Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

To build the airport, um, foreign. Thank you. I hate to break up the conversation, but can I get everybody? Okay, what a great crowd. Well, good afternoon, everybody. Come on, little noise, little noise.

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Good afternoon and welcome to Public Health Grand Rounds at the Aspen Institute. This is actually our first in-person session of Grand Rounds since February 2022, when we hosted the program, "The New Coronavirus, The Next Pandemic," featuring Tony Fauci. Well, we sure got that one right. One month later, the Aspen Institute, and indeed the entire nation, was shut down. Of course, we moved to virtual Public Health Grand Rounds events, but I suspect you all would agree, it's just not the same. We are incredibly excited then to be back here in person, with food, with friends, and colleagues that we haven't seen in an awfully long time. So, welcome back and thank you for joining us for what promises to be a really extraordinary program.

I am Ruth Katz, executive director of the Health, Medicine, and Society program at the Aspen Institute. Health, Medicine, and Society is the sponsor of Public Health Grand Rounds at the Aspen Institute, and I want to take just a moment to make a comment about the series. Many of you know that Grand Rounds is a time-honored feature of medicine, designed to keep clinicians up to date about scientific and medical advances and to promote excellence in research and practice. Public Health Grand Rounds, now here in its seventh year, borrows from that tradition to advance knowledge about the cutting-edge public health issues of the day. And we've got a fascinating such topic for today, truly innovative and at the forefront of public health: "Your Brain on Art," which just so happens to be part of the title of an amazing new book that will be released tomorrow.

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"Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us." This book shares the new science behind humanity's evolutionary birthright to make and behold art, and its power to transform our lives. What artists, and I know some of you are artists in our audience, what you have always known, but what I think all of us have always known intuitively, and that researchers are now providing, proving, is that the arts, in all its many forms, amplify physical and mental health, learning, and flourishing, and help to build stronger communities.

To discuss all this, we have with us today the authors of "Your Brain on Art," Susan<start_of_mask> examine and Ivy Ross. And I, I'll get to Eric in a minute. Um, but just a brief, uh, introduction to both of them. Susan examine is the founder and executive director of the International Arts and Mind Lab, a pioneering neuroaesthetics initiative at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Susan is also the co-director with me of the Neural Arts Blueprint, a joint project of the Aspen Institute and Johns Hopkins, whose goal is to build the field of neural arts, helping to make the arts, and the use of the arts again, in its many varieties, part of mainstream medicine and public health. Susan has actually dedicated her entire career to this cause, and her new book, and by the way, she has published many others, makes this case stronger than ever.

Ivy Ross is vice president of design for the hardware organization at Google, where she leads a team that has launched more than 50 products and has won over 200 global design awards. A National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, Ivy believes that the most engaging and creative ideas are to be found at the intersection of the arts and sciences. Ivy, in her spare time, also designs metal jewelry, and her work is in the permanent collection of some 12 international museums.

Now, Susan and Ivy will be in conversation with one of the institute's most prominent and beloved staff alums, Eric Motley. Thank you. Thank you. Eric left us for the National Gallery of Art, no less, where he now serves as deputy director. Before holding a variety of executive positions at Aspen, Eric was in leadership positions at the U.S. State Department and at the White House. He sits on numerous boards, including those at the Morgan Library and Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Eric is also an author. His memoir, "Madison Park: A Place of Hope," tells the story of the small Alabama community where he was raised, which was founded in 1880 by a group of freed slaves. I think you would agree, this is a really terrific lineup.

Now, before turning things over to Eric, a few housekeeping items to run through. First, we are videotaping today's program. It will be up on the HMS website within about 24 hours, so you can watch it again and share it with your friends. Our panel discussion will run about 40 minutes or so, after which we will open up the conversation to take your questions and comments. Please wait for a microphone before speaking, and do introduce yourself before addressing the panel. Now, time is tight for the Q&A portion of this program, and we want to get in as many questions as possible, so please be brief and get to the point of your question right away. Finally, for those of you who didn't notice, Susan and Ivy's book is available for sale right outside the door here. If you weren't able to buy one before during lunch, you will be able to do so afterwards. They're even going to sign them. You can also get the book on Amazon or through the publisher, Random House.

With that, many thanks to Susan, Ivy, and Eric for kicking off our 2023 in-person Public Health Grand Rounds program. Thanks as well, as always, to our mighty HMS team, Katja Wanzer and Raven Tucker, and of course, to all of you for coming out, being back with us. Thank you so much for joining us. It really, really is great to see you. And with that, Eric, the Aspen stage is yours, once again.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. This is my first time back to the Aspen Institute since leaving. So, only Dr. Ruth, that's what I call her, could invite me back. And I want to encourage you also to pick up this report. It's a very telling report, and it's a very good, uh, compendium to this book. Speaking of this book, this is an incredible book. Susan and Ivy, I've read it at least twice now, and I've learned so much. And I actually think this book is a critical tool, a blueprint, to helping us to map our way forward. And if you haven't gotten a copy of the book, and they're for sale out there, I would encourage you to. And I would encourage you to follow these two over the next several weeks as they travel the country talking about this book. This is a critical topic. You bring such clarity and thought-provokingness to it. So, it's an honor to have you on the Aspen stage. Thank you.

