The Next Big Idea Daily Art Is Not a Luxury. It’s Medicine.
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Feb 4, 2026 
Susan Mag Salmon, director at Johns Hopkins’ Arts and Mind Lab, links art and brain science. Ivy Ross, Google hardware design lead, brings an artist’s view to design and experience. Daisy Fancourt, UCL psychobiologist, presents large-scale research on arts and health. They discuss how music, dance, writing, and immersive art reshape brains, boost physical and mental health, and can be used as practical daily interventions.
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Arts Deliver Wide-Ranging Health Gains
- Regular arts engagement dramatically improves mental and physical health across many measures.
- Arts activate reward networks, build resilience, and can halve depression risk over a decade.
Magic Camps Rebuild Hand Function
- Magic camps turned boring hand exercises into fun practice for children with hemiplegia.
- Kids improved hand use 30% in two weeks and performed 93% of daily tasks with both hands.
Music Reconnects Alzheimer's Patients
- People with Alzheimer's often retain musical memory long after other memories fade.
- Music can reconnect them to past selves because musical memory is one of the last brain regions affected.
