What If Workplaces Used Brain Science to Provide an Optimal Workday?

 I have often discussed about how important it is to be able to work at our optimal level, especially working best with our chronotype (night owls usually get the short end of the stick) as well as with our personality traits and needs. There are four main chronotypes; some people work better early in the morning, but some are better in the afternoon or evening. I facilitate True Colors personality inventories, and each color type has different workplace needs, such as innovation and competency (Greens/NTs), creativity/expression, helpfulness, and harmony (Blues/NFs), independence and being hands-on (Oranges/SPs), or structure and organization (Golds/SJs).

This article echoes that. The helpfulness of a four-day work week for many people continues to be proven with research, but many workplaces (where it could be possible) will not consider it. Society favors the early morning start time, and with the advent of technology, people are expected to be available at all hours of the day. We need to find a way to work smarter, not harder, in our respective fields. I understand that some types of work are not conducive to creative maximization of their employees' peak productivity times and methods in every way, but I really hope that leaders and agencies can be more open in this regard. They will have happier employees and better outcomes in the long run, and our society will be the better for it.

What are your thoughts?

https://www.truity.com/blog/what-if-we-redesigned-workday-based-brain-science

What if We Redesigned the Workday Based on Brain Science?

By: Vlora Ramadani

posted 02.16.26 at 3:00 AM PST

If you designed the workday from scratch based on how the brain actually works, would it look anything like your calendar today?

For most people, the answer is no.

Many knowledge workers are living what feels like an "infinite workday" of back-to-back meetings, constant notifications, and an unspoken expectation to be reachable at all times. It's no surprise that so many people finish the day wired, tired, and unsure what they actually accomplished. 

At the same time, research on shorter workweeks and brain rhythms has exploded. Trials of four-day weeks suggest you can cut hours without tanking productivity, provided you redesign how time is used. Studies on attention and rest show that brains work best in waves, not in one long, flat block. And once you layer personality into the mix, it becomes obvious that there is no single “ideal” workday. There are human patterns we all share, and then there is the way each person's wiring shapes how they work best.

This article explores what those findings mean for a typical day at work. We hope it will help leaders use the latest brain and personality science to minimize burnout and increase sustainable productivity in their teams.

What Shorter Weeks Quietly Taught Us About the Workday

The four-day week is often framed as a perk, but the research tells a deeper story. In the UK's largest four-day week pilot, 61 companies and roughly 2,900 workers moved to about 32 hours a week with no loss of pay, on the condition that output stayed the same. Over six months, revenue stayed broadly stable, self-reported burnout and stress fell, sick days dropped, and more than 90% of companies chose to continue after the trial. You can see the full results in the report from Autonomy and from 4 Day Week Global.

Similar experiments in other countries, including multi-year public-sector trials in Iceland and pilots in places like Japan, have found that when hours are reduced thoughtfully, wellbeing improves and performance usually holds steady or even increases.

When you look closer, these companies didn't just chop a day off the week and hope for the best. They became ruthless about meetings, more intentional about focus time, and clearer about priorities. Time changed, but so did the design of the day.

That same logic can be applied even if your organization is not ready for a four-day week. You may not be able to change the number of days, but you can still change the rhythm of a single day.

Your Brain Needs a Break

Most calendars are built around neat one-hour blocks, but your brain runs on a different rhythm.

Throughout the day, your mind cycles through roughly 90-minute waves of higher and lower alertness. During the peak of a wave, it's easier to focus and resist distractions. After that, attention naturally dips and needs a short period of recovery before it can return to the same level.

A 2022 meta-analysis found that taking short “microbreaks” during the workday can boost vigor and reduce fatigue without harming performance, especially when they involve light movement or mental detachment from work tasks. In other words, pushing through without pauses isn't a sign of dedication — it's a recipe for fogginess and mistakes.

Brain imaging backs this up. Microsoft's Human Factors Lab used EEG caps to measure brain activity in people sitting in back-to-back virtual meetings. When there were no breaks, stress-related beta waves climbed steadily over time. When the researchers added short breaks between calls, stress markers dropped and participants went into the next meeting more focused and calm. 

If we took this seriously, we wouldn't design days as a wall of meetings from 9 to 5. We would build:

• One to three deep-focus waves of roughly 90 minutes each.
• Short, genuine breaks between waves.
• Lighter, less demanding tasks in the lower-energy stretches.

