Artists, philosophers, and children have always known the power of the arts. It’s innate and intuitive, yet we’ve marginalized the way we’ve thought about the arts as a form of entertainment,” said Susan Magsamen, founder and executive director of the International Arts + Mind Lab…
To find out what makes art experiences so powerful, scientists are peering under the hood. According to a framework developed by Chatterjee and Oshin Vartanian, PhD, a psychological scientist at the University of Toronto, aesthetic experiences arise from an interaction of three brain systems, collectively dubbed the aesthetic triad. The sensory-motor system perceives sensory features such as color or movement. The emotion-valuation system is concerned with feelings of reward and liking. And the knowledge-meaning system involves the prior knowledge and personal experiences that allow someone to find significance in the artwork…
Read the full article: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2025/09/art-mind-brain
Author Kirsten Wei