Thank you for your words. Yeah. Now, Dr. Ruth shared that you're at Google and that you're at Johns Hopkins. I'm just interested, before we talk about the book, how did you two connect, and how long have you been working on this project?

You want to start? Sure. Sure. So, I know we are, um, uncommon partners, uh, it would seem. But as it turns out, not so. Um, so, I, the lab at Johns Hopkins, I have a program called the Luminary Scholars, and we've invited, uh, people that are doing really extraordinary work at the intersection of the arts and sciences to be part of that group. So, for example, um, um, Rudy Tansy, who is a neuroscientist at Harvard, is a Luminary Scholar, as is Benj Pasek, who wrote "La La Land" and "Dear Evan Hansen," and a number of other people who have just been really extraordinary in getting the work into the world, not, you know, only doing research, which is really important, but really activating it. And so, a couple of years ago, I had wanted to expand it to think more deeply about the role of technology and the arts. And so, I cold-called Ivy on LinkedIn and said, "Hey, you know, I'm doing this work at Johns Hopkins University and would love to talk to you about it." And within, I don't know, 20 minutes, I got about 500 invites that day. And it was delete, delete, delete. And it was like, "Arts and Mind Lab, what is that?" That's cool. It's like, "That's cool." Yes.

So, we scheduled a 30-minute call that lasted for three hours. And it was just, and she was like, "Well, I know that, you know, I know that the arts change us. I'm an artist." And I said, "Well, yes, but we are starting to begin to understand how and why that happens. And that's really important for how we move this work forward into health and public health, into education." And so, my husband and I went out and had dinner with Ivy and her husband, and we hatched this idea to have a salon at her home.

And this is in California. This is in California, in Mill Valley. And do you want to pick it up?

Yeah, sure. So, we, it was like Noah's Ark. We curated, you know, two painters, two dancers, two film people, two. And Susan flew down some of her neuroscientists. And we sat in my living room and had a salon to just have a conversation about, "When has art changed your life?" And then, "Why?" And at the end of it, she looked at me, and as we were cleaning up, she said, "I've always wanted to write a book about this. Do you want to do it with me?" And I said, "This is the book I've been waiting for." Because all through my design career, when I would win design awards, publishers would come and say, "Do you want to write a book on creativity or innovation?" And I'm like, "No, I do that every day. That's kind of boring." Because I'm a lifelong learner. But this, I thought, you know, we could write it and learn along the way. Which is one of the reasons why we, the book format was interviewing over a hundred people. So, it was a learning journey. And, and I think something that's worth sort of doubling down on is the people that we brought together, each had a story that was so profound and different from the other. So, for example, we had people talk about the fact that they had learning differences as a child, but their mom had exposed them to film. It turned out that they became filmmakers. We had people that talked about singing and Alzheimer's. We had people that talked about mental health and their children, and using expressive writing to really help their children move through difficult moments. And I think for me, it was this "aha" that this is a tool, a set of skills, a capacity that we have that can affect so many areas of our lives. But we're so segmented, we're so siled, that we don't know how to really understand the breadth of it. But we, in Ivy's beautiful sort of theater, living room, were able to see these intersections almost like magic. And that is how we organized the book.

Thanks for the invitation. Look, I don't know. All right. Okay, great. I usually don't meet people on the first meeting and end up writing a book together with them. But look, I don't mean to sound brash. I've been to 122 conversations about why art matters. And this is a timeless, you know, understanding of the transformation that art has in our lives, from people dancing around fires to, we just discovered a couple of months ago, that in a cave in France, there's a 20,000-year-old drawing. And so drawing and music, and music soothing the soul. This is nothing new. So, what are you bringing to us? What new understanding and insights into this?

Well, let me start by, by saying that if COVID sending us to our rooms didn't do one thing, I think what it brought us is that we really have been optimizing for productivity. We haven't really been living full lives. And I think coming out of COVID, we are raw and ripe for an opportunity to really fully live and have this greater sense of meaning. So, I think, you know, timing is everything, right? And so, I think coming out of COVID and feeling this need for meaning, for purpose, also for connection, loneliness, and isolation, Vivek Murthy talks a lot about this, it really is the conduit for physical health, right? And for, and when we feel better together, we do better. What I think we're bringing is this baseline of science. And when I say science, I don't want everybody to think, "Oh, we're in a test tube. We're in a, we're in a basic science lab only." This work is generative. It's interdisciplinary. So, we're looking at certainly neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, psychiatry. We're also looking at public health, lived experience. And so, arts are generative. And what we are trying to do is say that in an interdisciplinary framework, we can really begin to understand some of the mechanisms, some of the ways that the outcomes affect us with the arts, and begin to lay what I call a testable pathway. You know, the reality is, there's not a lot of money spent on research in the arts. You know, and NEA's budget is about 200 million dollars every year. We spend three billion dollars on Alzheimer's research. If you find a drug today, that drug is not going to be delivered for 15 years. You can right now start humming, you can start doodling, you can start singing in the shower, you can sing with your mom who can't talk to you. And so, we think that this work is accessible, immediate, available. And the science is starting to show up to really prove it in very profound ways. And there's never going to be one study that says, you know, "Poof, the arts are the answer." But there are hundreds, and now thousands, of studies for music and Alzheimer's, for dance and Parkinson's, for mental health and expressive writing. And so, I think we're going to start to be able to have a much better conversation about the interventions, the practices, the policy, and I think ultimately, the funding for this work. And, you know, also, actually, in today's Fast Company, there was an excerpt on sound and light that we, an excerpt from the book on how sound and light affects Alzheimer's. And I think it's important that artists, even, even know that some of these mediums they've been working in, kind of the power that they have, scientific confirmation.

