The new interdisciplinary field of neuroaesthetics explains why relating to beauty through 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 the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, "the arts and aesthetic experiences are essential to the human condition".
While we all have different ideas about beauty, neuroaesthetic research is deciphering how beauty impacts the brain, from reducing stress-related amygdala activation to bringing us into our parasympathetic "rest and digest" state. Beauty is the giant wellness industry (the market that helps people to look good), but Malleret argues that helping people experience all kinds of beauty should be a major focus of the wellness industry.The mainstay, such as exercise and healthy nutrition, is a pillar.
As the world feels increasingly bad, our brains crave wellbeingparticularly through the mediums of the arts, beauty and nature (the three often go together, or at least are closely interdependent). The changing seasons, the beauty of a painting, the soothing effect of music, the blossoms on the trees, the colours of the sky: these are all fundamental components not only of our mental but also of our physical well-being.
In recent decades, we have learned a lot about how nutrition, sleep and physical exercise contribute to well-being. Thanks to the discipline of neuroaestheticsNow five years old, we now understand that beauty experiences can bring similar benefits to wellbeing as mindfulness by reducing stress-related activation of the amygdala in the brain, which reduces cortisol and brings us into our parasympathetic "rest and digest" state.
Y although beauty can be subjective, the same area of the brain (the medial orbitofrontal cortex) is activated when we perceive that something is beautiful.. A more pronounced focus of the wellness industry should be to help us prioritise the pursuit of beauty wherever it is found. If we know how to look for it, beauty can be accessible to all. Nothing and no one can deprive us of the benefits of beauty.
