Creative experiences may slow brain ageing and improve brain health

Creative experiences may support brain health and potentially slow brain ageing, according to 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 effective, as well as art classes, music tuition and hobbies such as gaming – positively affected an artificial intelligence (AI) “brain clock”.

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

We spoke to the lead researchers, neuroscientists Carlos Coronel and Agustín Ibáñez, about their findings.

What is brain health?

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

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

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

Although some decline is a natural part of ageing, the speed and pattern of these changes differ considerably from person to person, reflecting both resilience and vulnerability.

“Brain clocks” are machine learning (AI) models created to estimate a brain’s apparent age from brain scans or patterns of neural activity. They compare neuroimaging, electrophysiological or neuromolecular information with typical brain patterns observed across the lifespan.

Using a brain clock can therefore help us explore what makes the brain more resilient and what causes it to age more rapidly.

What did you want to find out?

We aimed to establish whether creativity is not merely enjoyable or emotionally fulfilling, but also biologically beneficial for the brain. Evidence increasingly suggests that involvement in the arts improves wellbeing, yet we still do not fully understand how creative activity could influence brain health.

Many people think art is too elusive and intangible to be investigated scientifically, or to produce a biological effect. We set out to question both assumptions.

Could creative experiences – something joyful and profoundly human – also be detected and measured in the brain? Could they slow brain ageing in a similar way to the effect physical exercise has on the body?

Our research examined whether creativity could affect the brain clock. When a brain clock estimates that you are younger than your actual age, it suggests that your brain is operating more efficiently than would be expected.

How did you go about it?

We gathered data from nearly 1,400 people in several countries. Some participants were expert tango dancers, musicians, visual artists or gamers. The others were non-experts from the same countries, matched by age, education and gender. These non-experts had no earlier experience in the relevant disciplines.

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

Training the models takes under an hour. Gathering the data was the difficult part: it involved hundreds of participants, from Argentina to Poland. This would not have been possible without collaboration between numerous researchers and institutions around the world.

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

Lastly, we used biophysical modelling. These models are “digital brains”, and the virtual brains enabled us to examine the biology underlying creativity.

The limitation of machine learning models, or “brain clocks”, is that although they can identify patterns in data and make predictions, they cannot recreate genuine brain activity.

Biophysical models, by contrast, are “real” brains in a digital world: in other words, they are mirrored copies of the brain within a computer. They apply detailed biological and physical rules to simulate how a brain functions. They are not AI models, but “generative models” that can genuinely produce brain activity using mathematical equations.

Brain clocks allow us to assess brain health, including accelerated or delayed brain ageing, while biophysical models can help explain why creativity is linked with improved brain health.

What did you find out about creativity and brain ageing?

The results showed a remarkably consistent pattern across all creative fields: 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. The aim was to determine whether short-term creative learning could produce comparable effects.

Even in this short-term study, participants’ brain clocks moved backwards after just 30 hours of creative training, indicating a brain-age reduction of between two and three years.

The effect became stronger as people spent more time practising their art. The particular art form made no difference: dancing, painting, music and gaming all helped vital brain regions work together more effectively.

These regions are important for concentration and learning, and they are generally among the first to age. Creativity, however, appears to keep their connections stronger and more adaptable.

We found that creativity safeguards brain regions that are susceptible to ageing and makes communication within the brain more efficient – much like creating more, wider and better-quality roads for communication between cities in a country.

Why is this important?

Arts and sciences are often portrayed as opposites, but they are actually allies. Creativity influences biology as well as culture. Our study presents creativity as a biological route to brain health and resilience, rather than solely a cultural or psychological phenomenon.

By demonstrating that artistic involvement can delay brain ageing, the research invites us to reconsider creativity’s place in education, public health and ageing societies.

More broadly, it broadens our view of healthy ageing beyond preventing disease. It identifies creativity as a scalable, accessible and deeply human way of maintaining cognitive and emotional wellbeing among varied populations and throughout the lifespan.

So, if you have been asking whether being creative is “good for you”, the answer appears to be “yes”. Scientifically, measurably, and beautifully so. Your next dance move, brushstroke or musical note could help keep your brain 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 licence. Read the original article.