I want to unpack that just a bit more. Why now? I mean, we've been accumulating the science for a while. How do we think that now is this inflection point that's going to be a game-changer?

Well, you know, and aesthetics measurably change the brain, body, and behavior, and how that can be used in service of humanity. So, arts for art's sake is so important, and in no way are we trying to take anything away from that. But we're saying that in service of health, well-being, and society. It's only been 20 years that we've been able to non-invasively get inside our brains and understand how these mechanisms work, how neural, neural plasticity works, how different mechanisms change, how the brain structures change. And so, I think we're at a point where we're starting to accumulate the knowledge, the evidence, that we can start to apply that. And, you know, artists haven't waited. Artists have been using this for forever. You know, you mentioned, you know, dancing around the campfire, writing on cave paintings. I just heard you're talking about 20 million years ago. I just saw a piece of, uh, research saying that they think that there's a piece of art 224 million years old. Like, that's crazy, right? That's, that's crazy. So, you know, there's a lot of, um, history. But as the science starts to become more definitive, we can look at things like dose and dosage, you know, which is a medical term. We can think about sort of when, where, and how. And I also want to shout out to child development. If you're thinking about the role of the arts for prevention, for resiliency, for laying down the neural pathways that are so important for the capacity to meet the challenges of life, the arts are where it's at. So, as, as schools have been taking art out of out of schools and and thinking about, you know, skill development or mastery of an art, what I think we're seeing is that social-emotional development, executive function, really building greater synaptic plasticity at a young age is so important. And that lasts across the lifespan. And why now also? Because, I mean, when you think about mental health being taking over physical health, I mean, some of these things are easy for people to do if they understand how it could help them, how it could release certain hormones and drugs, you know, just by doodling or drawing and make them feel better. And also, I think everything is, all of our systems are breaking down, and things need to be rebuilt. And so, even our buildings and schools and architecture, you know, to understand what we need to consider again as humans in terms of keeping ourselves happy and healthy, it's super important now.

So, let's talk about the brain a bit. We've just come through COVID. We're still experiencing the after-effects. What does the brain look like, and what's the brain's capacity to deal with what we've gone through? And how is art helping us to heal and transform our lives in that way?

So, during COVID, our lab created something called the COVID Arts Field Guide. And the idea was to try to pick up and lift up different art activities that could address different moments throughout the life of a disaster, right, of a crisis, of a real devastation. And so, some of the things that we did during COVID were some things as simple as getting families to go out and dance in their driveways because we knew that that released serotonin and dopamine and also helped kids just exercise. You know, you're thinking about the correlation between movement and obesity. So, very practical. We also looked at things like grief and loss and despair because so many people lost people during COVID. And how could you begin to start to really lift up those feelings and, you know, come to terms with that? And so, expressive writing turned out to be a very important vehicle. Um, James Pennebaker, who is a researcher at the University of Texas, Austin, has done a lot of work with expressive writing and stress and grief and and really very, very helpful. So, that was one of the areas, um, that have been really, really important. Getting out in nature during COVID and after COVID, we know that cortisol levels drop dramatically when you're in nature for as little as 15 minutes. So, trying to really target art activities, aesthetic experiences with different emotional, um, uh, different emotions that we're experiencing or different moments in our lives. You know, art is not all about happy, right? I think that's the other thing. You know, we, we use it for all of these amazing twists and turns in our lives.

Well, I think self-expression is one of the most important aspects of art. And we've suppressed that. I mean, I think we start suppressing it sometimes when we're little, when people tell us we're not good at it. Yeah. And yet, it's our birthright. I mean, you know, we are wired to express ourselves. And not only, you know, there's deep trauma, and then there is daily trauma that just, when unexpressed, keeps adding up, and you can get ill from that. Um, and so, this idea that we, because we came from a place where we constantly were expressing ourselves, as you say, storytelling, dancing, singing, graphics. And we then started optimizing after the Industrial Revolution and put all that aside. Or they didn't even have a word for art back then. It was the way life was. It was culture. And so, I think sometimes we think we're advancing, but we have to go back to the well every so often and say, "What was going on there that we need to bring into contemporary times?" And so, this idea of expressing yourself is so important. I mean, through some of the research, we found out that even just writing a secret on a piece of paper, not even sharing it with anyone, but the art of writing it down helps you lower your cognitive load. So, little things that we don't even realize, um, that we should be doing to make us healthier and happier.

