What Art Does For Your Brain

Think about the last time a piece of music stopped you in your tracks, or a novel kept you up late at night. Why do these experiences feel so powerful? Psychobiologist Daisy Fancourt says engagement with the arts can help to regulate our emotions, build resilience, and support long-term well-being. She joins us to talk about this research, and to share practical ways to bring more creativity into our everyday lives.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. The Old Testament tells the story of King Saul, a ruler who was frequently gripped by waves of anguish and despair. When Saul was afflicted by such torments, his advisers didn't always call for a physician or a priest. Instead, they summoned a young shepherd named David, known for his skill at playing the lyre.

• 0:29Shankar Vedantam?

  As the music began to play, King Saul's mind would settle and his mood would lift.

• 0:39Shankar Vedantam?

  For centuries, stories like this have been treated as legend, poetic, symbolic, even mystical.

• 0:47Shankar Vedantam?

  But do they point to something real?

• 0:50Shankar Vedantam?

  Today, a growing body of scientific research suggests that music, painting, dance, and storytelling do far more than entertain us. They calm our nervous systems, reshape our emotions, and even influence our physical health.

• 1:09Shankar Vedantam?

  This week on Hidden Brain, and in a companion story on Hidden Brain Plus, why the arts are no luxury, but rather a vital form of medicine for the mind.

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• 2:56Shankar Vedantam?

  Think about the last time a piece of music stopped you in your tracks, or a novel kept you up late into the night, or a painting made you feel something you couldn't quite put into words. Why do these experiences feel so powerful? For a long time, scientists didn't have a clear answer. The arts seem too subjective, too personal, to study in any systematic way. But that's starting to change. At University College London, psychobiologist Daisy Fancourt has found that these moments are not just meaningful, they're measurable, and they can play a crucial role in our emotional and psychological well-being. Daisy Fancourt, welcome to Hidden Brain.

• 3:37Speaker 06

  It's lovely to be with you.

• 3:40Shankar Vedantam?

  Daisy, as a young woman, you were very involved in music, singing and playing the piano. What did you notice about the emotional and psychological effects that music and the arts had on you and your friends?

• 3:53Speaker 06

  I feel really lucky because I was born into a family of professional musicians, so the arts were just so much a part of my day-to-day upbringing. I don't think I really reflected on what a privilege that is to have that kind of exposure at such a young age. I mean, I remember so clearly that if ever I felt stressed or worried about anything as a teenager, I used to go and play the piano, just sort of instinctively, and I knew that was something that would help me. And I certainly have noticed that a lot of the relationships, the friendships that I built early on, they came through playing music with friends, being in orchestras or bands or being involved in musical theatre. So I think it was a lot more fundamental and foundational to me than I necessarily appreciated at that young age.

• 4:45Shankar Vedantam?

  I understand, Daisy, that while you were in college, you began working in a pediatric hospital. Tell me about this work, where it was and what you did.

• 4:54Speaker 06

  It was an incredible program that was open to students at Oxford University, where I was studying. And alongside your studies, you could train to go and deliver arts programs in hospitals. And it was something I just jumped at immediately because I was still fascinated by science and medicine and keen to find a way to blend the two. So we received training and then worked in pediatric hospital wards doing singing workshops with the children.

• 5:20Speaker 06

  And I was just completely blown away by the impact that I saw the singing having. I kind of expected it to be a nice bit of entertainment. But actually, I was seeing directly that singing with children who were really anxious and crying and distressed would stop them crying and would actually completely calm them down.

• 5:40Speaker 06

  And I saw these amazing interactions between patients and their siblings, that actually music was providing this form of emotional and social connection for them, even in this very challenging and kind of often inhumane kind of environments of the hospital. So I was actually able to witness the benefits I hadn't really appreciated that music could have.

• 6:05Shankar Vedantam?

  I understand that on one occasion, you observed a premature baby in the hospital who was crying inconsolably and refusing to eat. Tell me that story.

• 6:15Speaker 06

  We were working in NICU, so neonatal intensive care units, with some of the parents, and actually trying to help the mothers sing with their babies. And I remember this one child who was just crying and crying, and the mother was really struggling. And you could see it was really impacting her psychologically as well. But as soon as we started singing this lullaby and she started singing along with her baby as well, the baby's behavior just completely changed. And within a couple of minutes, it was suddenly feeding again.

• 6:47Shankar Vedantam?

  I'm assuming that part of this might have also been that singing was calming the mom down, and perhaps that was also sending a signal to her child.

• 6:56Speaker 06

  Absolutely. And this is something that we actually saw so many times across different wards, that often the parents were the ones who were the most anxious and really actually struggling the most with the situations they were in. And actually giving them a way that they could engage and play and respond with their children through singing was something that was supporting that whole family unit together.

• 7:19Shankar Vedantam?

  Another time you saw a child being treated for burns. He was in severe pain. What did you observe, Daisy?

