BmoreArt

What the authors call “microdosing of aesthetics” is on a rise: “In the same way you might exercise to lower cholesterol and increase serotonin in the brain, just twenty minutes of doodling or humming can provide immediate support for your physical and mental state.” And this kind of proof is not only on the maker’s side of art, but also the beholder’s, with multiple research studies, dating as far back as Oliver Sacks’ and Concetta Tomaino’s work in the 1980s, showing that “music played at a certain frequency decreases levels of cortisol, while increasing oxytocin, a hormone sometimes used therapeutically to treat depression and anxiety.” And such studies have been conducted across the spectrum of art forms, up to and including those using VR, AR, and AI technologies.

The authors, who reside on opposite coasts, both come from creative backgrounds. Ross is a former jewelry designer living in California, who is currently vice president of design for hardware products at Google. Magsamen is Baltimore’s own. Author of seven books, she created Curiosity Kits, a multi-sensory creative projects company, and Curiosityville, an online interactive learning environment (each sold to other companies in 1995 and 2014, respectively), before founding and directing the International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab), Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics, in the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, in 2007. 

I’ve known Magsamen since the 2000s, when we sat on committees together during a burgeoning interest in bringing arts integration (teaching all subjects in and through the arts) into Baltimore City Public Schools. Her passion was as limitless then as it is now, with her focus on neuroarts. In preparing this article, I interviewed Magsamen and attended a panel she was on at BmoreArt’s Connect+Collect Gallery. Thoughts from those conversations appear throughout this review. 

So, what does “neuroarts” mean? In 2021, Magsamen’s lab partnered with the Aspen Institute to publish an action plan for neuroarts becoming better known globally for its benefits, initiating it as a new field academically, and beginning to change policy. The 85-page “NeuroArts Blueprint” provides this helpful definition: “Neuroarts is the transdisciplinary study of how the arts and aesthetic experiences measurably change the body, brain, and behavior and how this knowledge is translated into specific practices that advance health and wellbeing.” 

Underscoring the broad appeal of the book, the authors begin with a survey to gauge your “aesthetic mindset”—put simply, “the ways you are aware of the arts and aesthetics around you, and how you bring them into your life with purpose.” For those of us whose lives are rooted in the arts, scores will be high. But it’s a cool baseline quiz (c’mon, who doesn’t like quizzes?) that the authors urge repeating in a month or so, after trying out ideas in the book. A smart way to engage readers now and in the future. 

From there, in “The Anatomy of the Brain” chapter, the authors outline their four “core concepts of the neuroarts”: Neuroplasticity, Enriched Environments, the Aesthetic Triad, and Default Mode Network. Don’t numb out. The authors use clear descriptions, down-to-earth visual analogies, and engaging illustrations. For example, neuroplasticity comes to life through black-and-white photographs of microscopic neuronal networks in a petri dish that Magsamen’s neuroscientist husband Rick Huganir took in his Hopkins lab, illustrating how neurons in our brains try to communicate by reaching out from their “axons” (like taproots of a tree) through “dendrites” (like tree branches growing from a tree trunk made up of neurons). This “synaptic connection” process, which involves billions of neurons, is mind-boggling, so much so that the brain has developed a way to prioritize communications by “pruning,” wherein some synaptic connections grow stronger and others grow weaker. 

Dozens of examples of the brain doing its neuroarts magic are woven through the subsequent six chapters, the titles of which bespeak their focus: Cultivating Well-Being, Restoring Mental Health, Healing the Body, Amplifying Learning, Flourishing, and Creating Community. With regard to community, the authors make inclusiveness key. Just about the time I thought neurodivergence or cultures outside the US and Europe would not be addressed, there they were. The use of gerunds in the chapter titles—action-oriented “-ing” endings—signals Magsamen’s and Ross’ optimism that the studies covered in the chapters will mobilize readers. That may come in the shape of trying out exercises in the book, googling IAM Lab and NeuroArts Blueprint, clicking on the sites’ “News” and “News & Resources” tabs, subscribing for updates—or even reaching out by clicking the Contact tabs. 

Openness to input is among Magsamen’s many assets, and we can all have a hand in manifesting this Blueprint. We in the arts are already a part of it. But by holding onto some of the statistics in the callout box and citing them in just the right settings, you never know what funder or politician might be listening and be convinced that what we do counts in bigger ways than heretofore known.

One of the most convincing, big-picture data points from a 2021 study titled “Alzheimer’s Disease and Music Engagement Economic Impact Analysis” (on the NeuroArts Blueprint website) that Magsamen cited at the end of the Connect+Collect panel was that there’s a “three-to-one return on investment when you use music in this context [of caretaking for dementia patients]. So, for every dollar spent, there were two more dollars available for use on something else, because the patients didn’t need more care, more medication. The study addresses GDP and jobs, contrasting the 2020 cost of a music intervention ($802) with the cost of medication ($3,500).” This is the kind of fact that can turn the heads of the most artless folks.

Given Magsamen’s openness, it was perhaps on an unconscious level that she and Ross chose the title Your Brain on Art for their book. Remember all those war-on-drugs PSAs over the years, starting in the 1980s? How can we forget? In the PSA, an egg (“your brain”) gets dropped into a searing-hot cast iron frying pan (“drugs”) followed by the actor’s statement: “This is your brain on drugs.” Key, though, was the PSA’s final line: “Any questions?” I dare say that the authors of this book are ready to take yours.