That's the brain science. The next layer is: what kind of work are you doing, and who is doing it?

Knowledge, Emotional and Physical Work Need Different Days

Even before we talk about personality, the “ideal” day depends on the kind of work someone does.

For people in knowledge work, the main strain is cognitive. The brain burns energy making decisions, solving problems, and constantly switching between tasks. A brain-friendly day here means large uninterrupted blocks for deep work, fewer unnecessary meetings, and grouping similar tasks together so the brain isn't forced to change gear every few minutes.

For those doing a lot of emotional labor — teachers, HR professionals, therapists, support roles, managers on the front line — the load is relational. They're holding space for other people's emotions all day. A recent systematic review on remote work and health found that remote and hybrid roles can increase stress, fatigue and emotional exhaustion when boundaries are blurred and recovery time is scarce, especially in people-facing jobs. An ideal day for these workers includes decompression time between intense interactions, clearer limits on after-hours contact, and routines that help them come back to themselves after being “on” for others.

For physically demanding work, fatigue shows up in muscles and joints as much as in attention. Various research suggests that adding short movement breaks can reduce discomfort and improve functioning over time. An early example is a study of meatpacking workers that introduced active microbreaks and found reduced musculoskeletal discomfort across several body regions. Here, an ideal day includes rotating tasks, pacing exertion, and building in recovery as a safety measure, not just a nice extra.

So we already have three different “ideal days” emerging: one for cognitive load, one for emotional load, and one for physical load. But within each of those, personality still changes what works best.

Same Job, Different Brains: Where Personality Comes In

Two people can share the same job title and still have very different needs for a healthy, productive day. Personality is one reason why. Truity's frameworks — the TypeFinder® test based on Myers and Briggs, the Big Five, DISC personality assessment, the Enneagram — give teams a language for those differences.

For example, in the 16-type system, Judging (J) types often feel their best when the day is structured and decisions are made early, while Perceiving types tend to thrive with more flexibility and room to respond to what emerges. This article on chronoworking explores how aligning work with your natural energy cycles can improve focus and prevent burnout, and notes that flexible, self-directed schedules often appeal more to Perceiving types.

Introversion and Extraversion change the picture again. Introverts usually recharge in quiet and may need more time between meetings and other busywork to regroup. Extraverts gain energy from interaction and can feel flat if they have too many hours of solo work. This means that meetings drain different personality types in different ways, and small changes to timing, structure and recovery can make a big difference. 

In my own experience leading a large remote team, one simple change made a big difference. I started blocking at least one no-meeting day each week. That protected day allowed me to sink into deep work in my own rhythm instead of spending the entire day in reactive mode. On other days, I created specific focus blocks and told my team, “I will respond to messages within 60 minutes.” That small act of transparency made it easier for everyone to respect focus time without feeling ignored and it gave them permission to set similar boundaries for themselves. It was a practical way to translate brain science and personality needs into everyday behavior.

Where Leaders Can Start

Seen through this lens, there is no one ideal day. There are shared human needs — rhythm, rest, and a sense of progress — and there are personality patterns that shape how each person gets there. A company-wide four-day week may not work for everyone, and most managers can't roll one out anyway. But they can start redesigning the workday in small, brain-aligned ways.

A few experiments to try:

• Protect deep-work time. Choose one or two blocks in the day where meetings are discouraged and messages don't need instant replies. Let people know they're allowed to be “heads-down” during this time.
• Make room for breaks. Build in short buffers between meetings. Encourage microbreaks during demanding work and model them yourself, so people don't feel guilty stepping away for five minutes.
• Match tasks to energy and type. Ask team members when they feel most focused, and encourage them to tackle complex work in those windows. Use personality insights to fine-tune: your Introverts may need quiet to start the day; your Extraverts may benefit from collaborative time earlier on; your highly Conscientious employees may need help declaring work “good enough” so they can switch off. Every personality system offers insights you can lean on.

Redesigning the workday based on brain science is an acknowledgment that people are not machines. When you respect the way brains and personalities actually work, you don't just get more out of your team in the short term. You create a rhythm of work that people can sustain,  and even enjoy, for much longer.