• 7:27Speaker 06

  Well, after I finished college, I actually got a full-time job working in our National Health Service, so working in hospitals, designing new arts programs. And one of the wards we worked on was in the emergency departments. And I remember there was a little boy who'd come in, who'd had really terrible burns, and there was a delay in managing to get morphine to him, and he was calling out for pain relief. But actually, there was a theatre group that we had in the hospital, and they started doing this performance for him in the emergency department. And again, it was just this complete change in his behavior. He suddenly wasn't asking for pain relief. He was smiling and laughing along with what they were doing. And you could see that that distraction that had provided had been sufficient for him no longer to feel out of control in that pain situation.

• 8:09Shankar Vedantam?

  And was this theatrical production, was it aimed at children? Was it aimed at his age group?

• 8:14Speaker 06

  Yes, it was. It was from a wonderful group called Chicken Shed, who specialized in how you could engage young people with the arts. And we brought them into the hospital. They'd specialized in working in disability art, but we brought them in and said, well, can we adapt this and develop programs that would be really targeting the children who are in the hospital? And they delivered some amazing programs across our pediatric wards.

• 8:45Shankar Vedantam?

  So even as you were seeing the effects that the arts were having on patients, you were also noticing that among some of your colleagues, doctors and administrators, they saw this as a form of entertainment, not as a form of therapy. Can you talk about this disconnect that you experienced, Daisy?

• 9:02Speaker 06

  Well, it was sort of a situation where if people didn't know what it was and you started describing it, it was sort of described as, oh, yeah, the hospital entertainment program. But actually, I noticed that as soon as we started working closely with clinicians on their wards, they actually really started to get it. They started to see this impact, like we brought music onto the dementia wards. And immediately when we started playing these songs, there were these patients who couldn't remember their relatives, but were suddenly singing along, word perfect. And you could see the clinicians suddenly looking up and noticing. And then we were having these great conversations where we were saying, well, how can we use this? How can we use this with the patients to support them whilst they're in hospital?

• 9:43Speaker 06

  So I was seeing these moment to moment transitions in how the arts were being perceived by the clinical staff as we started working more closely with them. But it was still at a stage where we didn't fully have the evidence to sort of say, well, that's because of these scientific studies. Like, we were seeing the impact, but not always having those scientific papers to fall back on to explain it. So it really highlighted for me this gap in terms of scientific research in being able to make that case, rather than having to demonstrate it physically all the time.

• 10:20Shankar Vedantam?

  Daisy had seen that engagement with the arts was healing people and making them whole. When we come back, we follow Daisy as she becomes a researcher. She discovers why the arts have such striking effects and how to integrate them into the practice of medicine.

• 10:36Shankar Vedantam?

  You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 11:12Speaker 07

  Welcome to Science of Perception Box. Perception Box. Perception Box. One's own perception of consciousness. And the Perception Box. Hi, I'm Elizabeth Koch. What's a Perception Box? You could think of it as a kind of reality filter that's constantly shaping how we see ourselves, other people, and the world around us. Yet we often don't even recognize it's there. Your face is a mask, and you're behind this mask. Science of Perception Box. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

• 11:44Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. After seeing firsthand the benefits of the arts in her own life and in the lives of her patients, Daisy Fancourt became a researcher. She started to generate hard scientific evidence for the benefits of the arts on our health.

• 12:03Shankar Vedantam?

  Over the past couple of decades, she and others have identified distinct ways in which the arts affect our bodies and our minds.

• 12:11Shankar Vedantam?

  Daisy, you say that engaging with the arts can elevate our mood and increase our sense of well-being, not just in the moment, but over time. How is this happening? And do we understand the brain mechanisms behind this?

• 12:24Speaker 06

  It's actually one of the things people report the most when you ask them how they feel when they engage in the arts. They'll often say they feel happier. And we actually are really starting to understand more about the neuroscience of why this is. Because when we engage in the arts, we are essentially activating pleasure centers in the brain and reward networks, like the dopaminergic system, which leads to the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine, which are involved in those feelings of happiness, of pleasure. And actually, we used to think that we just got these dopamine releases at the kind of peak moments of arts experiences, like if you're listening to a song and that chorus comes back and you have that kind of yes moment. But we also now know that you get those in anticipation of those moments.

• 13:07Speaker 06

  It's the buildup to the return of that chorus. Or if you're reading a story, it's those moments when you're about to find out who the murderer is in a big detective novel, for example. And actually, that's why the arts are so effective at giving us these dopamine releases, because arts experiences are constantly about tension and resolution and anticipating what might happen and seeing if we're right or having our expectations thwarted. So essentially, when we engage in the arts, we are giving our brains these repeated doses of dopamine. And that helps us to feel happier in the moment. But also, over time, we see that the more regularly engaged we are, the higher the levels of our happiness that we have, the higher our life satisfaction. And particularly if we're getting involved in doing and making arts as well,

• 13:52Speaker 06

  it can affect so many other aspects of our well-being, like our self-esteem, our sense of meaning, our purpose, and autonomy in our lives.

• 14:01Shankar Vedantam?

