Leaders' Playground

8: This is your brain on beauty in Paris

• Irene Salter, PhD • Season 1 • Episode 8

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Why can music move you to tears, while other times you walk right by it, not noticing? Why does some art freeze you in your tracks, but other times it's just a desktop screensaver? How does beauty happen in the brain?

In this episode we visit Paris! We'll explore museums, chapels, and subway stations on an expedition to understand your brain on beauty.  You'll meet several neuroscientists who specialize in neuroaesthetics such as Andrew Chatterjee and Samir Zeki, as well as violinist Joshua Bell who conducted a social experiment in the subway that reveals a lot about how to prime your brain to find more beauty. Together, we'll learn practical ways to shift your perspective in order to find beauty even in the most mundane everyday moments.

The writer Leo Tolstoy said, “We are accustomed to understand art to be only what we hear and see in theatres, concerts, and exhibitions... But all this is but the smallest part of the art by which we communicate with each other in life.” By understanding the neuroscience of beauty, we can understand how to find beauty everywhere.

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For complete show notes, transcript, and free downloadable resources go to: https://www.irenesalter.com/podcast

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to the Leader's Playground. Today, I'm going to take you to visit Paris, where we're going to learn all about the science of beauty, and then we get to take that beauty home with us and look for beauty in our everyday lives and in our work. We'll learn about the three brain systems involved in how we experience beauty, how we experience beauty, and I'll tell you about the neuroscientist who claims that the experience of beauty arises from activity in one particular brain area Intrigued. Keep listening. Hi. Thank you for listening to the Leader's Playground, the podcast for leaders who wish their work could feel more like play. Leadership can be lonely, overwhelming and just plain like play. Leadership can be lonely, overwhelming and just plain crazy making. We are here to rekindle your spark. I'm Irene Salter, your host, and a PhD neuroscientist and science educator with a passion for helping people thrive, not just survive. Please click that follow button so you don't miss a single episode.

Speaker 1:

Some of you may know that my family and I took a year to travel around the world together. We called it the Salter Gap Year, and, while our stated goal was to expose our kids to the larger world and make some memories together before they were too teenager-y to ever want to spend time with us ever again us their old, boring, horribly embarrassing parents. You know, if I'm honest with myself, the gap year was actually a way to escape my everyday reality. I was burnt out. That's it. I was one year after COVID-19, and there was just way too much to do, not enough time to do it all. I never had enough time to stop and smell the roses. The life of a busy working mom just had so much heavy responsibility. I couldn't see the beauty in the world anymore and I thought maybe if I lived abroad and went to places like Paris or Egypt, I might be able to find beauty again. So off we went, ended up going to London first, and then we made it to Paris, which is the beauty capital of the world.

Speaker 1:

Now I had to drag Jason kicking and screaming, to Paris. He had visited Paris once before in his early twenties, well before we started dating, and his recollection of that trip is dominated by snooty Parisians and constantly stepping in dog poop. He literally said like you'd walk three steps down the street and step into dog poop. It was driving him insane. And well, in contrast, I'm like Audrey Hepburn, who thinks Paris is always a good idea, and without any nagging or pestering from me at all. Nope, not me, jason finally capitulated. Spreadsheets might have been involved. Anyway, jason and I finally arrived in Paris and were looking for the beautiful there.

Speaker 1:

The first moment where beauty really struck me, I mean like really deep in my soul, was when we were in the Musée d'Orsay. You see, beauty. There was a painting that had hung above my bed for over a decade. It was Renoir's Dance at the Moulin de la Galette. I bought it at the Stanford bookstore back when I was an undergrad. You know how at the bookstores on college campuses they sometimes have those sidewalk stales with hundreds of posters on racks for all of us poor college kids to have something in our bedrooms beside blank white walls. Well, I found this one and I loved it so much that I hung it on my bedroom wall and I had it there well into my 30s, framed right above my bed. And then here in the Musée d'Orsay, there it was on a wall.

