Two Sylvias' Weekly Muse: May 14, 2023

Issue 55

Hello Poets, Writers, and Artists!

We recently came across an interesting book titled, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us, which explores the relatively new field of neuroaesthetics—an area of research into the mechanisms in the brain and body that are triggered when we view beautiful and meaningful pieces of art (this can also include watching a play or reading a poem). The authors of the book, Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, take readers on a deep dive that explores how both our minds and bodies can be transformed when we actively engage in the arts, and how our perception of beauty spills over into all aspects of our lives.

In one chapter of this fascinating book, Magsamen and Ross interview Anjan Chatterjee, a professor of neurology, psychology, and architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, where he founded one of the first laboratories dedicated to the study of the perception of beauty and meaning—the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics. In this lab, Chatterjee and his col…