Obligatory Self promotion—Over on my Substack, in addition to the usual free content, I am serializing another novel. As I did with The Retrievers, I’m making the first three chapters of The Righteous Brother available for free, then putting the remainder behind a not-very-tall paywall. Love to have you join me—a small monthly payment limits your risk, if you decide you don’t like it. 😉

Some of you know that I once made my living as a technical writer, so I come by an interest in technology and science legitimately. I was the kid who liked to take things apart and put them together again, if not always successfully.

Thomas Aquinas was the first philosopher to separate faith and reason and I feel about that the same way I feel about the assumption science and art somehow don’t have anything to say to each other. I’ve always been interested in ways the two come together and happened on some interesting stories in a book I read recently, Your Brain on Art.

Your Brain on Art deals specifically with the study of neuroaesthetics, how art affects the brain in physiological and biological ways. There are great chunks of society that consider art a luxury item. The authors of this book posit that not only are activities like painting and dancing, and, yes, writing, useful, they are essential to human well-being.

I can’t do justice to their entire thesis in a blog post, but I encourage you to read the book if you are interested in creativity, art-making, or brain science. Here are some of the research-based findings the authors came up with.

• Music with a rhythm of 60 beats a minute can synchronize with human brains to produce alpha waves, the brain frequency associated with rest and relaxation. Take it down to 40 beats or so and the rhythm synchronizes with delta waves, associated with sleep. Music can also help rewire the brain after a stroke.
• Colors have a biological effect on human thinking and emotion. The color red raises the galvanic reaction in humans, how much sweat glands react, more than colors like green or blue. In one study, people in a gray-painted room displayed higher heart rates than people in a more colorful room.
• Research into architecture shows that building with elements like curves instead of straight walls can reduce the blood pressure and heart rate of the people living within.
• Imaging studies show that poetry has neurological benefits. Reading poems lights up the part of the brain associated with restful states, and rhythm is something our brains are hardwired to respond to.
• Coloring, drawing, even doodling stimulate the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that keeps us focused and interprets sensory information.
• Research even supports the notion that people who engage in art have a lower risk of developing chronic pain as they age.  

Kurt Vonnegut’s advice on a successful life was this: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

And while the soul-growing is a noble end, so too is finding ways to enhance your physical being, your biology. Exercising your creative skills, however you do that, is an inescapable part of living a healthy life, physically as well as psychologically. So go out, dance, sing, write, cook, garden, knit, do what you do, however you create. It’s not just your soul you’re taking care of . . your brain will appreciate you.