Speaker 1:

The original was as tall as I was, far wider than my arms could reach, but I was looking at the scene of sun-dappled dancers and it totally captured the joy and exuberance of that lazy Sunday afternoon in Paris. Renoir was known for painting on the scene in real life. And all of these everyday people were there in this public square dancing and enjoying a Sunday afternoon. There were three people chatting. In the foreground of the painting there was a man in a dark coat, a woman in a striped blue and white dress with all these little ruffles around the edges, another woman with that same dark eyes as the first, with a bold black choker. I had heard a story that one of the trio was modeled after an actress in the premier theater in Paris and if you close your eyes you can just imagine the stories that that actress might have told. All of that painting just spoke to me.

Speaker 1:

The paint strokes with all of those three-dimensional nature to it. It was so different from the two-dimensional one on my wall. All of those waves of paint could highlight things that would otherwise be missed, like a red-orange curl in a girl's hair or a white sparkle of sunlight off a wine glass. I would miss things in the painting in my bedroom because it was smaller, like there was a tiny boy's face peeking out from under a man's arm that I never had seen before, like I totally had missed it. You could almost hear the swirl of music. There was a bandstand in the back of the painting, kind of hidden in shadow, and again, if you close your eyes, like I did when I was there at the museum, you could hear a soft waltz playing. It was just like dancing when I was a college student and a grad student. Back in Golden Gate Park or outside, somewhere, swirling in someone's arms, there was music mingled with the bird song and like sunlight on my face. In fact, the time that I went to Paris, before the last time I had visited, my friend Chuck and I danced on the banks of the Seine just for the fun of it and there was no music. But it was that feeling and swirl of dancing that felt so good. It felt like waltzing right into the painting, kind of like Mary Poppins jumping into the chalk drawing there in that gallery.

Speaker 1:

I was completely open to the beauty of that painting and I began to think what is beauty doing to my brain? I'm a neuroscientist. What's going on there? So I did some research. One of the premier neuroscientists who studies beauty in the brain is Andrew Chatterjee. He has long claimed that beauty comes from three different brain systems, all working at the same time, all working together. There's a sensory system, an emotional system and a cognitive system. Each one of those systems is made of multiple interconnected brain areas, all processing and making sense of the scene in its own way. That sensory system is what connects our eyes to the visual centers of our brain. It's also what connects our ears to the auditory senses. It brings to consciousness what is there for all of those five senses to see. Then there's the emotional system. That's the limbic system of the brain which adds the sense of depth and feeling. And finally you have the cognitive system, which is contributing memory and value and meaning.

Speaker 1:

When I looked at Renoir's painting, my eyes took in that visual information. It brought it back to that visual cortex and my brain started piecing that together the color, the scene, the faces. That was the sensory part. When I would think about my poster. How small my poster was on my bedroom wall compared to the real thing in the museum, how two-dimensional it was compared to the three-dimensional breaststrokes, when I was noticing the little boy peeking out from underneath the man's arm, all of those things, those are the cognitive parts. That's the memory that's coming into play. And then when I was remembering back to dancing in Golden Gate Park or dancing on the banks of the Seine. It brought that depth and feeling, that feeling of presence and joy and flow. That feeling, that's the emotional part, and I had all three things in my brain at the same time as I was looking at that painting. Sensory plus emotional, plus cognitive. According to Andrew Chatterjee, that's what means beauty. That's what beauty looks like in the brain.

Speaker 1:

A few days later, when walking around the streets of Paris, I had a different experience, which allowed me to see this even more clearly. I heard violin music drifting out of a subway station. There was a street performer down somewhere in the tunnels there that was entertaining commuters, and we walked right by without ever stopping, which is very interesting because the day before we went to a chamber music concert with violin music, and it was in the Saint-Chapelle Cathedral. It was this beautiful 13th century chapel where we were listening to Vivaldi's Four Seasons. This was the kids' first classical music concert. Hadn't taken them to classical music before. There was these candelabras falling from the ceiling, and the ceiling itself was painted with a background of blue with golden stars. There were all of these golden arches. The windows were the masterpiece, though. That chapel was world renowned for its stained glass windows and it was sunset, so all of these beams of candy colored light shown in it was an utterly majestic setting and suddenly the music from the orchestra started to fill the space.

