Art is good for your brain

Out-of-the-box thinking also stimulates your brain to grow new neurons. 

Every time you engage in a new or complex activity, your brain creates new connections between brain cells.

Your brain’s ability to grow connections and change throughout your lifetime is called brain plasticity or neuroplasticity.

Creating art stimulates communication between various parts of the brain.

In this way, creating art has been proven to increase psychological resilience and resistance to stress. (15)

It’s thought that intelligence depends more on the number of brain connections than the size of your brain. (16)

Art enhances cognitive abilities and memory, even for people with serious brain disorders.

Dementia is mainly thought of as a memory loss problem, but patients also experience symptoms such as agitation, aggression, anxiety, depression, and insomnia.

Drug treatment for dementia symptoms is generally not very successful.

When dementia patients are encouraged to create visual art, they derive obvious pleasure from it.

It improves their social behavior and self-esteem, and reduces psychiatric symptoms. (26)

Dr. Arnold Bresky is a physician who has created a program called the “Brain Tune Up” that utilizes art therapy for Alzheimer’s and dementia patients. (27)

He has seen a 70% success rate in improvement of his patients’ memories.

By drawing and painting, patients are increasing connectivity between the right and left hemispheres of the brain and growing new brain cells.

Art Boosts Self-Esteem and Provides a Sense of Accomplishment

Creating art increases the “feel good” neurotransmitter dopamine.

Dopamine has been called the “motivation molecule.”

It boosts drive, focus, and concentration.

It enables you to plan ahead and resist impulses so you can achieve your goals. 

It gives you that “I did it!” lift when you accomplish what you set out to do.

Dopamine stimulates the creation of new neurons and prepares your brain for learning. (12) ward off depression, and protect the brain from aging. (13, 14)

Art Encourages Creative Thinking

Dr. Lawrence Katz is an internationally recognized pioneer in neuron regeneration research and author of Keep Your Brain Alive: 83 Neurobic Exercises to Help Prevent Memory Loss and Increase Mental Fitness.

He found that mental decline was due mainly to the loss of communication between brain cells, not from the death of brain cells themselves. (7)

Dr. Katz coined the phrase “neurobics” to describe brain exercises that use your senses in new and novel ways, and creating art certainly fits this definition.

Art enhances problem-solving skills. (8)

Unlike math, there is no one correct answer in art.

Art encourages creative thinking and lets you come up with your own unique solutions.

Art and relaxation/meditation

"This meditative-like state focuses your mind and temporarily pushes aside all your worries. Creating art trains you to concentrate on details and pay more attention to your environment. In this way, it acts likemeditation."

Art helps kids 

There’s evidence that the brain-enhancing benefits of music lessons received during childhood can follow through adulthood and last a lifetime. (21, 22)

The benefits of visual art programs are equally impressive.

Art lessons increase brain plasticity, fluid intelligence, IQ, and attention.

They improve overall behav­ior and reduce impulsiveness. (23)