You know, thinking about what happens after COVID, you know, in some ways, the, the isolation that we had during COVID really broke the social fabric. And I don't know if a lot of you have experienced this, where coming back into spaces and re-establishing relationships and figuring out how we build something in the future. There's a chapter in the book on community building. And there's a fantastic group called Sweetwater Foundation in the South Side of Chicago that I think is a really great lesson. They co-created a community of 12 acres now where they've built, started with the community garden, then they built a facility where people could come and eat together, break bread together. There's great research about eating together lowers arguments and makes people more amenable to get along. They've also now built a workshop for kids to come and build. They have fellowships, they have dances. But they've literally built a community where there was nothing. And they built it with very little. Maria Rosario Jackson also talked a bit about this idea of a cultured kitchen, where if you're in a community that culture has been stripped, and sometimes stripped on purpose, how do you rebuild? How do you know who you are? How do you build that creative muscle? And to create spaces where we're able to come together and experiment and to think about who we are, what we want, what we, you know, what do we believe in, is a really important thing. And we say in the book, art creates co-, art creates culture, culture creates community, and community creates humanity. And it's just true. And so, how do you create space for that? I'll give you one more. In the, in the chapter on mental well-being, there's a beautiful story about a woman who was institutionalized. A twin. She couldn't, she couldn't speak. And they thought she was irrecoverably mentally intellectually damaged. Her sister eventually went and retrieved her, brought her to live with her, and enrolled her in a school in California where it was all about making art. And it took her two years to be able to make her first piece of art. And you've seen her work. Her name is Judy Scott. She makes these beautiful yarn pieces that are very womb-like. And she couldn't speak, but she was quite intelligent. And she created these amazing pieces year over year that really expressed how she felt. So, you know, I think giving people space and time to find their voice is also really important.

Yeah, because, you know, when you can't find words for things, expressing them through drawing or making something. I mean, those kind of techniques they're using with kids in third world countries that are traumatized and can't speak, what's going on in their family? But you give them a piece of paper and crayons, and the story is right there.

You tell another interesting story about Aaron Miller. Will you tell that story? That's in mental health. Yeah. So, Aaron, Aaron's with a program. And Kathy Sullivan, I'm not sure if Kathy's here. There she is. There she is. Kathy Sullivan runs something called Arts to Ashes. Actually, I should. There are many people that have either been in the book or part of creating the book. And I just want to give a big shout out. Thank you all. Yeah, so much. So, Aaron, firefighter Aaron, had PTSD from remembering a fire that happened years ago where someone had died. And he really was very troubled by it. And Kathy started to work with him. And, uh, his art form that he chose was painting. He had painted when he was a younger person, and he'd come back to it. And by painting and be able to express sort of what he was experiencing, he was able to really unstick and and start to sort of move those emotions. And really has now started to use this work with other firefighters and other fire stations and is really starting to move this forward. And also, Melissa Walker is here from, from the NICo. And Melissa has been very involved with something called Creative Forces, which is a very beautiful program that's expanded all over the country that uses expressive arts to help people with PTSD and traumatic brain injury. And they use visual arts as another way to help people create symbol and metaphor and to ultimately be able to put words to emotions that are beyond words, as Ivy said. So, we're a part of the brain called the Broca's region can shut down during trauma. They're able to help find ways to then come back to that, and that creates a tremendous amount of healing.

We were talking earlier, Parkinson's, dementia. We get, you have a wonderful example about early childhood development. There's a lot of research now backing the role that the arts have on dementia. Could you say a bit more about that?

Sure. So, specifically around music is where most of that work. And, you know, NIH and NEA have been funding sound and and music quite, quite a lot. It's really the most studied art form through something called, and as part of something called, The Sound Health Network. And so, there's some really wonderful work that's been happening there, specifically around dementia and Alzheimer's. We know a bit more about what's happening. You know, it's sort of the closest thing to magic I've ever seen when someone starts to sing who hasn't talked or recognizes you that hasn't talked. But some of the information that I think is interesting is that the, the, we, we store short-term memory in the hippocampus. And so, song goes into that space of the brain. That's the first part of the brain that starts to deteriorate when you have Alzheimer's. So, amyloid and plaque, that's what kind of does the damage. But interestingly, after the short-term memory is consolidated with song, in particular, it distributes to different parts of the brain. So, when we're singing to Mom or to an aunt, the recall is not coming from the hippocampus. It's coming from the auditory cortex. It's coming from different parts of the brain which have not yet been damaged by Alzheimer's or, or not as much damage by Alzheimer's. So, it's pretty miraculous that our brains create these backup systems and other backup systems, and that they can really be so agile, right? And adapt. So, if you're blind, for example, uh, that's a vision, that's an impairment, but there are other senses that are awakened and step in. Yeah. You know, you mentioned Parkinson's. And, you know, Parkinson's is a dopamine problem. It's where your body can't create dopamine. Yet, for Parkinson's patients, when they're dancing, they're not making more dopamine. They're then sort of switching neurotransmitters. So, they're using things like endorphins and serotonin and other neurotransmitters that are actually helping them to shift. So, I mean, I think we know so little about the brain. But what, but we're starting to know. The more we know, it's sort of a miraculous tool that we really can enhance. And it turns out that the arts, because they're so salient and because they're so sensorial, are such great tools for some of these things.

