• The brain has a hundred billion nerve cells with a hundred trillion connections to help process our sensory experiences, including the visual and performing arts.
• Emotions, which arise from the limbic brain, play a powerful role in how we create and process our aesthetic experiences. Noel Carroll, one of the leading contemporary philosophers of art, observes that many of the words that we use to describe people’s moods are the same words we use to describe art.
• Some neuroscientists believe that the evolutionary development of the human brain may have been partially driven by the human need for aesthetic experiences. Neuroscientist Anjan Chatterjee writes in The Aesthetic Brain, “We have a visual cortex that has specialized modules to process places, faces, bodies, and different objects. Is it a coincidence that much of visual art is about landscapes, portraits, nudes and still lifes? Is it also a coincidence that we have an area (of the brain) specialized for biological motion and that dance is such a popular form of art?”
• Research suggests that human beings are drawn to the inherent beauty of natural environments, e.g., mountains of Yosemite, the black sand beaches of Hawaii, etc.
• How far back in human history does the aesthetic impulse go? We generally think of the earliest known art as the Paleolithic cave paintings of Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain. These art works are thought to date back to between 35,000 and 11,000 BCE. The earliest known sculpture, however, the Tan-Tan quartzite figurine from Morocco dates back an estimated 400,000 years.

Given Country Day’s mission and its commitment to the arts and the fact that we have begun construction of a 35,000 square foot Center for the Arts, does the science of neuroaesthetics have a message that is relevant? I believe the answer is yes.

First, studies of the human brain reveal deep connections between our aesthetic experiences and other areas of human development. For example, the education of the whole child includes the emotional life of our students. Art clearly activates those areas of the brain, which help us create and process our emotions, and therefore provides a powerful energy for helping young people identify and understand their emotions.

Creativity is now on just about everyone’s short list of 21st century skills. While much more research is needed, neuroaesthetics further validates the connection between creativity and artistic endeavors. Our understanding of creativity and how to teach students to be creative is enhanced by research in neuroaesthetics.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, neuroaesthetics would seem to confirm that there is no “art part of the brain” and that our interest in the arts, as well as our aesthetic experiences, is a universal human experience that dates back to our earliest ancestors. Depending upon the art form, this emerging neuroscience tells us that the arts activate multiple areas of the brain, often simultaneously, during the process of creating or experiencing art. As I’ve noted in previous blog posts, the arts have a wide range of powerful and positive benefits ranging from boosting mathematical achievement to promoting empathic responses. What is perhaps most gratifying is that the emerging science of neuroaesthetics confirms the wisdom of including the aesthetic potential in Country Day’s mission of “educating the whole child.”