Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Black and Indigenous people don’t experience post-traumatic stress disorder. We experience persistent and pervasive traumatic stress. It’s ongoing,” Resmaa says. “White body supremacy weathers and erodes the brain architecture. It weathers the endocrine system. It weathers the musculoskeletal system. It weathers the reproductive system. It is the

In each of your feet, you have more than 700,000 nerve endings that are constantly taking in physical sensation. Touch receptors in your skin connect to neurons in the spinal cord by way of sensory nerves that reach the thalamus in the middle of the head on top of the brain stem.

Laura Inserra is one of the most sought-after sound practitioners in the world. She combines music and ancient wisdom practices from many cultures for a therapy she calls MetaMusic Healing.

The second circle is your brain’s reward system. This is a set of neural structures, or circuits, that activate when you experience happiness or pleasure. When the reward system comes online, it increases the probability that you repeat the behaviors that occurred prior to the event that sparked it.

Things that create saliency induce the release of neurotransmitters, like dopamine and norepinephrine, activating your synapses and increasing synaptic plasticity. This regulates memory formation, Rick says. The stronger the salient experience, the stronger the synaptic plasticity, because at that moment, a number of cells are activated, releasing

Pruning is the term for the removal of a synaptic connection.

Those who have an aesthetic mindset share four key attributes: (1) a high level of curiosity, (2) a love of playful, open-ended exploration, (3) keen sensory awareness, and (4) a drive to engage in creative activities as a maker and/or beholder. The Irish poet

Our body movements are planned by an area in the forebrain known as the basal ganglia, while our cerebellum helps to regulate posture, coordination, and balance. A group of sensory nerves known as interoceptors

“This was the first time anyone had ever seen a structural change in an animal’s brain based on different kinds of environmental experiences,” Diamond later