Speaker 1:

The violinist in particular was super expressive. He had this way about him where he wasn't just playing an instrument, he was playing the crowd. He was winking and smiling, making all these theatrical flourishes. It reminded me of a world-famous young violinist by the name of Joshua Bell. Now, I'm not a big classical music fan, but I do know about Josh Bell because he's the star of a viral YouTube video that has to do with a lot of psychology. Of course I'm fascinated by that. I've put the YouTube video link in the show notes for you.

Speaker 1:

Well, josh Bell did a social experiment. He took his world-famous $3.5 million violin made by Stradivarius, and he took it inside a New York City subway station. During the morning commute he put out his violin case or maybe it was a cheap battered violin case, I don't know and then had some hidden cameras record how many people would take the time to stop and notice the beauty of world-class music played in the subway. He played for 45 minutes and at the end of it he had $52 in his violin case. Not too bad, but of all of the people that had passed by they counted 1,097 people that walked by him Only 27 gave money and only seven of those actually stopped for any length of time to listen. One of the people who stopped recognized Bell, because three days earlier he had played the exact same selection of Bach and Schubert to a sold-out audience at the Symphony Hall in Boston. The average ticket price of those seats was a hundred dollars.

Speaker 1:

So what gives? Why is it that people walk right by the same exact music when it's played in a subway versus when it's played in a thing? Psychologists call context dependence, the context of where something is and the way that it's framed or hung in a gallery or it's choreographed on a stage. Those things matter to our experience of beauty. We ignore the exact same thing in the subway that we appreciate when it's framed in the right context.

Speaker 1:

This phenomenon has been studied by neuroscientists as well, and this is where we can bring in Samir Zeki. He is a neuroscientist with a whole bunch of colleagues studying at the University of College London, and they are particularly interested in a brain area called the medial orbital frontal cortex. That cortex which I'm going to abbreviate as MOFC, so that MOFC sits at the front of your brain, just right behind your forehead. It takes in signals from all over. It gets inputs from the eyes, the ears, stress systems, memory, limbic system, many, many more. Well, samir Zeki has been studying this brain area for 20 years.

Speaker 1:

Samir Zeki makes an exceedingly bold claim. He says that activity in the MOFC is the definition of beauty. Let me repeat that. He says activity in the MOFC is the definition of beauty. Let me repeat that he says activity in the MOFC is the definition of beauty. Seriously, I mean, this question of what is beauty has eluded people like Plato, leonardo da Vinci, alice Walker, the writer, art historians like Clive Bell. I mean people have been trying to define beauty for centuries. And then along comes this random neuroscientist and proposes plain and simple firing in the MOFC causes beauty period. Well, zeki offers a bunch of evidence to support that claim. As activity in the MOFC goes up and up, so does the intensity of a person's experience of beauty, and it's not just art appreciation. He found the same relationship when everyday people listen to music or when we view attractive faces. He's even found the same relationship between MOFC activity and the intensity of the beauty experienced when mathematicians look at gorgeously elegant formulas. I think Zeki's coolest experiment is the one related to Josh Bell and that viral YouTube video. So, zeki's experiment, you have to kind of imagine yourself in it.

Speaker 1:

Imagine being slid into this brain imaging machine. It's called a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine or fMRI. It's like this giant tube and you get slid in on a cot. The device will follow the flow of blood and will look for the greedy brain regions that are using more than their typical share of oxygen and glucose. So here you are inside this tube. You look up and there's a screen, a video screen, and it brightens with abstract paintings and the researchers outside tell you some of these are labeled gallery and they're from a prestigious museum in Denmark. Others are labeled computer and my friend made them on Photoshop. In fact, the labels are completely random. They all come from the museum, but you don't know that. What you do see is that to this untrained eye, when it says gallery on the painting, they appear to be more beautiful. You rate them higher on a scale, from one which is like unappealing, to five, very appealing.