  Now, the arts evoke all kinds of different emotions. So we might, you know, watch a horror movie and feel scared, or we might listen to heavy metal and feel pumped up. How is it that these experiences can also produce feelings of happiness and peace when in some ways the experiences themselves might seem antithetical to happiness and peace?

• 14:21Speaker 06

  It's true. It feels like a paradox, doesn't it? That the idea you could watch a horror movie or read a really sad book, but somehow it's still good for your well-being. And the reason for this is that when we engage in arts in, for example, sad or scary or shocking arts experiences, we actually experience positive and negative emotions simultaneously. So if you experience those sad, scary, or shocking events in real life, it would just be probably deeply traumatic. But because we know it's art, our brain treats us a little bit differently. So we've got a little bit of an aesthetic distance between us and that arts experience. And that distance means that we experience those emotions, but we don't have to respond to them.

• 15:04Speaker 06

  We don't have to change, like, the scary experience in our lives. We've not got to try and stop that fear. So actually, we get to contemplate it. That means our brains get to rehearse how they might regulate their emotions or think about how we might respond in the real world. And that's actually something our brains love to do. And it's actually really good for us as well, because our brains are prediction machines. So when we engage in the arts, we're actually helping to expose ourselves to new situations that can help us navigate complex experiences when they come up in our real lives. And also that those experiences, even like listening to sad songs when we're feeling sad, it can give us a feeling of kind of authentic emotional connection, the feeling that other people might have experienced similar emotions. And that can also support us psychologically.

• 15:58Shankar Vedantam?

  And perhaps this is why when people are really upset, sometimes they reach for sad songs, which would seem paradoxical, because you would think that people would want to listen to songs that are happy songs. But very often, we are looking for music that matches our internal emotional barometers.

• 16:14Speaker 06

  Exactly. And actually, sometimes it's through listening to those lyrics and songs or those melodies that we can start to understand our own emotions better. And that means we can then process them and be able to cope with them better, too.

• 16:32Shankar Vedantam?

  We had a guest on Hidden Brain recently, Colton Skrivner, who talked about the effects of watching horror movies or scary experiences. And he was studying the effects that these have on our minds. But as you're talking right now, I'm realizing that in some ways, there's a parallel when we watch a scary movie about a shark or a monster of some kind. In some ways, it's a form of exposure therapy.

• 16:55Speaker 06

  It is. You see this most clearly with young children who might want to read a ghost story over and over again, because their brains are practicing having that fear, managing that fear, being able to rationalize it. And we're often really drawn to those scary experiences. But there is a kind of caveat here, which is some people, like me, hate scary films. And that's because actually, we're forgetting that it is art. When I watch a scary movie, I get so drawn into it, I kind of think it's real life. And therefore, I lose that distance and I just get scared. So that is a kind of caveat here, is that we have to be appreciating those experiences for art. And it's the same way why sometimes if we've listened to a lot of really sad songs when we're feeling sad,

• 17:38Speaker 06

  again, we can get drawn in just a little bit too much and actually find that it's not supporting us in the right way.

• 17:45Shankar Vedantam?

  Talk about the role of the arts in helping us to regulate our emotions, Daisy.

• 17:50Speaker 06

  When we engage in the arts, it can actually give our brain a kind of toolkit of ways of managing our emotions. So some of the time, it can be that if we are painting, or dancing, or singing, or drumming, then we're actually cathartically getting rid of our emotions. We might be venting them, for example, if we're feeling angry, or expressing those moods through our arts. But there are also other times when actually it can be really helpful for us to distance ourselves from emotions in our lives. If we're doing arts, it can give us a chance to be really mindful and just focus on the arts and give our brains a break from stresses or worries in our lives. Or it can even give us that that chance to think differently, to kind of reappraise what might be going on. Lots of people will have had the experience where you do something

• 18:35Speaker 06

  really creative and actually because you're calmer, because you're focused on the drawing you're doing, or the dancing you're doing, you actually find yourself thinking a bit differently about the world. And by the time you've finished, you actually think differently about the problem you might have had in the first place. So arts can be this amazing way of giving our brains lots of different ways that we can then contemplate, or reassess, or cope with challenges we might be facing.

• 19:00Shankar Vedantam?

  I understand that one study in the US induced negative emotions in people by asking them to think about a very sad event, or showing them, you know, photographs of tragedies like, you know, funeral scenes, or experiences of torture and suffering. Describe this experiment for me, and what it found, Daisy.

• 19:19Speaker 06

  This is a really interesting study that said, well, if we give people kind of puzzles, or we tell them to draw shapes and copy things, then will that help to regulate their emotions, to calm them down, for example, or to de-stress them, in a better or worse way than if we actually let them do creative things? And what they actually found is if people had that creative freedom, like they could draw freely, or they could write expressively about what they were feeling, they actually helped to regulate their emotions much better, much faster. So it really highlighted that the creativity in the arts is one of the things that can really support us when we're feeling stressed, or when we're feeling worried.

• 19:56Shankar Vedantam?

  I understand that you've seen something of this phenomenon firsthand, when it comes to your own daughter?