 

Vlora Ramadani

Vlora Ramadani is a writer, facilitator, and founder of Almamana, a mindful creative studio. She draws on years of marketing leadership and remote-team experience to explore how personality, alignment, and mindfulness shape the way we work and lead.

 

Why Doctors Are Prescribing Art

 Art Therapy Thursday!

Why doctors are prescribing art: Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross dive into how the arts are just as crucial to our lives and well-being as nutrition and sleep. They talk about why and what has led to doctors prescribing visits to art museums for patients. This is even more important as the arts are often seen as optional and are the first to be cut from programming because they seem like a luxury, when in fact, they are essential to our survival. I read Magsamen and Ross's book, "Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us" for one of my classes, and I would highly recommend it to everyone to read or listen to on audiobook (it is free to listen to if you have Spotify Premium).

https://seeallthis.com/en/article/your-brain-on-art/

The Secret to a Longer, Happier Life: Art

How the Arts Transform Us

Article

No. 31 • September 2023

New groundbreaking research by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, published in their book Your Brain on Art, confirms what we have long suspected: art proves to be just as essential to our survival as sleep, movement and nutrition. For See All This, they reveal the key findings of their research.

text: Susan Magsamen & Ivy Ross

‘Humanity began with firelight,’ evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson told us before his death in 2021. ‘Our lives as we know them come courtesy of lightning.’ Arcs of electricity six times hotter than the surface of the sun sparked trees and brush to flames on the African savanna where early Homo erectus and Homo sapiens captured this magic and carried it with them from place to place. Our prehistoric ancestors learned to harness wildfires into controlled campfires, bringing them back to shelters and camps.

During the day, language developed to address the basic daily needs of the group, from the logistics of tracking animals to caring for children and preparing food. At night, though, something remarkable happened. Fires were built, wood crackled into flame, and woodsmoke, heady and fragrant, filled the air. A honeyed glow warmed faces and illuminated the dark for the first time, offering warmth and protection from predators. So began the lasting human desire to make a circle, stare into the flickering fire, and commune.

The pragmatism of the day made way for the mystery and evocative nature of night, as fire fostered new forms of coming together. We created stories. We sang. We danced. We drew. We developed myths and metaphors that passed on the moral and ethical values of the group. We celebrated and we mourned.

Through the centuries, these creative expressions forged layers of meaning-making. Tribes around the world formed, and a sense of belonging emerged between individuals, families and groups. It was through these repetitive creative acts, that humans developed strong social bonds, created trusting relationships and a collective feeling of transcendence and communal need emerged.

Fire sparked the birth of community. More than 250 million years of evolution have favored social development and the core imperative to thrive in community by honing our unique ability to creatively share our thoughts, ideas, and emotions with one another. Today, there are still over 5,000 indigenous tribes on the planet, many of whom don’t have a word for art because it is simply entrenched in how they live.

Since the industrial revolution, we have been optimizing for productivity, and with that we  have put fundamental human needs aside, because the arts are not only our birthright: science is discovering that we are evolutionarily and physiologically wired for them. The arts turn out to be as essential to our survival as sleep, exercise, and nutrition.

What Artists Already Knew

Over the last 25 years, technology has enabled us to non-invasively get inside our head, and researchers are catching up with what artists have always intuitively known. Research is confirming that arts and aesthetic experiences alter a complex physiological network of interconnected neurological and biological systems including cognition, immune and endocrine, circulatory, respiratory, reward and motor systems – to name just a few.

Many of these discoveries have been made through neuroaesthetics, an emerging interdisciplinary field. The goal is to understand how the arts and aesthetic experiences measurably impact our brains, bodies and behavior, and how this knowledge can be translated into practice in health and wellbeing.

A key to understanding the transformative power of the arts and aesthetics is found through our sensory systems. We literally bring the world in through our senses and these mechanisms are fascinating.

Smell is one of the oldest senses in terms of human evolution. Your nose can detect 1 trillion odors with over 400 types of scent receptors whose cells are renewed every thirty to sixty days. In fact, your sense of smell is so good that you can identify some scents better than a dog can.

Microscopic molecules released by substances around you stimulate your scent receptors. They enter your nose and dissolve in mucus within a membrane called the olfactory epithelium, located a few inches up the nasal cavity from the nostrils. From here, neurons, or nerve cells, which are the fundamental components of your brain and nervous system, send axons, which are long nerve fibers, to the main olfactory bulb. Once there, they connect with cells that detect distinct features of the scent.

