Do you have favorite tunes that, when you hear them, just make you feel good all over?

Do you love to dance or sing or play a musical instrument? Do you prefer to draw or doodle or paint or write poetry? If you enjoy any one of these artistic activities, or something else, you are experiencing one of the most wonderful aspects of being human. For tens of thousands of years, humans have used their brains and bodies to create stories, songs, art, and traditions that are passed from one generation to the next. Just look at how your own family, friends, and community celebrate and recognize important events, and you will be able to identify what makes your group special and distinct. Each culture has its unique aspects, but expressions of music and art are common throughout them all.
Music and the arts are so much a part of the human experience that we often say our brains are “wired for art” and have been for centuries. Very recently, Chinese geologists discovered a cave containing handprints and footprints grouped and displayed in a creative way. Those prints are estimated to be 226,000 years old, the oldest artwork ever discovered. And the origins of music are lost in the mists of time, but our deep connection to song and rhythm has scientists theorizing that music evolved alongside language or could have even preceded it. It could have been used to help early humans survive or to communicate over distances. Archaeologists have discovered the oldest flute-like instruments (made of animal bones and similar to today’s recorder) in Slovenia, estimated to be 53,000 years old.
KidSpirit contributors respond to Susan’s prompt (below) on “coming home to yourself.”
We have made extraordinary progress as a species, yet today’s world is filled with many stressors, including climate change, political unrest, social media misinformation and disinformation, and natural anxieties. Thanks to scientific advances and new ways of viewing the inner workings of our brains, we now have a better understanding of how music and the arts can help us thrive and flourish in the midst of challenging circumstances, no matter our age or level of talent.
How do we know this? In the early 1960s, a scientist named Marian Diamond learned, through animal experiments, that the size of our brains may actually increase if we are in enriched environments. Enriched environments are spaces where there are objects and items to explore and that stimulate our curiosity and learning. At first, other scientists did not believe her, holding on to the theory that our brains do not change and, in fact, decline as we age. Further studies agreed with Dr. Diamond’s initial findings, and today she is considered one of the founders of neuroscience.
Dr. Diamond’s research opened the door for other scientists to question how experiences such as participating in the arts and music affect us. Since then, scientists from many fields have added greatly to the knowledge of how our incredibly complex brains work, and about 30 years ago, the field of neuroarts was born. Neuroarts is the study of how the arts and aesthetic experiences impact the brain, body, and behavior. It is a field that combines the sciences, art, and technology. Through their work, scientists have identified four core principles that define neuroarts, and they are:
1. Neuroplasticity – this is the brain’s ability to form and reorganize connections between neurons throughout life, essentially “rewiring” itself. Each of us is born with 100 billion neurons that connect to about 10,000 other neurons. You have quadrillions of connections, creating countless circuits across your brain. (A quadrillion is one followed by 14 zeros.)
2. Enriched environments – The environment in which you are raised and the places where you live, play, and work are vitally important as the building blocks of your experience and how you view the world.
3. The aesthetic triad – Three components in your body – your sensory and motor systems, how your body reacts when good things happen, and your knowledge and meaning-making ability – combine to form what we call an aesthetic experience. Aesthetic experiences are unique to each of us and help define what we like and don’t like.
4. The default mode network – Just as computers may be linked through a network, there are several parts in our brain that, together, hold our sense of self and determine and process whether a work of art, a piece of music, or a certain landscape in nature matters to us. This helps explain why your best friend prefers alternative/indie music, while you like classic rock.
In addition, we use – and respect – the ways of knowing, or how we learn and take in new information. The ways of knowing are: Artistic – using art to create stories, songs, dances, and much more; Experience – the knowledge we accumulate from day-to-day living; Ancestral – what we learn from our ancestors, our cultures, and the natural world; and Academic – what we learn from our teachers and professors as well as our own questions and experiments.
Using what they have learned, groups around the world have employed music and the arts to improve the lives of millions, including to help children in impoverished communities realize their self-worth; to assist those suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome in addressing and moving beyond their trauma; and to give people suffering diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and cancer ways to better manage their illnesses. We all can benefit from making or beholding music or art. For example, working on an art project for just 45 minutes, regardless of your skill, can decrease stress. And engaging in just one or more artistic experiences a month can extend one’s life by 10 years.
I would like to think that a number of you reading this might be interested in becoming the next generation of neuroarts researchers and practitioners. So to challenge you, here is an arts prompt called “coming home to yourself.” Using whatever materials you have at hand, describe, artistically, how you see yourself, your essence. You may draw yourself, sing, or dance yourself. The goal is to give you the freedom to explore your innermost being through the arts and music.
If you would like to learn more, my colleague and friend Ivy Ross, who works at Google, and I published Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us in 2023. We spoke to scientists, artists, community leaders, and others all over the world about how and why they believe the arts are good for us, and we thought it important to share our findings with everyone.
I encourage you to make the arts an intentional part of your life. Participating in music and the arts keeps us well, helps us heal, stimulates our curiosity, enhances our creativity, and makes us more empathetic with those around us. I believe that we are standing on the verge of a societal shift in which the arts can deliver potent, accessible, and proven health, well-being, and learning solutions to billions of people.