Speaker 1:

The other thing that happens is your MOFC lights up brighter and brighter when you label it as gallery versus when you label it as computer. Your MOFC is adding up the sensory inputs, the emotional inputs and the cognitive inputs and it's putting those three together to determine whether this artwork is worthy or not of a burst of electric activity in the MOFC and whether or not that should be sent down to downstream brain areas. Kind of like Bell's music in the subway versus his music in a concert hall. That MOFC, when it's taking in all of that data, will take the context and will light up like a Christmas tree only when we're primed and ready to receive it. So that cathedral or that gallery label gets the MOFC ready to receive, while a subway or a computer doesn't. Okay, so now that you know the science, let me tell you what this has to do with our work. I mean, this podcast is supposed to be about using science to make work feel like play. So get on with it, irene.

Speaker 1:

Well, the biggest lesson I learned from Agapir is that beauty can actually be found anywhere. You just have to slow down to look for it. You just have to prime your MOFC to receive it. I don't actually have to be in a museum to appreciate art. I don't have to be in a 13th century chapel to appreciate music. I can be one of those seven people who actually stops to listen to Bell play in the subway.

Speaker 1:

Leo Tolstoy, the great writer. He once said we are accustomed to understand art to be only what we hear and see in theaters, concerts and exhibitions. But all of this is but the smallest part of the art by which we communicate with each other in life. What he means is that theaters, concerts and exhibition, yes, we think that's where we have to find art, but that's just the smallest places where we can find it. All we have to do is open our mind to receiving art in other places.

Speaker 1:

Later, in my Paris trip, after having realized this thing that beauty is more about mindset, I did an experiment. What if I could mentally label the Zoom window on my laptop gallery Instead of computer, gallery instead of computer. Could I shift my mind enough to think of a Zoom meeting differently and find art or beauty within it? So there I am, sitting at my computer same laptop as always and a message little appears announcing the arrival of my client. Okay, I close my eyes and I'm going to think this conversation with my client is a work of art. I label it mentally gallery. Then I click admit and I opened my eyes.

Speaker 1:

And in that hour the fascinating thing is I actually noticed things I might otherwise have missed. I noticed a hitch in her voice. I noticed the way the sunlight shadowed a crease on her forehead. I noticed an abrupt intake of breath when I asked a key question. I noticed how she shifted her posture by the end of our call. It was as if this Zoom call had a gilded golden frame, as if it were hanging in the Musée d'Orsay. Before we signed off, my client said this session answered a question I'd been trying to solve my entire life and I was able to step back and admire this woman. And I was able to step back and admire this woman as if she were waltzing in a sun-dappled park and painted by Rodin. Clearly, my MOFC was lit up like that Christmas tree. So take a pause here.

Speaker 1:

Here's the strategy for this week. There is a whole bunch of art which takes the label and plays around with it. Probably the most famous of this is Duchamp, who labeled a urinal the fountain, and he called it art and put it in a gallery. In, and he called it art and put it in a gallery. I also love the story of students at MIT who once put a cafeteria tray in the campus art gallery and put a plaque on the wall, just like all the other plaques, describing the art, and it took weeks for the staff to finally notice. Some of them might call these people disrespectful pranksters, but I really think they're inviting us to try and experiment. They're inviting us to explore how perspective changes when you label something every day gallery.

Speaker 1:

Well, I tried it. I tried it with a Zoom screen. I want you to look around you right now, although wait, if you're driving, keep your eyes on the road and don't close your eyes. So go ahead and pick something that you can see A pine cone, a tape dispenser, a chair, a tree, sleeping cat, a cup of coffee, it doesn't really matter. Now, once you've picked your object, close your eyes and shift your mind into a more open state. And shift your mind into a more open state.