Like scent, taste is also a chemical sense: The foods you eat trigger your 10,000-plus taste buds, generating electrical signals that travel from your mouth to an area of the brain called the gustatory cortex. This part of the brain is also believed to process visceral and emotional experiences, which helps to explain how it is that taste is among the most effective sensations for encoding memory.

Our ability to hear is intricate and precise. Sound from the outside world moves into the ear canal, causing the eardrum to vibrate. These sound waves travel through the ossicles to the cochlea and cause the fluid in the cochlea to move like ocean waves. There are thousands of small hair cells inside of the cochlea, and when the fluid moves, these cells are activated, sending messages to the auditory nerve, which then sends messages to the brain. The auditory cortex, also located in the temporal lobe, sits behind your ears, where memory and perception also occur. Music is the most researched art form.

Our ability to see requires us to process light through a complex system. Your eyes work similarly to a camera. What you see is converted into electrical signals by photoreceptors. The optic nerve then sends these signals to the occipital lobe in the back of the brain and converts them into what you see. It’s here that we perceive, recognize, and appreciate objects, and neuroscientists are discovering that it is one part of this lobe – the lateral occipital area – that contributes to how we process and create aesthetic appreciation of art.

Touch is one of the more powerful cognitive communication vehicles. It was one of our first sensory systems to evolve. Your fingers, hands, toes, feet, and skin are extraordinarily sensitive, picking up minute cues that trigger physiological and psychological responses. In each of your fingers, you have more than 3,000 nerve endings that are constantly taking in physical sensation. Touch receptors in your skin connect to neurons in the spinal cord by way of sensory nerves that reach the thalamus in the middle of the head on top of the brain stem.

We share our feelings and emotions through the simple act of holding a hand or sharing a hug. Touch rapidly changes our neurobiology and mental states of mind by releasing the neurotransmitter oxytocin, which is also attributed to feelings of trust, generosity, compassion, and lowered anxiety.

Always Making New Connections

Your smell, taste, vision, hearing, and touch produce biological reactions at staggering speeds. Hearing is registered in about 3 milliseconds. Touch can register in the brain within 50 milliseconds. Your entire body, not just your brain, takes in the world, yet much of this is outside of your awareness. Cognitive neuroscientists believe we’re conscious of only about 5 percent of our mental activity. The rest of your experience – physically, emotionally, sensorially – lives below what you are actually thinking.

Your brain is processing stimuli constantly, like a sponge, absorbing millions of sensory signals. But not all of the information that your brain is processing reaches your consciousness. You can’t process all the sensory stimuli that you are exposed to every day, but the most salient information that enters your body has an unlimited capacity to change your biology and behavior.  Your brain pays attention to what is important to you either because it is practical or emotionally relevant.  Turns out, the arts and aesthetics are some of the most salient experiences we have.

These arts and aesthetic experiences ignite your brain’s neuroplasticity. Each of us are born with 100 billion neurons that connect at a synaptic level. You have quadrillions of these connections in your brain, creating endless neuropathways. These pathways underlie your body movements, emotions, memory – basically, everything you do. When you are making a memory or learning something you are actually making some synaptic connections stronger and some weaker through the saliency of your experiences. And that is neuroplasticity.

You are always making new connections and pruning old synapses. This is why by continually putting yourself in new places and experiences, like going to museums and galleries, and performing and visual arts – including viewing beautiful publications such as See All This changes your brain in positive ways.        

Becoming You

Becoming aware of what you like and don’t like, and better understanding how you are influenced, informed, and changed by arts encounters, creates opportunities for you to apply your own perceptual preferences to almost every area of your life. Using arts and aesthetics in this personalized way is so powerful because of your default mode network.

The default mode network is now believed to be where the neurological basis for the self is housed. Your responses to the arts and aesthetics are as individual as the geometry of a snowflake. The sonatas of Mozart or the sounds of traditional Portuguese fado music might transport some, while others feel uplifted by the Persian calligraphy of Mir Ali Tabrizi or the smell of ink made from henna. Still others get into the flow by being immersed in a film or reading a poem. One person’s cacophony is another person’s symphony. And your perception is your reality.

