For thousands of years, human beings have made art on cave walls, on temple floors, on silk and stone and canvas. Long before neuroscience had the tools to explain why, artists, meditators, and wisdom traditions understood something instinctively: creating art changes you. It shifts something in the mind, in the body, in the breath.
Now, modern brain science is catching up. And what it is discovering is extraordinary.
The Science of Art and the Brain: Neuroaesthetics
A field known as neuroaesthetics the scientific study of how art measurably changes the body, brain, and behaviour has been quietly building a compelling body of evidence over the past three decades. Founded at the intersection of neuroscience, psychology, and the arts, it offers empirical proof for what artists and contemplatives have always known intuitively.
Susan Magsamen, founder and director of the International Arts + Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, defines neuroaesthetics as the study of how arts measurably changes the body, brain, and behavior and how this knowledge is translated into practice. Her research, along with that of colleagues across the globe, is reshaping how we understand the relationship between creativity and human health.
You do not need to be a brain scientist to understand that the arts have physiological, psychological, and spiritual benefits. Artists have always known that the arts change us in profound ways.
Susan Magsamen, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
What Happens in Your Brain When You Make Art
When you pick up a brush, something remarkable begins to happen across multiple regions of your brain simultaneously. Creative processes activate important brain areas such as the somatosensory, motor, and visual areas areas that process sensory information including touch, temperature, and sight and plan or control intentional movement. In other words, making art is a full-brain workout in a way that sitting at a desk simply is not.
But perhaps most striking is what art does to the brain reward system. A 2017 study published in the journal The Arts in Psychotherapy measured blood flow to the brain reward centre the medial prefrontal cortex in 26 participants as they completed art activities including colouring a mandala, doodling, and free drawing. The researchers found a significant increase in blood flow to this part of the brain in all participants, regardless of their artistic skill level. The brain, it turns out, experiences making art as inherently pleasurable not because of the result, but because of the process itself.
Art and the Default Mode Network: How Creativity Quiets the Noise
One of the most fascinating discoveries in recent brain research concerns two neural networks that govern much of our mental experience: the default mode network (DMN) and the executive control network. Under normal circumstances, these two systems work in opposition. The executive control network is active when you are focused on a specific task in the outside world consciously thinking, maintaining attention, multitasking. The default mode network, in contrast, is normally activated when you are not focused on the outside world. It is the network of rumination, mind-wandering, self-criticism, and anxiety loops.
Here is what makes art so remarkable: the neuroscience of creativity suggests that these two networks interact dynamically during artistic processes. Making art creates a unique state in which both networks are engaged simultaneously producing something closer to deep flow than either distracted thought or purely task-focused effort. The result is a natural quieting of the mental noise that drives stress and emotional overwhelm.
The Impact on Stress, Cortisol and the Nervous System
Art has a measurable impact on brain wave patterns and emotions, the nervous system, and can actually raise serotonin levels. This is not metaphorical. It is biochemical. The act of creative engagement particularly when it involves colour, texture, and the meditative rhythm of repetitive mark-making directly influences the body stress response.
Cognitive neuroscientists have found that creating art reduces cortisol levels the biomarkers for stress and that through art, people can induce positive mental states. This is particularly significant in a world where chronic cortisol elevation is linked to sleep disruption, emotional dysregulation, weakened immunity, and burnout.
For those carrying the weight of mental overload, art offers something that most interventions cannot: a way to regulate the nervous system not through effort or willpower, but through presence and gentle absorption.
New Neural Pathways: How Art Actually Changes the Brain
Art can create new neuropathways in the brain because this happens through sensorial experience. With high visual stimulation, if we see a lot of art or make a lot of art, we are growing dramatically parts of our brain, says Susan Magsamen of Johns Hopkins. This process, known as neuroplasticity, is the brain capacity to rewire itself in response to experience. Art is one of the most potent triggers for this rewiring.
Treating human pathology using art gives us a tremendous alternative option for engaging brain networks that enhance the way the brain processes information, incorporates external and internal data, and develops new efficient brain connections. The implications extend far beyond therapy: regular creative practice literally reshapes the architecture of the brain over time.
Wellbeing, Focus and the Whole Person
The benefits of art extend well beyond the neurological. Creativity in and of itself is important for remaining healthy, remaining connected to yourself and connected to the world, says Christianne Strang, professor of neuroscience at the University of Alabama Birmingham. Anything that engages your creative mind the ability to make connections between unrelated things and imagine new ways to communicate is good for you.
When Art Becomes Meditation: The SKR Studio Approach
At SKR Studio, painting meditation is not simply art-making. It is a practice that consciously unites the neurological benefits of creative engagement with the contemplative depth of meditation and the vibrational power of sacred mantra.
Every painting created here is made in a meditative state, with the mantra Śrī Viṭṭhala Giridhārī Parabrahmane Namaha chanted throughout the process. This is not coincidental. Ancient traditions understood intuitively what neuroscience is now confirming: that the combination of rhythm, repetition, colour, and sacred intention creates a state of consciousness that is deeply healing for the maker and for those who later encounter the work.
When you bring one of these paintings into your home, you are not bringing decoration. You are bringing a specific neurological and vibrational invitation: to slow down, to be present, to let beauty do what science now confirms it has always been doing changing you, quietly and profoundly, from the inside out.