And doesn't poetry? It's in the same place as music in the brain. Yeah. Poetry lights up the same place. Dancing is where? Well, dancing is primarily motor cortex. But dancing is, you know, people say, "Well, what's the difference between exercise and dancing?" And, you know, certainly they're exercise. But I think one of the things about dance that's worth lifting up is that there's an emotional context. There's usually a contact with somebody else. And dance is cultural. You know, we think of dance now as like, you just go out and dance. But dance is storytelling. Dance is context to where you come from. Often, there's just a great NPR story about, uh, square dancing and sort of the way that square dancing really was an amalgamation of so many cultures that sort of shifted and became more colonialized over time. But in fact, it started as sort of this shared experience where we all came together in a country that was new. And I, that's the way, that's the way, you know, dance is so powerful.

Well, there's something that happens when you're all moving together in sync in your brains that brings you together. And I think we've lost some of that. You know, there's not a lot of that community dancing going on. Oh, that reminds me. Okay. So, David Byrne did this great thing, right, at the end of COVID, talking about, and it's called the Social Distance Dance Club. And at the Armory in New York, he created six-foot circles, and everybody had to be in a circle. And he called dances, and other people called dances. And what he found was that people would find other people in the room that they got in sync with. And so, they'd create these little, little communities of dancing. And that this idea of synchronicity is not new. You know, we, we march together in military, we sing together in church. So, we want to belong. We want to be part of a group.

You know, this book has incredible stories that kind of reinforce the research. You met with A.O. Wilson, Renee Fleming. Tell us about a number of the people that you worked with, those two in particular. What did you learn?

Yeah, well, A.O. Wilson, I mean, we got to him right before he passed away, which was so sad. But, you know, he was telling us things like how, uh, e-social, that ourselves, bees, and ants, our e-social species, and that we were designed to be in community, and that art was our birthright. Yeah. He, he was crazy. Um, he was like, like, people always say, "How old are you?" And I say, "12." He was like, "Eight." And I, I call Chuck Savitt, who's here, um, is, was publisher of Island Press. And he was very good friends with Ed. And I said, "We'd love to interview Ed for the book." And so, I'd call him. He's like, "Just call him." So, I call him. And he'd answer the phone every time. And he'd say, "Susan can't talk to you right now because I'm getting ready to go out for a walk." And so, I call him again. He'd say, "Susan, I can't talk to you right now. I'm getting ready to go out for a walk." Which we love. Which we love. All past. That's exactly. What do we call a nature pill? Yeah. He was taking his nature pill every day. And then, when he, he's like, "Call me at exactly this time, and I promise I'll talk to you." And so, he did. And, and, you know, he really reaffirmed for us, I think, this idea that we are hardwired, and that the arts are our birthright, and that this idea of, um, creativity really is about communication, self-expression, really is about communication. And that, so, it makes so much sense. So, he also pointed out that in the time humans have been on this Earth, it's been 99.9% we were living in nature. And we've only been living like this in 0.1%. Wow. And so, it's actually a master experiment. And I think we're kind of failing. You know, these buildings don't necessarily make us feel better. Except, ever. But he was the one that said, "Well, wait a minute. You know, we actually, this is a very small percent. We're living like this, and we've been so used to living in nature." And that's a great segue to how architects and designers are so into biophilic design and bringing nature inside. So, you know, of all the things that we're looking at, initially thinking about, "Well, how do spaces make us feel?" People start bringing nature in. And now we're thinking more deeply about things like light and scent and and texture and color, which are all, you know, often modeled on nature's, nature systems. I work in a centrally arresting place. I mean, the National Gallery of Art is absolutely beautiful. And when John Russell Pope built the building, he was very mindful of the importance of nature being within the gallery. So, we have all of these gardens. So, when you're looking at Thomas Cole, you're then transported to a small space of contemplation and reflection. Um, no, it makes a big difference. We did our first kind of public proof of neurostatics at the Milan Salone. It's a big design fair. 500, no, 400,000 people come from around the world. And it was something that, uh, Google sponsored with my design group, and we partnered with Susan and architect Suchi Reddy. And we developed a band that had an algorithm to take your physiology and see in which space. And we had three different rooms that were all based on different neurostatic principles: color, texture, music, light patterns, and artwork, just to name a few. And people, we only had 10 people in the room at a time for five minutes, no talking, no devices, just, it was called "Space for Being." Just be in the space, sense the music, sense the light. We invited you to touch the art. And don't touch the art. Yeah, I know. Big difference. Big difference in this place. But, and then in between each room, there was a palate cleanser. It was another room you walked through that was kind of gray foam. It was kind of fun, just to clear you of your senses. And while you were in each of these rooms, the band was picking up on your physiology. And at the end, you downloaded. We had a band tender, not a bartender, that took the band and downloaded your data. And then showed that we deleted it in an effort to show you in which of these three rooms your body was most at ease or least stressed. And we had said this would be a failure if a lot of people didn't have a disconnect between what their mind thought and their body was showing them. And so, sure enough, it was 56%. Would walk in and say, "I love room number two." And, you know, you could walk into a space and mentally go, "It looks like my mother's house," or "A room I've seen in the magazine. I like it." But your body was not comfortable in that space. And so, people could not believe the disconnect, 56% of the time, between the space their cognitive mind thought they would like and how their body was feeling. And the exercise was not because Google's going to do a band that you have to walk around to show how you're feeling. It was really to explain this idea that our body is feeling all the time, and we are sensory. We're, we're wired. We take in everything from our senses because I think that we stay up in our head and think that we are, um, humans, you know, where our mind is first. And we're actually been designed to be emotional, sensing folks. And so, it was really to be aware that your body's feeling all the time, and that we have agency over our space. Like, I look up, and this is so beautiful because not only is it a skylight, but also uses curves, which neurostatics would tell us, curves we relate to much better than angles. So, I mean, it was a great exercise, and people got to experience this concept of neurostatics, that your biology is changing based on the aesthetics that you surround yourself with. And that if you tap into that, you make different decisions, you make different choices, right?

