How creativity may improve brain health and slow brain ageing

Creative pursuits may support brain health and, in turn, slow the ageing of the brain. That is the conclusion of research conducted by an international team of scientists working across 13 countries.

The researchers discovered that creative pursuits – including dance lessons, with tango appearing especially beneficial, art classes, music tuition and hobbies such as gaming – positively affected an artificial intelligence (AI) “brain clock”.

What is more, participants who spent more time practising their chosen art form had “younger” brain clocks.

We asked the lead researchers, neuroscientists Carlos Coronel and Agustín Ibáñez, to describe their research.

What is brain health?

Brain health describes the cognitive, emotional and social functioning that enables people to fulfil their potential, preserve their wellbeing and adjust to change throughout life.

Rather than simply meaning the absence of illness, it refers to the brain’s capacity to maintain efficient, resilient and integrated functioning that underpins daily living.

Brain ageing refers to the biological and functional alterations that occur in the brain over time. These include changes in its structure, connectivity and metabolism, which may or may not affect performance.

Although a degree of decline is normal, the pace and pattern of these changes differ substantially from one person to another, reflecting both resilience and vulnerability.

“Brain clocks” are machine-learning (AI) models that estimate how old a brain appears by using brain scans or patterns of neural activity. They compare neuroimaging, electrophysiological or neuromolecular data with typical brain patterns across the lifespan.

Using a brain clock can therefore help us investigate what makes a brain more resilient and what causes it to age more quickly.

What did you want to find out?

We aimed to establish whether creativity is not only enjoyable or emotionally fulfilling, but also biologically beneficial for the brain. Evidence is mounting that engaging with the arts supports wellbeing, yet we still do not have a firm understanding of the ways creativity could influence brain health.

Many people consider art too elusive and intangible for scientific study, or doubt that it could make a biological difference. We wanted to question both assumptions.

Could creative experiences – activities that feel joyful and profoundly human – also be detected and measured in the brain? Might they delay brain ageing in a similar way to physical exercise benefiting the body?

Our research examined whether creativity could affect the brain clock. When a brain clock estimates an age below a person’s actual age, it indicates that their brain is working more efficiently than expected.

How did you go about it?

We gathered data from nearly 1,400 people in several countries. The group included expert tango dancers, musicians, visual artists and gamers, as well as non-experts from the same countries who were matched by age, education and gender. The non-experts had no prior experience in the respective disciplines.

We measured their brain activity in real time with magnetoencephalography and electroencephalography. We then trained computer models – machine-learning models – to produce a brain clock for every participant.

Training the models takes under an hour. The difficult part was assembling data from hundreds of participants, from Argentina to Poland. This could not have been achieved without the worldwide collaboration of numerous researchers and institutions.

We then used the brain clocks to estimate each individual’s age from their data. A predicted brain age that was lower than someone’s actual age indicated that their brain was ageing more slowly.

Lastly, we applied biophysical modelling. These models are “digital brains”, and we used these virtual brains to explore the biology underlying creativity.

The limitation of the machine-learning models – the “brain clocks” – is that, while they can identify patterns in data to make predictions, they cannot recreate actual brain activity.

By contrast, biophysical models are “real” brains in a digital world: effectively, a computer-based mirrored copy of the brain. They use detailed physical and biological rules to simulate how the brain operates. They are therefore not AI models, but “generative models” that can genuinely generate brain activity using mathematical equations.

Brain clocks can measure brain health, in terms of accelerated or delayed brain ageing, whereas biophysical models can help explain why creativity is linked with improved brain health.

What did you find out about creativity and brain ageing?

The result was remarkably consistent across all creative disciplines: creativity was associated with a younger-looking brain.

The brains of tango dancers appeared more than seven years younger than their chronological age. Musicians and visual artists had brains that looked around five to six years younger, while gamers’ brains appeared roughly four years younger.

We also carried out a smaller study in which non-experts completed only 30 hours of training in the strategy video game StarCraft II. We wanted to find out whether short-term creative learning could produce comparable effects.

Even in this shorter experiment, just 30 hours of creative training caused participants’ brain clocks to tick backwards, with brain age falling by between two and three years.

The effect increased with the amount of time people spent practising their art. Nor did the type of art matter: dancing, painting, music and gaming all helped crucial brain regions function together more effectively.

These regions, which are vital for attention and learning, are normally among the first to age. Creativity, however, appears to keep their connections more robust and adaptable.

We found that creativity protects brain regions susceptible to ageing and improves the efficiency of communication across the brain – much like creating more, bigger and better-quality roads for communication between cities in a country.

Why is this important?

The arts and sciences are frequently treated as opposites, but they are actually partners. Creativity influences biology as well as culture. Our research recasts creativity as a biological route to brain health and resilience, rather than solely a cultural or psychological phenomenon.

By demonstrating that artistic engagement may delay brain ageing, the findings invite us to reconsider creativity’s place in education, public health and ageing societies.

More broadly, the research widens our view of healthy ageing beyond preventing disease. It identifies creativity as an accessible, scalable and deeply human way to maintain cognitive and emotional wellbeing among varied populations and throughout the lifespan.

So, for anyone asking whether creativity is “good for you”, the answer appears to be “yes”. Scientifically, measurably, and beautifully so. Your next dance step, brush stroke or musical note could help your brain remain a little younger.

Carlos Coronel, Postdoctoral researcher, Latin American Brain Health Institute, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez and Agustín Ibáñez, Professor in Global Brain Health at GBHI, Trinity College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.