Speaker 1:

I want you to think about this object as if you were a five-year-old who asks all of those million questions. You know how, like when a five-year-old asks well, who, what, when, where, why, how. I want you to be that annoying five-year-old, or maybe be like a tourist seeing that thing for the first time in their life. Or even a tourist who's been invited to the back of the museum and given a pair of gloves so that they can handle this precious artifact that some curator has collected and has hidden in a drawer and you get to hold. Or maybe be like a scientist studying an object for an experiment and in some ways you actually are.

Speaker 1:

When you open your eyes, I want you to look through those naive eyes, look with genuine curiosity, without expectations. I want you to think this thing is a work of art. Ready, okay, open your eyes and look. What if anything changes? What if anything do you notice? And here's how you can start to find beauty in the everyday. Feel free to pause this podcast for a minute and really open your mind. The more time you spend, the more you'll see. And if not, if you can't see anything, don't worry.

Speaker 1:

This is a skill that takes practice and sometimes, if it's hard to find with a boring object, try it with an everyday object which does have some innate beauty to it, maybe a flower or a souvenir or a piece of jewelry. When you can do it with those objects, you can gradually work your way up to something that's more mundane, but once you get the hang of it, you can shift your mind to find beauty in your work, in a meeting, in a well-designed presentation, in the tools of your trade, in your colleagues. You can do this. You got this. Okay, now back to the show.

Speaker 1:

I thought I had to travel to find things like beauty, awe, play, wonder and delight, but in truth, all of those things that make us come alive, they're all around me, even in my workplace. It's been there all along and I just have to open my eyes to see it. It's like the last scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy says if ever I go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard, because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with. And so now I can look at everyday moments from my everyday life, from my day-to-day work, and I can see that they are even better than what I can find when I travel. Because really, as much as I'd love to spend another day at the Musee d'Orsay or sitting listening to music in Saint-Chapelle, if I'm truly honest with myself, I'd much rather find beauty here, like in a lab meeting surrounded by the thrum of conversation in the lab where I used to do my thesis. Or maybe I could sit back and admire the beauty of a gorgeous lesson plan when I was a teacher. Or maybe I could create an aha moment for a student, or marvel at a group of colleagues solving big problems together. Or sit back and watch my family and my kids growing up. Maybe I could change a leader's life one powerful conversation at a time. The beauty of that, the ones that I can create that's amazing, because when you stumble on beauty abroad, it's fleeting, you're a visitor, but when you can create beauty at home and in your work, it's lasting and you're a citizen.

Speaker 1:

I hope you liked what you heard today. It's adapted from chapter four of the book that I'm writing, which is tentatively titled have Brain, will Travel, which is a memoir about my gap year and explores the science behind my wanderlust. You can learn more about it at irenesalterbookscom. And I would love to thank the people who made my podcast possible Tyler Lockamy, my sound producer and designer. Robin Canfield, my web designer, who is amazing and did all of the illustrations. And Tessa Borquez, who is my chief of operations and keeps the entire enterprise of Inquiring Minds running. In the show notes, you will find a link to that Josh Bell YouTube video. You'll hear about Samir Zeki's work, as well as many other resources, all about the science of beauty.

Speaker 1:

Finally, would you please do me two favors. First, do you happen to know a leader or a friend who's surviving and not thriving? Maybe they need to learn how to find beauty in their everyday? If so, would you mind sharing the link to this podcast with them? It might be exactly what they need right now. And secondly, please click the follow button on Spotify, apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Please click the follow button on Spotify, apple or wherever you get your podcasts, and that will ensure that you find out about the next episode, where we're going to go to a D&D conference full of Uber geeks. We're going to learn about role-playing games and imaginative play. We're going to find out what happens to our brains on fantasy, and you'll learn how to bring that into your workplace. So join me next time here at the Leaders Playground. See you soon.

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Irene Salter, PhD

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