. Equally, if we're feeling really angry with things, then we can vent those emotions through doing arts. We can be modelling our pain or using dramatic painting, for example, or dancing out those emotions.

And that can be a much healthier way of regulating our emotions than some of the other vices that we might turn to, like shouting at somebody or feeling like we just have to have a drink to get over it. So Artsk is one of those tools that I don't think many people use enough as a way of actually bringing their emotions up and down as they need to. 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. It's peak pollination season and my business is scaling fast. To keep the nectar flowing, I need a phone plan with top priority data speeds. That's why I chose GoogleFi Wireless.

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This is such a fascinating literature that's been developing so much over the last few years within neuroscience. One of the things that has gradually been emerging is that when we engage in lots of different arts activities, it activates so many different parts of the brain. And it actually helps to strengthen the connections between different neurons in our brain, the synapses between neurons and the brain. And we actually have now got evidence that if people are regularly engaging in arts activities, the repeated strengthening of those connections actually helps to build the overall resilience of our brains. It's a concept called cognitive reserve. And what's been shown in lots of studies

now is that if people have higher levels of cognitive reserve, they actually are able to cope better with preserving their cognition, even if their brains start to show symptoms of dementia or other kinds of degeneration as they get older. And we've actually found in studies that I've led from my university, UCL, that people who engage more in the art actually have better preservation of cognition and a longer time until I actually start to show signs of dementia. So it's really about using arts to build our brain health. In fact, in neuroimaging, people who are more engaged in the arts actually have brains that look younger compared to people who are less engaged. So let's move on to sort of physical health. So this is quite

interesting. You talk about cardiovascular health being improved by engagements with the arts, which is quite, you think, because you mentioned dance and things like that, and you think, well, you know, I can see that. But it's other things as well, isn't it? You know, what can you tell us about that? So dance is one of the activities where we see really strong cardiovascular benefits, like reductions in blood pressure, better management of glucose levels, for example. And naturally, you might think, well, dance is exercise. So surely this is just basically saying do more exercise. But actually a number of clinical trials have now compared dance directly with exercise and actually showing that dance is slightly more effective often in terms of improving these outcomes.

And we don't just see this in terms of those cardiovascular things I just mentioned, but also things like levels of inflammation within our immune system, which are really important in cardiovascular health too. And I think this is mainly coming down to the fact that yes, dance is exercise, but dance also brings those creativity ingredients that we spoke about earlier. It improves our mood, for example, which is fundamental to our mental health, but also to our physical health. And dance can be a really engaging activity. We actually in trials see that there are often better adherence lessons to dance classes than to gym classes. So you can actually see that then it becomes a more

efficient or holistic way of people getting their physical activity and thereby adds up to have these broader benefits for our cardiovascular health. So does this work soon? If we're doing something a bit more intense form of dancing, I don't know, like street dancing or something, do we still get the effects if we're doing like a nice Viennese waltz, for example? Well, naturally this then comes down to sort of some of the specifics about what health outcome you're wanting to achieve and what is the dance form that you're using. If we're talking about health outcomes that are really to do with very strong levels of cardiovascular fitness, then you're going to need those more cardio workouts from your dance

activity. But actually, if we're thinking about things of like reductions in blood pressure due to sort of stress responses, then actually calming dance is one of the activities that's been shown to improve that. And in fact, there are these really interesting studies looking at people who have hypertension, which is one in five adults. It's a lot of people around the world. And they've actually said, well, what happens if people were given all the usual lifestyle things like changes to diet, for example, not smoking, more physical activity? Or what if they did that? And they also just listened to relaxing music for 20 minutes a day. And they actually found the relaxing music group had these greater improvements in their blood pressure and their hypertension above and beyond

what's being found with the other lifestyle factors. So in other words, it's not just about the advice we already know for our heart health. It's about what else could we add on? Adding arts on can lead to even greater benefits above and beyond those. And another one that you talk about, another activity, is singing. Its effect has been studied on our respiratory health. So what can we say about those studies? So when we sing, we are really giving our lungs a really good way. workouts. If we're singing regularly, we actually see that we have improvements in the strength of our respiratory muscles. Lots of studies show things like improvements in the management of symptoms of breathlessness, for example. One of my colleagues actually conducted studies looking at

what the equivalent to singing is in terms of physical activity. And actually, if you sing, it's the equivalent for your lungs, is going for a brisk walk. But this actually isn't just relevant if you are healthy in your lungs, but it's particularly relevant if you're someone that has a lung condition. And over the last few years, there have been these wonderful trials that have been emerging saying, well, could singing be an activity people could do if they have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD, or other kinds of lung conditions? And the evidence is gradually accumulating, showing that actually singing regularly can be another really valuable tool to add into your toolkit to manage lung conditions, to help people feel less breathless, to improve their respiratory strength.