Your experiences with the arts and aesthetics are so singular because your brain-connectivity patterns are distinctive. Through your experiences, billions of new synapses form in your brain and these conduits build a repository of stored knowledge and responses as unique as your fingerprints. No one else, not a single person on this planet, has your exact brain.

Microdosing Aesthetics

Many of us tend to think of the arts as either entertainment or as an escape. A luxury of some kind. But they are so much more. Beyond prevention and brain health support, they can help address serious physical and mental health issues, with remarkable results. And they can help you learn, flourish and build community.

Around the world, doctors are prescribing museum visits. Schools are bringing music, studio art and performing arts back to enhance learning. And because research shows that sensory-rich environments help us learn faster and retain information better, workplaces, galleries and public spaces are being reimagined and redesigned with both function and feeling in mind.

We each have the agency to take actions that move us toward experiences that give us meaning and purpose and help us heal, learn, and thrive. It is in this way that simply daily habits become our lives. Simple, quick, accessible ‘acts of art’ can enhance your life.

Already we see a rise in microdosing of aesthetics as people use specific scents to relieve stress, calibrate light sources to adjust energy levels, and use specific tones of sound to alleviate anxiety. In the same way you might exercise to lower cholesterol and increase serotonin in the brain, just twenty minutes of doodling or humming can provide immediate support for your physical and mental state. Immersing yourself in aesthetic experiences from being in nature to visiting a gallery, lowers cortisol, the stress hormone. Playing music increases synapses and gray matter in the brain which helps support cognitive skills, while just one or more artist experiences a month, as a marker or a beholder, can extend your life by ten years. And researchers have debunked a huge myth, which is that you don’t have to be a skilled artist to have a significant impact on your health and wellbeing.

We invite you to build your aesthetic mindset.  Engage your natural curiosity. Try more playful explorations, suspend judgment and simply experiment. Open yourself up to the sensorial experiences throughout your day. And be a maker and a beholder with even more intention.

It’s been said, the world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

Happy Creative Arts Therapies Week!

Happy Creative Arts Therapies Week!

Creative Arts Therapies Week is always the 3rd week of March, celebrating art therapy, music therapy, dance/movement therapy, drama therapy, and poetry therapy.

The National Coalition of Creative Arts Therapies Associations (NCCATA) celebrates these CATs all year long:

https://www.nccata.org/about

Here is a systematic review looking at how the Creative Arts Therapies help with stress management and prevention:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5836011/

Did you know there is an international credential that creative arts therapists can obtain?

The REAT® credential identifies professionals who integrate more than one form of the creative arts therapies together in mental health treatment. Registered Expressive Arts Therapists are credentialed by the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association.

https://www.ieata.org/what-is-reat/

Did you know that art therapy developed simultaneously in America and Britain in the 1940s?

Great Britain also acknowledges the creative arts therapies, and here is a great explanation about them and their practice:

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/drugs-and-treatments/talking-therapy-and-counselling/arts-and-creative-therapies/

Fellow art therapist Lauren Nicholson has created stickers for Creative Arts Therapists in honor or CATs week:

Find Lauren's Art Therapist products here.

Thank you for celebrating Creative Arts Therapies Week with me!

How Does the Brain Enter the Zone?

You may remember moments when you were in flow state, or being "in the zone," when you get involved in a task or are working on something creative. This research study from Drexel University is studying how flow state works in the brain. They focus on flow state with musicians, but engaging in art can rely on the flow state as well. Flow state is also what can work very well in art therapy for deeper processing.

What has your experience been with the flow state?

https://neurosciencenews.com/creativity-zone-neuroscience-25697/

Unlocking Creative Flow: 

How the Brain Enters the Zone

FeaturedNeuroscience

·March 4, 2024

Summary: A new study unveils how the brain enters the creative flow state, famously known as being “in the zone.” By analyzing jazz improvisations through EEGs, the research confirms that creative flow combines extensive experience with a conscious release of control, allowing for automatic idea generation.

This “expertise-plus-release” model suggests that deep creative flow is more accessible to those with significant experience and the ability to let go. The findings offer a new understanding of flow, challenging previous theories and opening avenues for enhancing creativity through practice and relinquishment of control.

