In Your Brain on Art – How the Arts Transform Us, authors Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross show how activities from painting and dancing to expressive writing, architecture, and more are essential to our lives. This ground-breaking book is a portal into the new understanding about how the arts and aesthetics can help us transform traditional medicine, build healthier communities, and mend an aching planet.

Featuring conversations with artists such as David Byrne, Renée Fleming, and evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson, Your Brain On Art is an authoritative guide to neuroaesthetics. The book weaves a tapestry of breakthrough research, insights from multidisciplinary pioneers, and compelling stories from people who are using the arts to enhance their lives.

In their New York Times best-selling book, Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross show us how the arts can deliver potent, accessible, and proven solutions for the well-being of everyone.  Doctors have even been prescribing museum visits to address loneliness, dementia, and many other physical and mental health concerns!

In Your Brain on Art, we are offered compelling research that shows how:

• Engaging in an art project for as little as forty-five minutes reduces the stress hormone cortisol.

• Playing music builds cognitive skills and enhances learning,

no matter your skill level.

• Just one art experience per month can extend your

life by ten years.

• Vibrations of a tuning fork create sound waves to counteract stress.

• Virtual reality can provide cutting-edge therapeutic benefit.

• Interactive exhibits dissolve the boundaries between art

and viewers, engaging all of our senses and strengthening memory.

Robert M. Bilder, PhD will join Ms. Ross and Ms. Magsamen in conversation. Dr. Bilder is the Michael E. Tennenbaum Family Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences and Psychology; Chief, Division of Psychology; David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA; Jane & Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience at UCLA; and Stewart & Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA. His research focuses on brain and behavior, with aims to eliminate artificial boundaries between mental health and illness, and between everyday and exceptional creativity.

Ivy Ross is the Vice President of Design for Hardware Products at Google, where she leads a

team that has created over fifty products, winning over 225 design awards. An artist with work in

over ten international museums, Ivy is also a National Endowment for Arts grant recipient, and

was ninth on Fast Company’s list of the 100 most creative people in business in 2019.

Susan Magsamen is the Founder and Director of the International Arts + Mind Lab Center for

Applied Neuroaesthetics at the Pedersen Brain Science Institute of the Johns Hopkins University

School of Medicine, where she is a faculty member in the department of neurology. She is also

the Co-Director of the NeuroArts Blueprint with Aspen Institute.