Why art? The role of arts in arts and health

Abstract

This article is an answer to a report called "What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being?" The authors conclude that the arts have an impact on mental and physical health. Yet, the question of the role of the arts remains unanswered. What is and what is not an art effect? Recently, embodied theory has inspired articles on the perception of art. These articles have not yet received attention in the field of Arts and Health. Scholars in psychosomatic medicine have argued for an approach based on recent work in enactive embodied theory to investigate the connection between the body and the mind. The present article examines how key concepts in this theory relate to art. This leads to a discussion of art in terms of empathy-the relation between the internal state of the artist and the internal state of the beholder. I exemplify with a conceptual framework of musical empathy. Implications for health are addressed.

Keywords: aesthetic contextualism; aesthetic empathy; arts and health; embodied aesthetics; enactment; imagination/imagery; reuse; sensorimotor empathy.

Figure 1

Structural coupling in music perception. The listener is structurally coupled to music via two steps of resonance. The structure of the soundwave is converted to electrical potentials in the cochlea and picked up by the auditory nerve by way of neural resonance. The structure of endogenous oscillations is immanent in reused motor-planning (sequenced) oscillatory traces. At music perception endogenous oscillations pre-take auditory nerve oscillation.

Figure 2

Musical enactment/mismatch. The figure shows interaction between the exogenously induced sequence (in the auditory nerve) and endogenous sequences pre-taking oscillations (presented in Figure 1). Matches in color signify structural coupling (matching information). The event (in red) is a mismatch (a desynchronization of sequences), detectable in ERP as the “prediction error”. This implies a reset of the endogenous pre-taking sequence. ERP reaction times separate components in ERP potentials: reactions on strong anticipations from weak anticipations, and unattended mismatches from attended mismatches.

Figure 3

Musical empathy in an extended cognitive system. The musician and the listener both pre-take the music as it unfolds. It is a mutual enactment. Imagination is awareness of endogenously pre-taken music. The artist performs her neural simulation. The listener endogenously co-performs the work. The artist and the beholder are coupled. The motor sequence is associated with extra-musical memories as well as with emotion.