Key Facts:

1. The study supports the “expertise-plus-release” theory of creative flow, indicating that expertise and the ability to release control are essential for achieving deep creative states.
2. High-flow states are associated with increased activity in the brain’s auditory and touch areas, and decreased activity in executive control regions, supporting the idea of reduced conscious control during creative flow.
3. Practical implications suggest that achieving productive flow states requires building expertise in a creative field and then training to “let go,” enabling the brain’s specialized circuits to operate autonomously.

Source: Drexel University

Effortless, enjoyable productivity is a state of consciousness prized and sought after by people in business, the arts, research, education and anyone else who wants to produce a stream of creative ideas and products.

That’s the flow, or the sense of being “in the zone.” A new neuroimaging study from Drexel University’s Creativity Research Lab is the first to reveal how the brain gets to the creative flow state.

The study isolated flow-related brain activity during a creative task: jazz improvisation. The findings reveal the creative flow state involves two key factors: extensive experience, which leads to a network of brain areas specialized for generating the desired type of ideas, plus the release of control – “letting go” – to allow this network to work with little or no conscious supervision.

Led by John Kounios, PhD, professor in the College of Arts and Sciences and Creativity Research Lab director, and David Rosen, PhD, a recent graduate from the College and Johns Hopkins University postdoc – the team determined their results suggest that creative flow can be achieved by training people to release control when they have built up enough expertise in a particular domain.

“Flow was first identified and studied by the pioneering psychological scientist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,” said Kounios. “He defined it as ‘a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.’”

Kounios noted that although flow has long been a topic of public fascination as well as the focus of hundreds of behavioral research studies, there has been no consensus about what flow is. Their new study decided between different theories of how flow is involved when people produce creative ideas.

Theory: Is Flow a State of Hyperfocus?

One view is that flow might be a state of highly focused concentration or hyperfocus that shuts out extraneous thoughts and other distractions to enable superior performance on a task.

A related theory based on recent research on the neuroscience of creativity is that flow occurs when the brain’s “default-mode network,” a collection of brain areas that work together when a person daydreams or introspects, generates ideas under the supervision of the “executive control network” in the brain’s frontal lobes, which directs the kinds of ideas the default-mode network produces. Kounios likened it to the analogy of a person “supervising” a TV by picking the movie it streams.

Alternative Theory: Flow is Expertise Plus Letting Go

An alternative theory of creative flow is that through years of intense practice, the brain develops a specialized network or circuit to automatically produce a specific type of ideas, in this case musical ones, with little conscious effort. In this view, the executive control network relaxes its supervision so that the musician can “let go” and allow this specialized circuit to go on “autopilot” without interference.

The research team said the key to this notion is the idea that people who do not have extensive experience at a task or who have difficulty releasing control will be less likely to experience deep creative flow.

The study’s results support the “expertise-plus-release” view of creative flow.

The researchers tested these competing theories of creative flow by recording high-density electroencephalograms (EEGs) from 32 jazz guitar players, some highly experienced and others less experienced. Each musician improvised to six jazz lead sheets (songs) with programmed drums, bass and piano accompaniment and rated the intensity of their flow experience for each improvisation.

The resulting 192 recorded jazz improvisations, or “takes,” were subsequently played for four jazz experts individually so they could rate each for creativity and other qualities. The researchers then analyzed the EEGs to discover which brain areas were associated with high-flow takes (compared to low-flow takes).

The high-experience musicians experienced flow more often and more intensely than the low-experience musicians. This shows that expertise enables flow. However, expertise is not the only factor contributing to creative flow.

The EEGs showed that a high-flow state was associated with increased activity in left-hemisphere auditory and touch areas that are involved in hearing and playing music. Importantly, high flow was also associated with decreased activity in the brain’s superior frontal gyri, an executive control region.

This is consistent with the idea that creative flow is associated with reduced conscious control, that is, letting go. This previously hypothesized phenomenon has been called “transient hypofrontality.” 

For the high-experience musicians, flow was associated with greater activity in auditory and vision areas. However, they also showed reduced activity in parts of the default-mode network, suggesting that the default-mode network was not contributing much to flow-related idea generation in these musicians.

In contrast, the low-experience musicians showed little flow-related brain activity.  

“A practical implication of these results is that productive flow states can be attained by practice to build up expertise in a particular creative outlet coupled with training to withdraw conscious control when enough expertise has been achieved,” said Kounios. “This can be the basis for new techniques for instructing people to produce creative ideas.”

