ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I review and synthesize the growing scientific evidence of the direct and measurable health benefits of art experiences and art interventions. I focus on two examples of art experiences, music listening and art making, for two different health outcomes, pain management and stress management, respectively. For the first example, I show evidence that music listening creates a shift in neural processing via the saliency matrix, where processes related to emotion and reward are upregulated and processes related to attention contribute to inhibition of the spinothalamic tract, competing with pain signals and disrupting pain processing. For the second example, I show evidence that art making leads to physiological and neural changes related to health outcomes, including decreases in blood cortisol and salivary cortisol levels and blood pressure. I end with some suggestions for future research and practice.