And, you know, we were talking earlier, it's, it's individual as well, how one experiences art. Absolutely. Because people would say, "Well, what's the right answer? Which is the right room?" And we're like, "No, there is no right answer. It's what you feel good in your body." And we had certain, uh, situations, even culturally, where a woman said she liked rooms one, no, she couldn't. Room one and three was too beautiful. And she grew up in, um, South America, and she could never see herself in those rooms. But her body loved the second room, which was a very playful room. And she said, with tears in her eyes, she realized because she was happiest when she was playing as a child. So, this idea that personal meaning comes into how your body. So, there is no right room. You need to tap in and see where you feel good. I think that's a really important kind of concept to unpack. This idea of, uh, personalized art, or, you know, we talk about personalized medicine. But we all come from different places. We all have different genetic profiles. We all have different cultural profiles. And, you know, there's a part of the brain called the default mode network that's, they call it the seat of self. And it's where, when you're not bringing in information, when you're not processing or bringing in all these amazing things, you're really making decisions about what you like, what you don't like, what's beautiful, what's not beautiful. It's where you dream, and where you mind wander. And so, thinking, taking that into account in all of these environments, in healthcare, in education, in public health, how do we start to think about what at an individual level works? And how do you kind of think through that?

I was saying to you earlier that when you say that painting is beautiful, Eric has a gorgeous 1940s Rothko in his office. Now, who doesn't, right? Right. I'm original, original. I have a poster of that in my, in my house too. And, and it's actually vibrating. It's vibrating. And, you know, I look at it, and it pulls up, you know, an amazing amount of emotions for me, as it would for Ivy, and as it would for Eric. But they're my emotions, right? I'm experiencing that. So, when I say that's beautiful, and Ivy says that's beautiful, we're saying something different. And I think we all think beauty is beauty. But beauty truly is, is in the eye of the beholder. And when we start to understand that, I think we start to design differently. We start to make different decisions about where and how we live, and what we put around us, and what we, what we smell, all of those things. And people respond differently to that Rothko. I mean, every person, they're donors that I bring in, and I put them right before that Rothko, as you should. And there are others who don't want to leave the office because they're entranced, and they're having their own emotional experience.

We have questions that we have to take from the floor, and they are usually better than the moderator's questions. But before we do, just tell me a bit about flourishing, because that's a very important chapter in this book.

Yeah, you know, a lot, a lot of the book does talk about mental health and physical health, community building, learning. Um, but I think we all want to amplify our potential, right? We want to be more. We want to live our fullest lives. And that's where flourishing or thriving really comes in. And so, we spent some time talking with people who really are all about that. How do we lift it up? And so, um, awe and wonder, looking, thinking about curiosity, about inviting sensorial experiences, and really building this muscle for amplifying potential. And so, the chapter really, uh, sort of, we met with, um, Dr. Keltner, who is someone who studies awe. There's a woman that we talked with named Meg Chisholm, and Meg uses curiosity and mindfulness to work with medical students. So, the idea is, how do you really become, in her case, more observant, less judgmental, which all starts to help you to amplify your own potential? Because if you're not limiting your own thinking, you're broadening your views. And she uses something called visual thinking strategies, which is a really interesting technique to look at a painting or a piece of artwork. And I love it because it's three questions: "What do you see?" "What else do you see?" And "Is there anything else you see?" And she does it with groups, and it's amazing. She has hundreds of things that people see that are not the same things that another person would see. And I think what it says is that there's a huge potential to flourish when we open our minds to other people's ideas, and that we don't wait to sort of say what we want to say, but we really hear what someone else is saying. So, I mean, I think flourishing is the Holy Grail, right? I mean, we don't just want to survive, we don't just want to cope. Yeah.