And we're seeing so many great programs now that are actually putting that into practice. in hospitals, giving people prescriptions to singing classes to support lung health. Yeah, and this has been proven to be so effective that I think you say more than 100 so-called singing for lung health groups have been set up around the UK. We're seeing a really great proliferation of practice in here. I mean, naturally, we always need more clinical trials. And actually, as I speak, there are more very large-scale trials looking at singing and lung diseases that are going on right now, which are going to help so much in being able to quantify the scale

of those benefits and how much of an impact they really can make for individuals. Yeah, so let's move on to another topic then you talk about. So I don't know about anyone else, but this time of year, I've been a bit under the weather. There's a lot of illness going around. But you say that engaging with the arts can even benefit our immune system. So that's really interesting. How does that work? It is. This is actually something that I started off learning about through doing my PhD

on this very topic, thinking about how can the arts actually affect our immune system. Particularly we're seeing a few different types of studies now. One of them looks at immune proteins called cytokines. So these are chemical messengers that communicate between ourselves. And some of them help to promote inflammation in the body and some of them help to reduce it. And when we engage in arts activities, we actually tend to see a sort of brief increase if it's a kind of stimulating art activity, like an increase in the activation of these cytokines in our immune system. But over time, what we actually tend to see is a sort of brief increase, if it's a kind of stimulating art activity, like an increase in the we actually tend to see as a reduction in the levels of inflammatory cytokines. And this is really

relevant because inflammatory cytokines or inflammation in the immune system more generally is related not only to increased physical illnesses, but also to things like depressive symptoms. So we actually see this really strong connection then between the mood improvements that people so often report when they engage in the arts, but also these fundamental biological pathways underpinning it in our immune systems that also link this through to some of the physical health outcomes that are now emerging so strongly in clinical trials. And another thing that really sort of made me step back of it was, you mentioned the effect on gene expression.

I mean, that's an entirely new one on me. I mean, how does that work? This is really continuing this acknowledgement that we now have, that experiences on our lives are not only affecting us psychologically, but having fundamental biological effects on us. And now, through leveraging very large-scale data sets and also through experimental studies, we can see that when people engage in the arts, it affects things like their gene expression.

In fact, studies that we've been doing within my research group recently, we've been looking at patterns of what's called DNA methylation, so it's to do with when little chemical tags get added to our DNA. These can be combined in what's called epigenetic clocks. And if certain patterns in these epigenetic clocks indicate if someone is biologically older than their chronological age or younger, we've actually found that people who engage regularly in the arts have these patterns of DNA methylation

that indicate they are biologically younger than people who don't have that same level of engagements. And this is just more accumulating research that's showing that the arts are affecting the fundamental building blocks of our overall health. We've actually just launched a major new research program at UCL with seven years of funding now where we're going to be mapping exactly how the arts affect,

gene expression, protein and metabolite abundance in the body and more clinical indices of our overall physiological health. So this is the idea of improving something known as the health span. Am I right in saying that? Yes. We often hear a lot in the news about people wanting to live forever, discover these sort of immortality fixes in their lives. But actually what people generally want is they want to live for longer,

staying healthy. They don't just want to live for longer and get progressively more frail or whatever. They want to maintain good health. And that's about extending our health span. It's saying if we've got to say, certain life expectancy, how can we make sure that we are physically well, fit, functioning, free from disease for as long as we possibly can within this. And again, we're seeing this so much in studies of the arts. Lots of studies we've been leading at UCL have shown that people

who engage regularly in the arts have a reduced risk of becoming frail, developing chronic pain, developing age-related disabilities, for example. And this is independent of other things like physical activity that we already know are really good at preserving that health span. These effects are above and beyond that, suggesting that we really should be adding arts into our overall sort of group of health behaviours that we think about when we think about our health and longevity. Yeah, so often if we're talking about longevity and health spans or whatever, our minds would tend to skew towards the elder populations.