• 20:02Speaker 06

  Well, I've got young children, and as any parents to young children will be able to attest, like you see children really having to grapple with some big emotions and big experiences. And something I've noticed with my own kids is that if ever they're feeling worried about something, or anxious about something, then just being able to hand them some paper and crayons, it's incredible how much they'll start to draw that. Sometimes it's sort of angry scribbling, other times it's more cathartic drawing of calm shapes. And my children are only toddlers, so they're really young, but that just shows how innately young children are drawn to using the arts in this very organic way to support their emotions. And I think we can forget this as we become

• 20:44Speaker 06

  adults. We can forget that the arts can be such a powerful way of supporting our emotions. So I always think children are such an amazing example of this for us.

• 21:02Shankar Vedantam?

  You've studied the effects of group singing on patients dealing with cancer. Tell me about this work, Daisy.

• 21:10Speaker 06

  I've looked at the effect that the arts can have in lots of different patient groups, where actually we might have a medical treatment for the illness, but we might not have a solution for thinking about holistically what that person is experiencing. The work that I've done in cancer hospitals in the UK, we've looked at having choirs for people, which have been a way of bringing people together in a social setting, where they might be able to find some social support and companionship, and people who understand what they're going through. But also singing is something that physiologically can relax them. We've discovered through the studies that when we sing, we reduce our levels of stress hormones, and we also reduce inflammation in our immune system, which is linked not just to our physical health, but also to feelings like depression, depressive

• 21:53Speaker 06

  sympathms. And we've also found that people can experience a real sense of confidence through the choirs if they are learning this new skill of singing together, they're putting on performances. We found through our research that patients who'd been in the studies were saying that they'd felt that their self-esteem had taken a real hit when they'd been undergoing cancer treatment. But this was actually a way they were performing again. They were feeling more confident in their bodies, more confident socially, and it was helping them to navigate the psychological experience of cancer.

• 22:21Shankar Vedantam?

  I'm also reflecting on the fact that group singing involves singing in a group. So it's not just the music or the singing, it's probably helping patients connect with others.

• 22:31Speaker 06

  Very much so. And I think we see this across lots of different kinds of arts experiences. They can be this vehicle to us getting social interaction, or physical activity in dance, for example, or cognitive stimulation. So things that we already know are really good for our health. So the arts organically bring lots of those ingredients together. But the arts also do bring extra things as well. There are chances for more multi-sensory stimulation, and creativity, and an appreciation of aesthetics, and the use of our imagination. And I think it's the fact that the arts can combine all of those things into one experience that makes them so powerful for our health.

• 23:16Shankar Vedantam?

  Now, of course, trying to express yourself in art requires a certain amount of craft and control. Talk a little bit about how engaging in the arts can give us feelings of mastery, feelings of control.

• 23:31Speaker 06

  This is something that many people can find challenging in their lives, is finding a way that they can feel that sense of mastery and control. And some people can get that through their work, or through their home life, but there are plenty of people who don't actually get that, who can feel really disempowered in other aspects of their lives. But lots of studies have now shown that if we can engage in the arts and build artistic skills, even really simple things, like learning to play a piece on the guitar, or learning how to do a simple craft activity, like do some knitting, or crocheting, or embroidery, this can be a really good way of actually building our sense of ability, our sense that we can do something, our sense of mastery. And this is one of the really core components of our wellbeing. So it's

• 24:13Speaker 06

  a very important thing to make sure that we're cultivating. But it can also then help us to build our belief in ourselves, our feelings of our own self-efficacy, or agency. And these are really important life skills that actually affect all of our other health behaviours, too. If people start to feel a sense that they're good at something creative, they've built up that skill, then that can help them to feel more confident that they could try a different skill in their lives. So so many studies have shown that something as simple as joining a community arts group, for example, can lead to quite major life decisions, like taking up another health behaviour, or changing job, or deciding to go out and find new friends, taking on challenges people haven't thought they could do before.

• 25:03Shankar Vedantam?

  You tell the story of a woman named Shay. Can you tell me her story, Daisy?

• 25:08Speaker 06

  Shay is an attorney who currently now lives in Houston, and she is someone who described to me that she had a really successful career as an attorney, but just wasn't feeling really fulfilled from that work. She described her life as being kind of grey, rather than technicolor. And she was really concerned about this, particularly as her mother became very unwell with developed cancer. And her mother was saying to her, I really want you to find that sense of fulfilment in your life. But Shay remembered being really happy through singing experiences when she was younger. So she took this big leap, and she signed up to a week-long music course at Berkeley College, a kind of unconventional vacation. And she described to me how this was

• 25:49Speaker 06

  a complete turning point in her life, that that course made her feel so happy, built that sense of mastery, really changed her whole outlook on herself and what she could do as well as the rest of her life. So after that, she decided that she was going to shift her attorney work, and still carry on, but actually make much more space for music in her life. And she started doing more singer-songwriting work, and even doing tours. And now, years later, she says that she's completely transformed that sense of wellbeing in her life. She's managed to use music to sort of compensate and balance out the things that she wasn't getting through her work.