Other people's minds. Questions? Yes. Wait for the mic. Ivy's good instruction.

Hello. Thank you so much. I've been so looking forward to this. Uh, my name is Diane Oh Short. I'm Diana. I'm a former artist, like many in the room, but I run a creative consulting company that helps luxury hotels improve the guest experience. And I'm very curious about reading your book, first of all. But my question is, you just mentioned with the three rooms that you had talked about, and that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, are there certain standards? You know, is there a way to say, "This is beauty. This is design." Sorry, is that, "This is the, the standard for greatness?" Or is it really just in the eye of the beholder, you know, personalized? If you could speak to that.

Well, we know there's only certain things that we learned are universal. Um, for example, landscapes, or looking at the sunset, that you could be guaranteed that everyone would fall in love with it or have an awe experience. But beyond that, I mean, it's funny. I stayed in the hotel, you know, hotels used to be, um, or some of them are very clean and modern and simple. I stayed in the hotel in LA the other day that was all sensorial. And the art was, some of it was from Africa. So, there were different linens and textures, and I felt so good in there, um, because it was, I didn't realize it, but it was igniting my senses. And I have a whole different take now on, yes, you need the peace and quiet when you go to a hotel room, but this idea of having this almost multicultural textiles and things to discover, my whole hotel experience felt different. So, there is no right answer because there's so few commonalities of what I think people's faces, right? Was the other one, landscapes, and the perception of beauty in the symmetrical idea around someone's face. But other than that, it is very personal. But I think it's really the decisions of, "What's the environment you want to put them in?" You know, one that's alive in the senses, one that, um, calms them down. It's almost like, really, what's, what's the emotion? Because, you know, emotion is energy in motion. So, what do you want that emotion to be with that experience? And that's why I think we're going to see a lot more hotel rooms, because just like personalized medicine, I think there's going to be different, and there already is, different hotel chains that have different vibes. I think are going to start to cater, because once you find one, like, "I know that that made me feel good, and that may be what I need right now." But a year from now, I may need a different vibe. But I think this idea that people are going to go deeper into, um, one track, but that's going to be very personal, very personal.

I like that. I think, you know, if you think about hotels, like, one size does not fit all, right? And, and if you think about, I was talking about landscapes and faces, we all sort of agree universally on how they make us feel. But what a great opportunity for hotels or luxury goods to create a personality and archetype to say, "I want you to feel this way," and to let us experience that. There are, what I call, neurostatic principles. Like, we do know certain things about the way different colors work, although color tends to be very cultural. We know certain things about shapes, like, you know, curves versus straight lines. So, there are principles of what you're trying to, so the kind of the tradesman's work, right? You know, you can use these things to achieve this emotion. But if you're trying to create a universal emotion, I think that's, um, that's kind of a rabbit hole that is maybe not worth. And that's good to know, right? One of Hopkins is building, um, renovating 555 Pennsylvania Avenue, which used to be the museum. And they hired an a designer who designs hotels, and they hired him because they wanted to, someone to think about how do people come together. And there's science around how you create spaces for people to come together, right? So, I think there's some interesting science there. But yeah, I think celebrating our differences is something we have to lean into more. Community.

Yeah. Robin. Hello. Hi. I'm Robin Davison. I'm a, this was a former artist. I'm a former scientist, or still a scientist, always a scientist, a molecular physiologist, who became an abstract painter in the last several years. And, um, I was really interested. I agree wholeheartedly about creativity, uh, being a vehicle for communication and connectivity. Um, but I was thinking how ironic it is, um, that so many artists work in isolation. And in fact, in my own personal, I believe so much about the importance of the creativity and the connection that I've created an experimental art space here in D.C. where I actually open up my studio. It's an open.

studio you come watch me work and people love it and but but and that's just my own personal because I'm so committed to this idea about connectivity but I just wondered if you could comment on that so you know so many artists really do work completely in isolation to to to create their work so well it's an interesting sort of dichotomy I think yeah.

well I know when I was and I still am but mostly when I was an artist more full-time you almost need I mean getting in that zone you know it's a very personal Zone you know when you're getting in touch with what's inside to be able to express it and then I think um this idea of sharing it is the is the communal piece um so there's a Continuum you know you take what's inside you express it and then you put it out there to share together.

I do know that there are um and besides what you're doing there's something called um art to life Nicholas Wilton he's doing a lot of classes with people painting together to learn which are incredibly alivening and a great Community activity but um and there are some people that they love to paint and talk you know but I think essentially it's been a practice to do it by yourself just because I think of going inside to get that material there's an experiment in New York called I-beam and it's a large warehouse and it's scientists and people who are working on their technological ideas and artists and they work in their own little silos but they share the space together they eat together they break for tea in the afternoon together in an exchange of ideas in the intersection of those ideas have manifested a lot of new ideas hmm yeah.

