Final Report Art History URES 197 (1 Credit) Fall 2011 Advisor: Dr. Joseph Dreiss

Art Therapy and Neuroplasticity By: Joann Liu

Using art therapy as a means of healing and rehabilitation is a relatively new type of approach in the psychology world. It was not until the 1940’s and 50’s that being an art therapist became a distinct profession, and even today, many are unaware of art therapy and ignorant to its positive outcomes.

Dr. Joseph Dreiss has been researching the groundbreaking phenomenon of neuroplasticity-- the ability of the human brain to change with experience-- and the effects of art on the human brain. This Fall semester, I have been conducting research for

Dr. Dreiss on how art therapy is fundamentally based on the concept of neuroplasticity.

Initial Findings

Early on in the semester, I began reading up on neuroplasticity and how it actually works in the brain. This lead to me researching specific brain structures, what they do and how they interact with one another to perform various functions, including making memories, encoding, and sending messages from one part to another, but most importantly for my purposes, I began to understand how habits are formed in the brain.

In each of us there is a “warning center” made up of the amygdala, which assesses situations and generates feelings of fear and physical sensations, the insula, which is the cause of “gut-level responses,” and the anterior cingulate which, when stimulated, gives a rapid sense that something is wrong. When all of these parts in the brain are activated, a person feels uncomfortable and experiences distress so they will revert to habits, avoidance, and/or any other responses that they normally do when confronted with distress.

When that coping method is done passively- that is, it was not sent to the attentive mind, but rather done habitually- the area in the brain called the basal ganglia, which is in charge of our automatic thoughts and actions, along with the frontal cortex begins to form a habit because the coping strategy that was performed gets recognized as an automatic response (Gladding and Schwartz). In terms of neuroplasticity, this is a key aspects to understand because the basis of neuroplasticity is to be able to change the neural pathways in the brain so that old habits are eliminated and new ones, preferably progressive ones, are formed. That is where art therapy comes into play.

Diagramming the Primary Visual Cortex

A large portion of my research study was devoted to diagramming the above mentioned areas of the brain that have to do with habit-forming and various other important areas, but along with that, I also diagrammed sections of the brain that make up what is known as the primary visual cortex. This is the area that the retinas of our eyes are connected to in the cerebral cortex. These are essentially diagrams that highlight the sections of the brain that are stimulated when looking at various different types of images and artworks. The main source of my diagramming information comes from a book written by

Semir Zeki, a professor of neuroaesthetics, called “Inner Vision.” Zeki pinpoints areas in the primary visual cortex, labeling them V1, V2, V3, V4 and V5, all of which are color coded in my diagrams.

Area V1 deals with spatiotemporal features such as direction, speed and orientation of objects. V2 processes much of what V1 does, plus is stimulated when seeing illusory contours-- when a stimulus is part of figure or ground. This section is also in charge of the storage of object recognition memory and conversion of short-term object memories into long term ones. Area V3 is stimulated in cases where a person views large patterns covering extensive portions of the visual field. In area V4, there is strong attention modulation and stimulation of spatial frequency, orientation, and color.

V5 deals with motion perception and the guidance of some eye movements, as well as integrates local visual motion signals into the global motion of complex objects (Zeki

143). It is important to understand that each of these sections that make up the primary visual cortex all give each other feedback and feed-forward in order to fully visualize and process images.

Articles on Art Therapy and Neuroscience

After diagramming the primary visual cortex, I began to do in depth research on art therapy and neuroscience. My findings were fascinating; by way of fMRI scans and observing behavior changes, we are able to tangibly see that the process that a patient undergoes in art therapy truly effects their brain structures positively-- all by way of neuroplasticity.

The patients that art therapy can help are varied, ranging from those who have mental illnesses-- dementia, schizophrenia, etc.-- to those who have physical impairments or traumas, and can even affect people who need help simply managing stress in everyday life. Vija Lusebrink, author of an article titled “Art Therapy and the Brain” gives a general explanation of using art as a means of therapy: “Art therapy focuses on… how images and their expression reflect emotional experiences and how the emotional experiences affect thoughts and behavior. Formation of internal images activates sensory pathways.” Art therapists are able to reach these pathways and stimulate them, and thus cognitive responsiveness and growth by, as an example, engaging patients in activities such as haptic exploration, that is 3D activities; fMRI studies indicate that when patients engage in these types of activities both the somatosensory cortex and the occipital cortex are activated and worked. Lusebrink also outlines main reasons for the use of art therapy which are: a) for the reconstitution and rehabilitiation of physical impairments; b) promotion of mental, emotional and physical healing; and c) for the enhancment of cognitive and emotional growth (129).

Another way that art therapy works is that it breaks old habits by introducing art- making as a new one. The basic human attraction to pleasure, dictated by the biological reward system, can either be functional-- like art making, or is can take the form of a dysfunctional activity, such as drug use. Repeated positive feedback reinforces sameness and habit formation. What art therapy does is provide a “novel context,” new information for them to process and introduce into their neural pathways. This generates a new perspective on the client’s problem by “jumpstarting a mind-body negative feedback loop [and the advatage of that] and thus art therapy, is that they diminish or interrupt continuation of preexisting funtions (Hass-Cohen 284).

Another article documents that traumatic memories are actually stored in the right hemisphere of the brain, making verbal declarative memory of the trauma difficult. In cases with PTSD patients, when they were presented with vivid accounts of their traumatic experiences, studies showed that autonomic arousal occurred and at the same time the area in the brain concerned with language in the left hemisphere was “turned off.” This suggests that patients who experience trauma re-experience their emotional states as physical states rather than declarative verbal memories, indicating that, since experiences such as these traumas are stored and processed in the nonverbal sections of the brain, to reach them and help patients overcome them, it makes sense to use nonverbal methods of therapy, such as art therapy (Klorer 216).

Conclusion

I read many more informative articles and in each of them, there is a positive push toward the progressive use of researching more of the neuroplastic aspects of art therapy.

My research has explored and provided Dr. Dreiss with the necessary beginnings of the art therapy sections of his research on neuroplasticity and art. I have created tangible, visual diagrams that are useful in explaining neuroplasticity by means of showing sections of the brain that are stimulated by various experiences, such as seeing artwork. I have also provided Dr. Dreiss with various scientific documentations of the positive responses that art therapy interventions provide in terms of cognitive regeneration and in terms of forming new neural pathways, and thus, the formation of things such as new positive habits in patients.

Selected Bibliography

Gladding, Rebecca and Schwartz, Jeffrey. You are not your Brain. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2011.

Hass-Cohen, Noah. Art Therapy and Clinical Neuroscience. Philadelphia, PA: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2008.

Klorer, P. Gussie. “Expressive Therapy with Severely Maltreated Children: Neuroscience Contributions.” Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association. 22.4 (2005): 216.

Lusebrink, Vija B. “Art Therapy and the Brain: An Attempt to Understand the Underlying Processes of Art Expression in Therapy.” Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association. 21.3 (2004): 129.

Zeki, Semir. Inner Vision. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.