NEXT TIME YOU doodle on a notepad, dance around the kitchen or write in a journal, you can take satisfaction in the knowledge that you’re doing some good for your brain too.
That’s according to scientists at the Global Brain Health Institute, who are carrying out groundbreaking research into the link between creativity and brain health. And it’s a discovery that everyone can reap the benefits of, says Brian Lawlor, Professor of Old Old Age Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin and Deputy Executive Director of the GBHI.
“When people think about creativity, they think about a scientist like Einstein or an artist like Picasso, but creativity is part of all of us. We all have the capacity to be creative.”
Ahead of Creative Brain Week at TCD this March 12-16, we spoke to Professor Lawlor about the role activities like poetry-writing, singing and dancing play in keeping our brain healthy right into old age. His team believe that embracing arts and creativity is “key” to maintaining cognitive function and preventing dementia.
“There are benefits from the creative process for all of us,” he says. “Sometimes creativity can, in a sense, be minimised through experience and through education, and oftentimes creative circuits in the brain can lay dormant.
“One of the things that we want to try and do is understand the neuroscience of creativity. Creativity obviously resides in the brain, but what’s the circuitry? What underpins creativity in the brain, and how can we encourage it?” These are the questions that Prof Lawlor and his team want to answer.
Positive impacts
Among the benefits of using your brain this way is an improvement in mood and sense of wellbeing, says Prof Lawlor. “There’s evidence that creativity and thoughtful creative practice may help in terms of cognition. We know that people who, over their lifetime, are involved in creative practice and culture build up their cognitive reserve, and they may have a lower risk of developing dementia. For these reasons, we believe that understanding more about the brain science of creativity and how we can enhance creativity in everyone could be important for our health and well being.”
This understanding of how things like trying a new recipe or visiting a museum can affect the brain is “relatively new”, says Prof Lawlor. “We know that certain parts of the brain light up when people are involved in creative activities. We also know that things like depression, stress and anxiety dampen your creativity, and that certain pathways of the brain circuits are involved when people are feeling very lonely, very depressed and very anxious.”
Looking to the future
By understanding the brain science of creativity, he says, we may be able to understand how best to “turn on” those circuits that may enhance creativity, and “turn off” the circuits that dampen it.
And focusing on this connection early on may be greatly impactful for future generations. “You need to build this across lifespans,” says Prof Lawlor. “We believe that if you activate these circuits you can build a reserve in your brain over time and later in life – when people are prone to develop the changes in the brain that are associated with different forms of dementia – they can be physically more robust and resilient to that.
“There are advantages right now, obviously, in terms of well being and positivity, but also there’s a potential advantage down the road of protecting the brain and of building more brain health through this creative process.”
A collision of disciplines
Brain science, by default, has been looked at by scientists in a “very isolated way”, says Prof Lawlor, but Creative Brain Week brings artists, scientists and various innovators together to look at this emerging connection.
“Creative Brain Week is really about raising awareness that creativity is for everybody – it’s not just for the for the chosen few,” he says. “Everybody can be creative, and anybody can get involved in a creative process, or practice, and get into the sense of flow. Whether it’s getting involved in art, writing, poetry or theatre, once people get into that creative process, and they’re in that moment, they feel so much better.
There’s a sense of wellness and purpose, and there are brain circuits and brain pathways that are activated when that happens. If you can encourage and develop that over time, there’s a real benefit to your health and to your productivity.
Discover more about how brain science and creativity collide this Creative Brain Week, March 12 – 16. Attend events online or in-person at the Naughton Institute in Trinity College Dublin and hear from Irish and international experts on the subject. Hosted by the Global Brain Health Institute. Book your free tickets and find out more here.
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