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Susan Magsamen

Susan Magsamen is a researcher whose work centers on neuroaesthetics, neuroscience, and public health. Her published research examines the impact of arts- and music-based interventions on mental health, trauma recovery, and youth well-being. She has also authored papers on translating neuroscience into educational practices and the effects of environmental settings on psychedelic therapies.

9 claims checked on air: 1 context 3 overstated 4 supported 1 unverified

What they said on air

0:03:42supportedmoderateYour Brain on Art: The Science of Creativity and Neurologica

Visual art, metaphor, and symbol are used clinically to build narrative and treat trauma and PTSD.

"the power of, uh, metaphor and symbol in helping to create, build narrative around trauma, which now is work that's being done quite regularly for PTSD and and trauma" (said at 0:03:42)

Clinical literature supports the claim that visual art, symbolism, and metaphors are used in clinical settings to help patients construct trauma narratives and reduce post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Art therapy interventions—including mask-making, montage painting, and self-narrative art therapy—are applied in outpatient and clinical programs for military veterans, war-affected children, and individuals with psychological trauma to aid in externalization, trauma exposure, narrative building, and symptom reduction.

0:16:07overstatedlowYour Brain on Art: The Science of Creativity and Neurologica

Aesthetic experiences and engaging with art promote myelination enhancements in neural pathways.

"the myelination um enhancements that happen, too. So, creating this ability for for neural pathways to work better is is such a protective um attribute for us." (said at 0:16:07)

Broad claims that aesthetic experiences and general engagement with art enhance neural pathway myelination extrapolate heavily from specialized skill-learning literature. While intensive motor or auditory training (such as instrument practice or music-cued motor learning) can induce white matter microstructural changes on diffusion tensor imaging consistent with activity-dependent myelination, long-term developmental studies find that baseline white matter myelination trajectories proceed primarily via natural maturation regardless of musical expertise. Furthermore, direct evidence demonstrating that passive aesthetic experiences or general art appreciation induce de novo myelination in humans is lacking.

0:16:32overstatedmoderateYour Brain on Art: The Science of Creativity and Neurologica

Research by Assal Habibi at the University of Southern California demonstrated that arts/music training alters brain structure and increases brain mass.

"we've also seen some beautiful work by Assal Habibi from University of Southern California looking at literally changing brain structure and brain mass." (said at 0:16:32)

Assal Habibi and colleagues at the University of Southern California (Brain and Creativity Institute) have conducted longitudinal neuroimaging studies tracking children enrolled in systematic music training compared to sports and non-training control groups. Their research demonstrated that childhood music training induces regional structural plasticity—specifically altering the trajectory of cortical thickness maturation in auditory association areas (such as the posterior superior temporal gyrus) and increasing fractional anisotropy in white matter tracts of the corpus callosum. However, the studies demonstrated localized cortical and microstructural neurodevelopmental changes rather than an increase in overall 'brain mass.'

0:21:12overstatedmoderateYour Brain on Art: The Science of Creativity and Neurologica

Music and sound effectively reduce amygdala activation in the brain.

"music and sound are are really very effective in reducing amygdala activation and I think in large part because it's so so immediate, right?" (said at 0:21:12)

Functional neuroimaging research shows that music and auditory stimuli do not simply or universally reduce amygdala activity. Instead, music robustly modulates and frequently activates the amygdala depending on acoustic features, hedonic valence, tension, and emotional content. Meta-analyses of fMRI studies demonstrate significant amygdala activation during both pleasant and unpleasant music processing, with unpleasant or dissonant music evoking strong amygdala responses. While soothing music and therapeutic sound interventions have been hypothesized or observed to help downregulate hyperactive stress circuits and amygdala reactivity in specific contexts (such as anxiety or trauma recovery), characterizing music and sound broadly as an immediate down-regulator of amygdala activation oversimplifies and overstates the bidirectional, valence-dependent engagement of the amygdala by auditory stimuli.

0:32:40needs contextlowYour Brain on Art: The Science of Creativity and Neurologica

Poetry activates the same brain regions as music does.