Kounios added, “If you want to be able to stream ideas fluently, then keep working on those musical scales, physics problems or whatever else you want to do creatively—computer coding, fiction writing—you name it. But then, try letting go. As jazz great Charlie Parker said, ‘You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.’”

About this creativity and neuroscience research news:

Author: Annie Korp
Source: Drexel University
Contact: Annie Korp – Drexel University
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News

Original Research: Open access.
“Creative flow as optimized processing: Evidence from brain oscillations during jazz improvisations by expert and non-expert musicians” by John Kounios et all. Neuropsychologia

---

Abstract

Creative flow as optimized processing: Evidence from brain oscillations during jazz improvisations by expert and non-expert musicians

Using a creative production task, jazz improvisation, we tested alternative hypotheses about the flow experience: (A) that it is a state of domain-specific processing optimized by experience and characterized by minimal interference from task-negative default-mode network (DMN) activity versus (B) that it recruits domain-general task-positive DMN activity supervised by the fronto-parietal control network (FPCN) to support ideation. We recorded jazz guitarists’ electroencephalograms (EEGs) while they improvised to provided chord sequences.

Their flow-states were measured with the Core Flow State Scale. Flow-related neural sources were reconstructed using SPM12. Over all musicians, high-flow (relative to low-flow) improvisations were associated with transient hypofrontality. High-experience musicians’ high-flow improvisations showed reduced activity in posterior DMN nodes.

Low-experience musicians showed no flow-related DMN or FPCN modulation. High-experience musicians also showed modality-specific left-hemisphere flow-related activity while low-experience musicians showed modality-specific right-hemisphere flow-related deactivations.

These results are consistent with the idea that creative flow represents optimized domain-specific processing enabled by extensive practice paired with reduced cognitive control.

 

Spirituality and Faith May Improve Mental and Physical Health

This article notes how faith and spirituality can help both mental and physical health. Improvements have been shown in areas such as longevity, quality of life, cortisol levels, immunity, and levels of anxiety, depression, and substance use. 

I am interested to hear from you how your faith - or observed faith from others - have helped with mental or physical issues.

https://www.deseret.com/2023/8/3/23818675/spirituality-improves-mental-health-expert-says/

Keep the faith: Spirituality can improve mental health, expert says

People say faith can move mountains. According to these sources, it can also ease symptoms of anxiety and depression

Published: Aug 3, 2023, 2:19 p.m. MDT

The Rev. Curtis Price, of the First Baptist Church, holds hands and prays with the Rev. Monica Dobbins, of the First Unitarian Church, in front of the House chambers at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Friday, Feb. 8, 2019. Deseret News

By Britney Heimuli

Spirituality positively impacts the mind and leads to a decreased risk of suicide and addiction, psychologist Lisa Miller told NPR on Sunday.

NPR said Miller “has dedicated most of her career to the study of neuroscience and spirituality.” She found that people who said they have a meaningful spiritual life were 80% less likely to become addicted to drugs or alcohol, compared to someone who said they don’t.

In an interview with NPR, Miller said:

• The higher the risk for depression genetically, the greater the effect of spirituality as a source of resilience against depression.
• Recalling a powerful, spiritual memory triggers the same reaction in the brain as receiving a hug from a family member as a baby.
• Those who say they have a spiritual life are 82% less likely to commit suicide.

Miller previously told the Deseret News in an interview that “depression and spirituality are two sides of one door,” and that she is “very interested in how recovery and renewal from depression, despair or hard times is often found through spiritual life.”

How does spirituality affect the body?

USA Today reported earlier this year on the effects of spirituality on the body.

The article quoted the Mayo Clinic and said, “Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression and suicide.”

The National Library of Medicine published a study that said prayer, a common spiritual practice, can reduce or increase stress and anxiety, depending on what the prayer is about.

USA Today quoted studies that said spirituality and spiritual practices were linked to lower cortisol levels as well as improved immune function and vitality.

“One-third of spirituality is innate, two-thirds environmentally cultivated,” Miller told Deseret News.

Tyler VanderWeele, professor of epidemiology in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan Public School of Health, told the school, “Focusing on spirituality in health care means caring for the whole person, not just their disease.”

“Integrating spirituality into care can help each person have a better chance of reaching complete well-being and their highest attainable standard of health,” said Howard Koh, the Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership at Harvard T.H. Chan School.