Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

trauma occupies the body, entering through the rational and the cognitive first don’t often work.” The arts and

The notes C and G, which Ivy struck with her forks that day at work, resonate with the Earth’s core frequency and are known to be soothing vibrations. These frequencies are used together all over the world because the ratio, or interval, between the notes creates a universal feeling of harmony.

“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

Roughly speaking, the frontal lobe is responsible for executive functions like planning, attention, and emotion. The temporal lobe, home of the hippocampus, takes care of making memories. The parietal lobe is home to the somatosensory cortex, where information about body sensations like touch and pain is received and interpreted. The occipital lobe

In 2017, Kathy co-founded with Captain Buck Best a nonprofit called Ashes2Art, one of the first and only creative-arts wellness programs in the country designed for first responders and their families.

Here’s where it gets interesting: the olfactory cortex is located in the temporal lobe of your brain, which broadly affects emotions and memory.

taste is also a chemical sense: The foods you eat trigger your 10,000-plus taste buds, generating electrical signals that travel from your mouth to an area of the brain called the gustatory cortex. This part of the brain is also believed to process visceral and emotional experiences, which

Emotions are the initial expression of your response to environmental stimuli, inner needs, and drives, while feelings are the perception of what your body is experiencing: Often the emotion and associated action occur in the brain and body first, then the subjective awareness of these emotional states, reflecting feelings, occur next, if at all.

This network of interconnected brain regions is active when you are not focused on the outside world but rather focused internally.