The Brain on Beauty and the Rising Field of Neuroaesthetics
By Thierry Malleret, economist
The new interdisciplinary field of neuroaesthetics explains why engaging with beauty via the arts or nature has such a profound impact on health. Susan Magsamen, co-author of Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us, and founder of the International Arts + Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said: “Arts and aesthetic experiences are essential to the human condition.” While we all have different ideas about beauty, neuroaesthetics research is unriddling how beauty impacts the brain, from lowering the activation of the stress-related amygdala, to moving us into our parasympathetic “rest and digest” state. Beauty is the goliath industry in wellness (the market helping people look good), but Malleret argues that helping people experience all types of beauty should be a bigger wellness industry focus––a pillar, like exercise and healthy nutrition.
As the world feels increasingly unwell, our brains crave wellbeing, particularly through the mediums of the arts, beauty and nature (the three often go together, or are at least tightly interdependent). The changing of the seasons, the beauty of a painting, the soothing effect of music, the blossoms on the trees, the colors of the sky: all these are fundamental components of not only our mental but also physical wellbeing.
The new interdisciplinary field of neuroaesthetics explains why engaging with beauty via the arts and/or nature has a positive effect on health. In the words of Susan Magsamen, co-author of Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us, and founder and director of the International Arts + Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, “arts and aesthetic experiences are essential to the human condition.”
Over the past few decades, we’ve learned a lot about how nutrition, sleep, and physical exercise contribute to wellness. Thanks to the five-year-old discipline of neuroaesthetics, we now understand that beauty experiences can bring similar benefits as mindfulness to wellbeing by lowering the activation of the brain’s stress-related amygdala, reducing cortisol, and moving us into our parasympathetic “rest and digest” state.
And while beauty can be subjective, the same area of the brain––the medial orbito-frontal cortex––lights up when we perceive something to be beautiful. A more pronounced focus of the wellness industry should be to help us prioritize seeking out beauty wherever it’s to be found. If we know how to look for it, beauty can be accessible to all. Nothing and nobody can deprive us of the benefits of beauty.
The Global Wellness Summit will host a new Beauty and the Brain Symposium in September in New York City, with BuDhaGirl as presenting sponsor.
