Your Brain on Art Quotes

“When you make art and you don’t know what’s going to happen, you’re involved in the mystery that life really is.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“just twenty minutes of doodling or humming can provide immediate support for your physical and mental state.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin released in the making of music and art can help to relieve anxiety and depression.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Compelled, over hours and days, she entered a flow state where images arose spontaneously, one evolving into the next, “like life really is,”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Colors have the capacity to change our respiration, our blood pressure, even our body temperature.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Play is a key component of the arts and aesthetics in myriad ways. Art and play are like two sides of the same coin, with play being a part of artistic expression, imagination, creativity, and curiosity.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Pennebaker saw that those using expressive writing around trauma had far fewer visits to the campus health center than those who wrote trivial stories.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Drawing “is tapping into a very old part of ourselves and moving us into the emotional and intuitive parts of the brain,”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“You’re not asking your rational, cognitive brain to be in charge. Quite the opposite. You’re marshaling other parts of your brain to be of service. It’s a reminder that the arts are passively active. No need to think; just do it.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Drawing activates multiple regions in the brain that force our brain to process information in new ways while inspiring us to imagine and create new images in the brain.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“how rhythmic, repetitive movements with the hands have been shown to release serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin in the brain, making her feel a little bit better.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Your ability to move your attention flexibly, which is called switching, is quite limited,” he said.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Attention directs our consciousness to focus on some things and not others, and it is a fluid state that moves through varying degrees. “Attention is your ability to selectively focus and sustain focus,”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“There are three functions that neuroscientists consider the trifecta of cognitive processing: attention, learning, and memory.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“True learning is the scaffolding for a vibrant, resilient life, and the arts are vital to building that cognitive infrastructure in children through the formation of strong executive function.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Other studies of arts in education over the years have proven that students involved in arts are good academically.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Learning comes in many forms: cognitive, emotional, embodied. There is explicit learning, where you actively seek knowledge, and implicit learning, where you passively take in experiences that change you. Many elements go into making experiences more salient for learning, among them novelty, humor, curiosity, attention level, creativity, motivation, environment, and the unique way your brain develops.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“A simple piece of art can speak volumes.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Now imagine if illustrating pain was protocol when you went to a doctor’s office. Illustrating pain by painting, drawing, and sculpting can help detect, identify, and convey important characteristics and information.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“From everyday aches and pains to serious illness, this alchemy of art and science is transforming our biology in ways that are both measurable and effective.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Think about this experiment the next time you feel moved by your favorite song. You are literally changed, on a cellular level, by aesthetics.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for? —ALICE WALKER, AUTHOR”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“The arts offer us a way to slow down, feel our emotional pain, and let it unfold, revealing a changed but full human being.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Our brain is structured to build new connections and to constantly evolve, and how we learn is not the same as a societal education system too often built around memorization of rote data and recall.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Dance is a conduit for emotional wellness for everyone.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“But for some of us, it’s impossible to put secrets or traumatic experiences into words at all because of the ways they have altered our brain. The words, quite literally, cannot be found.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“All these drawings are different ways of accessing the imagination and what’s possible.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“These drawings are calling your shy imagination, your intuition, off the bench, to play a creative guiding role in your life,” Jim explains.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Healing doesn’t happen in a straight line. It unfolds.” Judy intuitively had created a container that held the charge of her past traumatic experiences and her need to process and let go. Judy”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“What you depicted is the healing process, the spiraling therapeutic process, where you return again and again to something to see it with new eyes.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us