• 26:27Speaker 06

  And I feel like Shay's story is such a universal one. There are so many people who feel like their jobs are not giving them that full sense of fulfilment, but actually don't realise that something as simple as developing an artistic hobby on the side could completely change that sense of balance in their lives, and as a result, their whole experience of their wellbeing.

• 26:55Shankar Vedantam?

  So given all these strands of research, I'm wondering if there's evidence that the arts can help to ward off depression, Daisy?

• 27:03Speaker 06

  This is a really important question and one that started fascinating me about 10 years ago, because when you add together all of the evidence we've been talking about for the benefits, for the brain, for our wellbeing, it starts to make you think, well, might the arts actually support our overall psychological resilience? So perhaps we're more protected against the risk of developing conditions like depression. So I work as an epidemiologist, so my field of work involves using very large data sets, cohort studies that track tens of thousands of people over years and decades of their lives. And actually, a lot of these cohort studies, which I analyze in the US and in the UK, have looked at people's arts engagements. They've included lots of questions about their arts behaviours.

• 27:45Speaker 06

  So over the last 10 years, my team and I have been publishing dozens of papers, actually looking at how arts engagement relates to the risk of developing depression over the following decades. And we found that people who engage regularly in the arts and have an artistic hobby actually have about half the risk of developing depression over the next 10 years. So you could say, well, are these people just healthier or wealthier or have other patterns of behaviours in their lives? But as epidemiologists, we use statistical methods to basically try and account for all the other factors that could explain this relationship. So demographics, behaviours, genetics, other aspects of people's lives or even their past histories.

• 28:27Speaker 06

  And we've actually seen that this relationship is independent of these factors. In other words, arts engagement seems to act as this risk-reducing factor against the risk of developing future mental illness.

• 28:40Shankar Vedantam?

  Is it clear which way the arrow of causation runs, though? You could imagine that someone who is not feeling depressed, somebody who's feeling generally happy with their lives, might be willing to take up a paintbrush or try their hand at a singing choir, and somebody who is depressed might stay away from those activities. Do we know that it's the arts that is reducing the risk of depression, or people with lower depression who might be more engaged with the arts?

• 29:02Speaker 06

  That is such an important question, and it's one that we've really been trying to disentangle. When we've run our studies, you're right, that we have seen some what we call bidirectional effects, that kind of goes both ways. But actually, we've been saying, well, which way is strongest? And actually, we tend to see that actually arts engagement has more of an influence on future mental health than the other way around. And actually, there are lots of ways that we can also say, well, if you currently don't have depression, for example, then is your arts engagement going to be related to the future risk of depression? So therefore, we know that it's not simply your current depressive symptoms. And basically, through using lots of different statistical methods, we've actually been able to demonstrate that it is the arts engagement that is predicting future risk

• 29:45Speaker 06

  of depression, even when we've taken account of those bidirectional effects.

• 29:51Shankar Vedantam?

  I understand that some of this research has also looked at the idea that the arts might help us to hold off cognitive decline. Explain this idea to me and tell me about the work you've done here.

• 30:03Speaker 06

  So when we engage in the arts, we're really giving our brains quite an effective whole-brain workout. We're involving so many different regions of the brain that might be involved in the visual processing of sheet music, for example, or the motor response that's required, or the memory, or the emotions that are being activated. And what we've seen through a lot of studies now is that when people are regularly engaged in the arts, it actually supports their cognition. They develop increased cognitive functioning. And we can see this evident in neuroimaging studies that have shown increases in the size and connectivity between different brain regions when people engage regularly in the arts. But we can also see this over time.

• 30:45Speaker 06

  As people get older, those who've got more regular patterns of arts engagement actually have better preservation of their cognition. And in fact, they even tend to have younger brain ages. We can estimate someone's brain age based on how their brain is connecting and the patterns of connectivity across brain regions. And people who are amateurs or professionals, their brains actually are younger as they get older compared to their chronological age. So that's, on average, about five to seven years younger as they head into older adulthood, their brains are. And actually, we've seen that this is related as well to a delayed onset of the symptoms of dementia. Because with dementia, even if your brain is starting to accumulate some of the plaques

• 31:27Speaker 06

  that are typical of conditions like Alzheimer's disease, people who've got higher levels of what we call cognitive reserve, they're actually able to compensate for longer. So their brains are able to adapt and deal with it so that they don't show the outside symptoms of dementia until later on. And what we seem to be finding through lots of different studies now is that arts engagement is helping to build that cognitive reserve so that people, even if they start to develop dementia, they can manage cognitively far better for longer.

• 31:58Shankar Vedantam?

  And in some ways, there's an analogy here with physical health. So you know, if you're very healthy, if you're, if you're strong and you go through a period of decline, you have longer to go before you get incapacitated because you have, you know, more muscle to start with, more cardiovascular health to start with, and you're making the same case, really, for what happens in our minds. The more we practice certain things, the more we develop a craft, a skill, a mental ability, a cognitive ability, this gives us reserves that help us, you know, stave off decline for longer periods of time.