well I do think diver we're very much about um well diversity of scientists artists designers I mean that is going to create and solve the problems because our problems are complex so you need those complex different lenses to look at through to get to the answers so I think that sounds ideal where you have your space and then I know in my design studio Google the same thing people have their own spaces to work but then you come together there are times you need to come together so it's both ends it's not you know yes right here front row hi I'm Sarah Locke from AARP I just want to follow up on the conversation you were having about why now and conversation about this emphasis on productivity that we've kind of Switched as a society and a civilization so with the AI and this idea about how that is going to unleash productivity can you talk about the brain and the art in this context.

well let me start and then you could chime in here because I would I think I am the kind of person that believes um technology is here to amplify our humanity meaning what can it take off our hands so that we can do only what US humans can do and I think imagination is one of the things I think we need to add to the ingredient so I'm actually very excited about certain things coming off our plate so that we can really be the superhumans we are designed to be which I think has a lot more to do with imagination than some of the things since the Industrial Revolution the tasks that we've been put onto in terms of what the brain is doing you might want to talk about that part from thinking about how AI really interfaces with the Arts you know the cover of our book I don't know if anybody has had a chance to look at it is actually an AI generated piece of art and it's really sort of extraordinary this is refic anole he's a Turkish designer he's really kind of doing some amazing things and that that is a compilation of fmris where people are dreaming and then he created an algorithm to then Express that and he designed the algorithm with his team so he chose the art right he chose what data he wanted to use he created the algorithm and then the algorithm sort of creates this piece of art from these fmrs it's the coming together of I think it was over a thousand and then you could see on his website annadel and DOL and adult a and a dool refic um it's it was a in motion all of these strands of information are coming at you and I said to him oh my God could we would you let us take a stop motion because it would be the most beautiful book cover he said I love what you ladies are doing because it is your brain on Art right yeah he said I said you know this is like the poster child because it is exactly your brain on Art while dreaming so and he's taking it one step further to your point he you can now go into a space with a headset and you can look at a piece of art and based on your um algorithms or your your brain waves you can actually change what's happening in that piece of art so no longer are we observing art we are making art in art and you know you're literally moving into the painting and so I think some of the the technology some of the Digital Arts that we're seeing are really immersing us and calling on you right now there are folks that are saying we have not five sensory systems but potentially dozens of sensory systems we know we have over 34 000 emotions right so how do these sensory stimuli that um the kind of immersive technological experiences can help us understand there's certainly a lot of ethical issues around AI related to um you know schools and cheating and I think all of those things are what what I think of as ethical and literary sorry um thinking about um how do we create sort of boundaries boundaries guard rails on how we use those things but I think in service of humanity as Ivy said there's another thing is Parkinson's during the covid people used to go to dance studios to dance for Parkinson's and they couldn't go during covid so just having Zoom to be able to dance online instead of thousands of people dancing millions of people started dancing and they danced with their families members and so we're then able to look at things like dose and dosage in ways that we couldn't before because it was just so hard to get to the dance studio and now people are going to the dance studio and so this hybrid experience of virtual and real world I think is also what we're starting to see as things unpack and we're seeing a lot of what I think in the last chapter the art of the future immersive art where you you step into the experience um there will still always be beautiful paintings to look at in 2D but where I think we're stepping in because we're craving that sensorial we've gone a bit flatlined as a society and so I think we're craving these spaces that will alive in all of our senses so some of these exhibitions you walk into a room that have scent and have um you could touch and affect things so it's it's goes back to this need to alive in our senses so technology is allowing some of those experiences to happen um that I think will be good for us and continue to be good for us and maybe one more that I think is interesting to lift up specifically Adam gazzali at UCSF is doing really great work with um virtual reality for ADHD so he's created a closed-loop system for helping kids learn how to be better focused and pay better attention using virtual reality so you know I think in service again of in this case learning there's another really great thing called snow world that's been created for people with pain and they're able to kind of go into a winter wonder world it's when bandages are being changed for burn victims and so they're not experiencing as much pain less opioids less issues with addiction and so these are really great examples and they're just many more coming so technology it's all about how you use it right and once Kevin Kelly wrote I asked him and he said the definition of or his definition of technology is anything man-made so a car a window a door and all of these things you know a car if you're not careful you can harm someone or it could be used for good to get you somewhere so I think as a society we need to hold hands on you know um creating some of those boundaries but we're certainly in this Arena seeing some great uses of Technology to amplify our creativity Susan Ivy we've reached the time that we have to end but there are a lot of thought Partners in this room that could help to amplify and accelerate I'm looking I see British Robinson from the Barbara Bush Foundation you're thinking a lot about the art and literacy I see Deborah Rutter the president of the Kennedy Center here Renee Fleming is a person that you've interviewed who's been very active participant in helping us to think about neuroscience and there are a lot of other people that I could name in here and this idea that art is not accidental or incidental or ornamentation that it's a part of the everyday exercises of Life perhaps is a wonderful way to end this Glenn ghoul The Pianist wrote that art is not a momentary ejection of adrenaline but whether it's a construction a lifelong construction of a state of Wonder and serenity so on that note you've written an Incredible Book thank you and we're on this journey with you thank you.

if you have some more questions and we'll sign books if you want us to do that but thank you thank you thank you and thank you Ruth thank you.