"It's also interesting that um poetry activates the same part of the brain that music does. And so, and not just rhyming." (said at 0:32:40)

Neuroimaging studies demonstrate that poetry and music share overlapping neural circuitry, particularly within emotional and reward processing networks (such as primary reward pathways that mediate peak emotional responses and chills). However, poetry and music also rely on distinct neural networks: poetry strongly engages language-processing circuits (including left-hemisphere semantic and phonological networks), whereas music relies heavily on specialized auditory and tonal networks, and studies note distinct functional patterns within reward structures such as the nucleus accumbens.

0:33:40unverifiedvery lowYour Brain on Art: The Science of Creativity and Neurologica

Poetry activates sound-processing brain regions independently of semantic word comprehension to a greater degree than prose or fiction.

"They're really more around sound and the way like the difference between how we process sound like rock and stone, right? They're so highly visual and we see something very very different when we're using those that those different words and they resonate in a way that, you know, from a sound perspective, separate from understanding word meaning. And that happens through poetry more than it does through um fiction or creative nonfiction." (said at 0:33:40)

No published record matching the claim that poetry activates sound-processing brain regions independently of semantic word comprehension to a greater degree than fiction or prose was located; this does not prove the claim false. While neuroimaging studies have examined neural responses to the sound of words (PMID: 29789504) and neural activation differences between reading poetry versus prose (PMID: 26409018, PMID: 30186210), none of these studies demonstrate that poetry specifically activates sound-processing auditory regions independently of semantic word meaning to a greater extent than fiction or prose.

0:35:54supportedmoderateYour Brain on Art: The Science of Creativity and Neurologica

James Pennebaker's expressive writing lowers cortisol levels.

"working with um James Pennebaker's work in expressive writing, not necessarily poetry although it could be, but getting an idea out of your head um onto paper that's causing you difficulty um does two things. One, it lowers cortisol" (said at 0:35:54)

Randomized controlled trials investigating James Pennebaker's expressive writing paradigm (and related written emotional disclosure interventions) have found that expressive writing attenuates cortisol release and physiological reactivity in response to acute psychological stress and trauma recall. Studies demonstrate that writing about emotionally challenging experiences or past failures buffers neuroendocrine (cortisol) responses compared to neutral writing conditions, though the effect primarily manifests as attenuated stress-induced cortisol reactivity rather than an unconditional reduction in basal cortisol.

0:36:15supportedmoderateYour Brain on Art: The Science of Creativity and Neurologica

Expressive writing reduces cognitive load.

"One, it lowers cortisol and it also lowers cognitive load." (said at 0:36:15)

Experimental studies demonstrate that expressive writing about stressors or worries reduces intrusive and avoidant thoughts, thereby freeing up working memory capacity and reducing cognitive load/distraction. Randomized experiments show that expressive writing allows individuals to 'offload' anxiety-related thoughts, which preserves working memory resources and prevents performance decrements under high-stress cognitive tasks.

0:42:48supportedhighYour Brain on Art: The Science of Creativity and Neurologica

The default mode network of the brain is activated during quiet rest, mind-wandering, and internally directed reflection rather than active external sensory or task processing.

"But the default mode network um goes to work when you're not creating, when you're not bringing that work in. It goes to work when you are quiet. So, you know, in this very fast-paced world we live in, we often don't just stop and let our brains process. And you know, you know how you sometimes you're in the shower and you have a really great idea and you're talking to yourself, it's because you're really just in that sort of in between space and and you know, we probably all have those moments where you're like, I just had a great idea. And you know, you're daydreaming, your mind wandering, you're figuring out what you like and don't like, you're really allowing the default mode network to come online to process all of that sort of sensorial information." (said at 0:42:48)

The default mode network (DMN) is a well-characterized large-scale brain network that consistently demonstrates heightened spontaneous activity and functional connectivity during passive resting states, mind-wandering, daydreaming, and internally focused cognitive processes (such as autobiographical memory retrieval and self-referential thought), while typically becoming deactivated or decoupled during externally directed, attention-demanding sensorimotor tasks.

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