• 32:28Speaker 06

  That's essentially right as a metaphor. But there used to be a kind of craze about, well, could we do this through brain training apps, like games you would do on your phone that would like build that cognitive function? But actually, when the big studies of this came out, the results weren't that impressive because there was a kind of realisation that those games are only practising one cognitive function at a time. But this is where arts really has the upper hand, because when you're engaging in the arts, you've got so many different cognitive processes that are being activated by that engagement, that whole-brain workout that I spoke about. And that's why I think the arts are such an exciting opportunity for supporting our brains as we get older.

• 33:11Shankar Vedantam?

  Across many years of research, scientists like Daisy have been building evidence to prove that engagement with the arts can make a real difference. When we come back, how to bring the arts into our daily lives and reap all the riches they have to offer. Also, in our companion story to this episode, available exclusively to subscribers to Hidden Brain Plus, we dive deeper into the role of the arts in medicine. If you're a subscriber, that episode is available right now. It's titled "The Healing Arts." If you're not yet a subscriber, please go to support.hiddenbrain.org. If you're using an Apple device, please go to apple.co/hiddenbrain. You can get a free seven-day trial in both places, and you'll instantly have access

• 33:55Shankar Vedantam?

  to all our subscriber-only content. Again, that's support.hiddenbrain.org or apple.co/hiddenbrain.

• 34:05Shankar Vedantam?

  You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

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• 35:18Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Has this conversation stirred thoughts of encounters you've had with the arts? If you have a personal story you'd be willing to share with the Hidden Brain audience, or a question or comment about this episode, please find a very quiet room and record a voice memo on your phone. Two or three minutes is plenty. Then email the file to us at [email protected]. Use the subject line "arts." Again, that's [email protected].

• 35:53Shankar Vedantam?

  Daisy Fancourt is a psychobiologist at University College London. She is the author of "Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Save Lives." Daisy, you say that a first step in accessing the benefits of the arts is to figure out how to add some aspect of the arts to our lives every single day. How do you advise people to do this?

• 36:15Speaker 06

  I think it's great to think about this in the same way we think about our diet or our exercise. We're used to target 10,000 steps a day or eat five fruit and vegetables a day or whatever. And I think having a simple rule like that is a really great way of starting. Now, for some people, that might be 10 or 15 or 20 minutes that you're able to put aside. And there can be really easy ways of doing this, even sort of simple swaps that you can have in your life. So for example, one that I do is I have what I call a creative commute. So I can't, I live too far away to cycle or run to work, but when I'm on my train each day, I'm not allowed to scroll my phone. Instead, I use that time to sit and listen to music or to read my book. And that's a really easy way of making sure I get those minutes every single day.

• 37:07Shankar Vedantam?

  You said that it's important to focus on consistency. So rather than trying to get four hours in one day and nothing for the rest of the week, it's more helpful to get 20 minutes every day?

• 37:18Speaker 06

  If we're engaging regularly, it's much more likely to become a habit that sticks. So you're much more likely to find that you don't just cancel that one day and then realize it's been a couple of weeks since you did everything. But it also means you can be getting those benefits day to day. And lots of the immediate benefits people get from arts engagement are for things like stress and for mood. And those are things that we can all benefit from having the little pick-me-ups embedded in our day-to-day lives. And we also see that a lot of the evidence about the long-term benefits is really focused on sustainability of engagement. So having something that you do as a habit for months or years of your lives, if you really want to be supporting things like brain health, for example, as you get older, or the reduced risk of developing various mental and physical health conditions.

• 38:02Speaker 06

  So I think it's really great to find that daily dose that's achievable for you.

• 38:07Shankar Vedantam?

  You know, some people struggle to start an exercise routine and they find it helpful to join an exercise class or maybe to get a trainer. And in some ways, perhaps the same is true when it comes to the arts?

• 38:20Speaker 06

  I think it is true because some people are concerned that they're not artistic or creative enough, or they're not good at something, they haven't got the right skills. So it can be really effective to start a hobby, an arts hobby, by joining a local group or by having a couple of lessons, a bit of instruction to get you going, or even using things like YouTube. So you've got some videos or an online community for some support to get you going. And actually, for things that involve a certain level of skill, to be able to really get the most of them. So things like craft activities or learning musical instruments. Literature now suggests that if you can do something for 50 hours, then actually you tend to have the level of skill that mean you can really fly with it on your own and really start to enjoy it and get into the flow of it.

• 39:03Speaker 06

  So that can be good for people to recognize that it might take a few weeks to feel that they're really comfortable with an artistic hobby. So to give themselves the time to have those experiences and build that level of comfort.

• 39:22Shankar Vedantam?

  Intuitively, it seems to me that if you can do an arts activity with someone whom you like, a friend, it's a little bit like starting a workout routine with a friend. You're more likely to stick to it.