But can anyone of any age get the benefits that we've been talking about? I think that historically we've tended to think about focusing on our age and our health as we get older, but I actually really think that's shifting so much now. People of any age want to know what can they do to make sure that they are physically fit and well now, but also investing in their own health for the future, trying to sort of build that capital so that they might have better cognition for longer, better physical health for longer, better mental health for longer. So this really is relevant at all ages.

And as we engage in the arts more and more across our lives, we are building up that artistic capital, that creative capital that's been nurturing our brains, supporting our well-being, supporting our physical functioning. So this is relevant at every age. And in fact, I would argue even particularly amongst children when it's right at the start of our whole lives and it's thinking about setting good patterns of mental health, of self-esteem of our own behaviours. Having said that, you think we could perhaps be doing more to encourage you.

perhaps within the education system to encourage children. Because, you know, you hear sort of every six months or something that the arts are being defunded. You know, so is there anything we can be doing there, like early on so that people are encouraged to interact with the arts? So that will flow through later in their lives. Absolutely, there is. And I have young children just now are heading into primary school

and so I'm seeing firsthand the challenges that we have here around very, very limited opportunities for children to do arts within schools. and this has been a systemic deprioritization of them within curricula, not just in the UK, but in many different countries now. And we are in many countries as well, seeing this reduced funding for arts within schools. It's somehow not seen as a priority. But actually this is a fundamental mistake. You know, it's actually a United Nations human rights that everybody has access to the arts.

It's one of the only human rights actually isn't monitored, which is such a problem, because we're then not actually holding ourselves accountable to this. And the grim reality is, if children don't have arts and schools, then it actually makes it really uneven for them because then it means that the only opportunity is outside schools. And then that means that the greatest likelihood is that the people, the children who are born into wealthier families with more education whose parents already engage in the arts are going to be more likely to have those opportunities. And those other children are not going to get them. So really schools are the great, the opportunity to make arts equally available for everybody. and it's one we're really not capitalising on enough at the moment. So you haven't said that, sort of by way of summing up, we've covered an awful lot there.

But in the book, you have a sort of toolkit, like several pointers of how anyone listening here who wants to gain these benefits can engage with the arts, you know, more deeply, more frequently, more effectively. So what are some of your, without giving everything away? What are some of your top tips? Well, I think we can think about this in terms of the specific and the general. So I have chapters on all different aspects of health and illness. And at the end of each one, I give really nuanced recommendations about what the science says, about exactly what kinds of art to engage in for how long and what way to achieve particular outcomes. But I also think we can think more generally.

In all of our lives, how could we be doing more arts? We actually ran a study recently. We asked a representative sample of adults. This was in the US, but I expect the UK is quite similar. Did you do any arts yesterday? And 95% said no. So I think we've got a sort of core problem that most people are starting from zero in this position. So I say think about arts as you would think about food.

So we're used to the idea of getting our five fruit and vegetables a day. It's similar for the art. Think about what's your equivalent. Is it 15 or 20 minutes that you're going to do before bed? Is it about trying a new creative activity once a week? Is it about using the arts for just five minutes before you start your work every morning to get you into the right headspace? basically think about what that moment is for you, that equivalent rule. Focus on diversity. We always try and get as many different plants as we can into our diet. Well, it's the same with art. Think

about diversity of arts experiences. Don't just rely on reading books because you love books. Think about how you could weave music or dance in there as well. Think about crafts. Also, don't think it has to be complicated. You can do simple swaps. So if you're somebody who already goes to the gym, why not go to a dance gym class instead? If you ever go out, for a dinner date, well, why not swap that for tickets to a gig instead? So even if you don't think that you have time, there could be these really simple trades that you can do that actually might be the catalyst for you being able to then engage and enjoy engaging in the arts more.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius, brought to you from the team behind BBC Science Focus. That was Professor Daisy Fancourt. To discover more about the topics we've just discussed, check out her book, Art Cure, the science of how the arts transform. our health. If you like to what you just heard, then please do consider subscribing to Instant Genius on your preferred podcast platform. If you'd like to see our guests and hosts in person, then why not check out our YouTube channel at ScienceFocus. The current issue of BBC ScienceFocus

magazine is out now. Pick up a copy wherever you buy your favourite magazines or download us on your app store of choice. You can also find us on Apple News or online at sciencefocus.com. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analog warmth. Alongside French acoustic specialist vocal, Name creates high-end audio systems combining innovation with craftsmanship, so you can listen to music, just as the artist intended. Discover more at name audio.com.

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