Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

If you blend out the authors' slightly new-age-y tone, this is a good resource for various studies and initiatives that deal with the positive impact of arts practices and arts experiences.

The range of what is considered ‘art' or ‘aesthetics' is wide in this book. A walk in nature, gardening and coloring helps calm our minds. Humming helps release endorphins. Storytelling, singing and dancing helps us form connections. Encounters with art pieces challenge and widen our state of mind. Carefully designed Virtual-Reality experiences can help soothe pain.

I especially enjoyed the chapter on ‘flourishing', which focuses on ‘awe' research done by Beau Lotto and his Lab of misfits, the architecture of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, the multisensory adventures of the Nomadic School of Wonder.

What's missing from the book is a more critical perspective. That art practices help ease physical and mental stress hasn't been a secret. Yet it's clearly now gaining more acceptability, in light of more tech-equipped and ‘professional' studies.
It also doesn't help the book that they're mixing hippie-practices with science studies and unironically call algorithms ‘sophisticated'. Every time they cited a study about the positive effects of art, I wanted to ask if the control group also had the resources and care that equals the resources and care provided by arts programs?

I clearly would have enjoyed a more scientific version of this book, but it's still a great overview, and offers lots of departure points if one wants to go dig into the mentioned research or projects.