• 39:34Speaker 06

  Definitely. And actually, there are some great ways you can do this in your lives. So in the UK, actually, we found there are lots of venues like pubs or bars that are now doing crafts evenings. So you can go alone, you can socialize with friends, but you can have that artistic focus. Or you can meet up with friends at a gallery or an exhibition as a way of having something to look at as well as that time to talk to each other. Something that I've heard of some couples doing now is instead of going for a date night dinner, actually going to watch a show or to go to a gig. So they're actually embedding those creative experiences with the social experiences that they've already made the time for in their diaries.

• 40:12Shankar Vedantam?

  I want to go back to something that you mentioned a second earlier because I think this is a real barrier for many people. You know, people say, I'm not musical, or I can't draw to save my life. Talk about this barrier, the sense of shame that we have about our own artistic abilities, especially compared to what we might see on social media of other people posting their accomplishments, how this is in some ways a barrier to us jumping into the water and trying something ourselves.

• 40:38Speaker 06

  I think it's really a sign about how we as societies have sort of taken arts engagement and actually commodified it. We've sort of made it this object, this thing that you're supposed to be good at, or you have to feel like you've had particular training to be allowed to do it. But just look back at young children, because when you look at children, all children sing, they dance, they make up stories, they act things out, they constantly draw or craft. They're not worried about whether they're good at it. They're really enjoying that experience. And all kids have got that innate creativity. So I think it's really helpful to draw on children as inspiration and remind ourselves that a lot of the health benefits of the arts actually come from doing it, not necessarily being good at it.

• 41:33Shankar Vedantam?

  You said that just as we might plan our meals out, you know, that on some days we're going to eat in and some days we're going to go to a restaurant, we can do the same thing when it comes to the arts, that we can actually plan our artistic calendars?

• 41:47Speaker 06

  I think that's a really great way of doing things. So that might be a case of seeing if there are some exhibitions or a festival coming up, or there are films that you really want to see, or that there are certain gigs or things you need to book tickets for. It's really great to put those things in the diary because as well as having the day-to-day daily dose of arts engagement that you might try and embed in your life, having things like that can bring really exciting novelty. They can give you different experiences that might give you feelings of awe or excitement. And they're also a really good way of making sure that we're just building those additional routines to increase that overall pattern of engagement that we get with the arts.

• 42:28Shankar Vedantam?

  You said something important a second ago, which is that it's one thing to consume arts, going to a festival or going to an exhibition, watching a movie. It's another thing to be producing art. Talk about the difference. Is there any evidence or research about the benefits of doing one or the other?

• 42:43Speaker 06

  Well, if we think back about what ingredients we're getting when we're engaging with the arts, if we're watching something, we're being exposed to lots of different stimuli. But if we're doing it ourselves, we're getting further types of stimuli, often tactile stimuli, for example, which people can find very therapeutic. But also, if we're building our skills, that relates to those experiences of mastery that we've spoken about, or a feeling of self-esteem or accomplishments that we can get through the arts as well. So a bit like the same way we try and have a variety of plants and vegetables in our diet, it can be really important to have a variety of arts experiences because they're all exposing us to different kinds of ingredients that have health benefits. And for some health conditions, it doesn't really matter whether you are receptively

• 43:27Speaker 06

  watching something versus actively participating. So for a lot of mental health outcomes, we actually see that both kinds of engagements have benefits, just in slightly different ways for us. But there are other experiences, other outcomes. So things like outcomes relating to mobility or to pain, for example, where actually having that active ingredient of participating is giving us additional sensory engagement and additional mechanisms that can actually support those health outcomes.

• 43:55Shankar Vedantam?

  You recommend regularly changing up the kinds of arts that we engage in. I'm wondering why this is, Daisy. If you love something, why not just stick to it?

• 44:05Speaker 06

  If you love something, then absolutely you can stick to it to a certain degree. But sometimes what people find is what we call the hedonic treadmill. If they're doing something that they enjoy, they can sometimes start to adapt to it. And it doesn't necessarily continue to bring exactly the same kinds of wellbeing benefits. So people actually will often organically shift things up. So for example, if you're someone that's really into crafts and you've been really enjoying doing a certain kind of knitting, for example, you actually might find that you're setting yourself different kinds of challenges or different patterns that you're trying to learn. But sometimes people can still find that it's good to mix things up and bring in a completely different type of arts hobby, because that can be a great way of exposing

• 44:49Speaker 06

  their brains to novelty, to sparking their imagination, and to perhaps making sure that whatever behavioral routines they've got in their lives keep that freshness and excitement to them.

• 45:17Shankar Vedantam?

  I think many of us do engage with music or the arts, but we often do it as we're doing something else. So you know, you're racing home from work, maybe you're on a train, you're playing some music, but you're also reading your email. It's one thing to listen to a beautiful piece of music with one ear and quite another to immerse ourselves completely in it. You talked a second ago about how when you are commuting home from work, you actually are devoting your full attention to the art that you're consuming. Talk about this, the importance of actually sitting and savoring and focusing on the art, not just doing it, you know, with one ear or one eye.

• 45:55Speaker 06

  Yes, when we listen to music, for example, quite in the background, it can still be having some benefits for us, like reducing stress response, for example. But if it's not getting our full attention, we're not going to be getting the maximum impact from it. So I think it's really important that we are consciously aware about how much we are passively engaging in the arts versus giving it that full attention. Because when we give it full attention, all of our emotional responses are heightened, our stress responses are heightened as well. And also, we've got a chance to really get into the flow of what we're doing. And if we can really get into that flow state, that feeling of complete absorption, where we're forgetting everything else in our lives, it has profound benefits for our mental health, and it also has profound benefits for our brain health.

• 46:40Speaker 06

  It actually leads to synchronization between particular brain regions and enhances our overall attention as well. So I think it's really great that we can ensure that we are giving our time and space rather than just always relegating it to background passive consumption.

• 46:56Shankar Vedantam?

  I'm thinking, Daisy, about how sometimes when I'm eating some dessert, if I actually take my time with it and linger over it and savor it, the dessert tastes two or three times as good as a dessert that I'm rushing through. And the same thing, in some ways, is true for art.

• 47:11Speaker 06

  Absolutely. We get a much deeper appreciation and enjoyment from it. Essentially, all of our senses are heightened when we're giving ourselves that full attention on what we're doing. And we see things like increased dopamine release, so increased feelings of happiness, if we're really focusing on the arts.

• 47:28Shankar Vedantam?

  A reminder: do you have a personal story about the effects of the arts in your life or the life of a family member? If you have a story you are willing to share with the Hidden Brain audience, or a question or comment about this episode, please find a very quiet room and record a voice memo on your phone. Two or three minutes is plenty. Email it to us at [email protected] using the subject line "arts". Again, that's [email protected].

• 47:56Shankar Vedantam?

  Daisy, I understand that you have come up with a number of ways to incorporate the arts into your own daily life. Paint a picture for me of what you've done.

• 48:04Speaker 06

  One of the things that I've done in my life is I've tried to work out across the day, when am I most likely to be able to benefit from the arts? So I've often found that if I swap my alarm on my phone to a really calming piece of music in the mornings, that really subtle shift can completely change my mood when I first get up and how I'm starting my day. I've also found some of the times, like in the afternoon, when sometimes I have a bit of an energy dip, where I know that actually putting on some music can be a really great way of freshening up my mood, or it can be a great chance to actually take a little bit of a break from work and just help me to shake up that slump in the afternoon. I'm somebody that really loves to be sociable in the evenings, so I've really enjoyed

• 48:45Speaker 06

  being able to find ways of combining my socializing with also seeing friends as well. That's felt like a really nice way of not having to find more time, but being able to maximize the time that I do have to have those more meaningful experiences with people. And I've also deliberately, across my week, booked a couple of sessions in where I do things like a book club, or I'll go to go and try a new class or a taste session of something, because I find that that's another great way of keeping my engagement really novel and fresh.

• 49:16Shankar Vedantam?

  I'm wondering, when you socialize with friends, you sometimes say that you skip having drinks or dinners and try and swap in an arts activity instead. Can you paint me a picture of a time when you did this with some friends, Daisy?

• 49:30Speaker 06

  I've found recently that I've been meeting some friends at galleries or exhibitions that have been on, and it's a really great way to be catching up. But worse, you're looking around and able to think about and talk about the paintings as well. I also think it can be a really nice way, if you've got things you want to talk about with friends that are a little bit harder or more emotionally intense, to actually do something that's not just sitting opposite people at a dining table, for example, but actually somewhere where you've got a little bit of space and walking around galleries or listening to music that might be being performed in kind of public events. It can be a great way of actually giving yourself a little bit more time and focus to actually have some more difficult conversations, too.

• 50:21Shankar Vedantam?

  I was talking to a friend recently who told me that, you know, before she had kids, you know, she and her husband would go ballroom dancing multiple times a week. And of course, I'm reflecting now, as I'm hearing you speak, that in some ways, that has so many different components of what you just talked about. You're listening to the music, you're dancing, you're social, you're being with someone. All of these things, in some ways, have profound benefits for us.

• 50:47Speaker 06

  They do, and they're often much more memorable as events to do together than simply going out for a meal. And actually, we do know from a social bonding perspective that if we do arts with people, so if we sing or we dance with people, we actually become emotionally closer with them faster than if we just talk or if we exercise with them. So it's a really lovely thing to do as well if people are forming new relationships or new friendships, because it can be an amazing icebreaker and a way of helping to facilitate the development of deeper connection.

• 51:31Shankar Vedantam?

  Daisy Fancourt is a psychobiologist at University College London. She's the author of Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Save Lives. Daisy, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

• 51:43Speaker 06

  It's a pleasure.

• 51:49Shankar Vedantam?

  Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristin Wong, Laura Kurell, Ryan Katz, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor.

• 52:08Shankar Vedantam?

  If you liked this episode, please think of a friend who might like it as well and share this episode with them. If they're new to Hidden Brain, they may also discover other episodes that are of interest.

• 52:23Shankar Vedantam?

  I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.

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