Studies utilizing Art Therapy  as part of a treatment for brain diseases or injuries can lead to promotion in brain plasticity

Syracuse University

- Women with Cancer
- Refugees/ Asylum Seekers
- Children
- College Students
- Coronary Artery Disease Patients
- Gender Variant Individuals
- People with TBI's or Mental Diseases

Populations that Benefit from Mindfulness Based Art Therapy

Plasticity is how the brain is able to learn and adapt to environments. It exists throughout a person's lifetime, though it tends to be more active in early development when the brain is still forming. Plasticity is one of the key concepts within behavioral neuroscience that affects nearly all systems of the brain and brain functions.

Plasticity

Giovanni Mirabella. "Is Art Therapy a Reliable Tool for Rehabilitating People Suffering from Brain/ Mental Diseases?" The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.Apr 2015.196-199.http://doi.org/10.1089/acm.2014.0374

Is Art Therapy a Reliable Tool for Rehabilitating People Suffering from Brain/Mental Diseases?

Refugees who participated in MBAT through Inhabited Studio reported the program helped them cope with PTSD, increase resilience due to the safe, non-judgmental and open environment that Inhabited Studio cultivates.

Mindfulness Based Art Therapy in Asylum Seekers and Refugees

Women who participated in an 8 week MBAT intervention reported a significant decrease in symptoms of distress, including anxiety, depression, hostility, and improved overall mental health

Mindfulness Based Art Therapy for Women with Cancer

Following an 8-week art therapy intervention, children reported decreased mental health problems and increased socio-emotional competence. Parents and teachers reported increased attention and decreased behavioral problems.

Mindfulness Based Art Therapy for Children

Studies have shown that having students practice 5 minutes of mindfulness and 10 minutes of intentional art making could reduce mood disorder symptoms and relieve college students of physiological stress responses

Mindfulness Based Art Therapy for College Students

A 12 session MBAT intervention in Korea resulted in lower levels of depression and anxiety as well as reduced stress levels along with lower blood pressure.

Mindfulness Based Art Therapy for Patients with Coronary Artery Disease

Individuals who experience Gender Dysphoria and feel that their gender identity is incongruent with their sex assigned at birth experience psychological distress due deviation from the societal norm, and Compassion-based Art Therapy combined with mindfulness can help build self-compassion and greater resilience

Mindfulness-Based Art Therapy for Gender- Variant Individuals

Mindfulness Based Art Therapy for Individuals with Traumatic Brain Injuries and other Brain Diseases

Processes like up-regulation and down-regulation (see "Agonist" and "Antagonist") are evidence of the plasticity of receptors in the brain (i.e., the fact that each subtype of neurotransmitter receptor can vary in number and distribution in the brain). Receptor plasticity occurs during development and throughout adulthood. Therefore, a neuron's sensitivity to different transmitters can vary throughout the lifespan. 

Receptor Plasticity

Plasticity of the sensory cortex refers to a characteristic of the cortex, that the cortical maps can change with experience. This was demonstrated in an experiment by Merzenich and Jenkins (1993), where they surgically removed the middle finger of the monkey, then found later that the region of cortex that responded to each remaining, adjacent finger expanded.

Plasticity of the Sensory Cortex

The nervous system's capacity to change and adapt is known as neuroplasticity. This adaptation can be triggered by various factors, such as personal experiences, normal developmental stages, or in response to damage or injury. The underlying mechanisms of neuroplasticity include the formation of new synapses, the elimination of unused ones, modifications in glial cells, and even the generation of new neurons. While the brain's plasticity is at its peak during early life, it retains a significant capacity for change and reorganization throughout adulthood.

Neuroplasticity

Infants have diverse hearing capbilities in early life. If that hearing ability isn't used, for example if they have damage or deformity in their ears, their ability to distinguish or interpret sounds disappears. 

Musicians show higher sensitivity and activation to musical notes, with bigger differences in brain imaging if the musician was trained from an early age.

Plasticity, auditory perception and auditory pathways

One example of culture’s influence on brain function involves the use of the abacus in East Asian cultures. Giyoo Hatano, a Japanese developmental psychologist, hypothesized that abacus users relied on a mental representation of an abacus to solve arithmetic problems. In an fMRI study, Japanese participants, all of whom were familiar with the abacus, demonstrated increased activation in the parietal lobe. The magnitude of activation was positively correlated with the difficulty of the arithmetic problem. By contrast, individuals with no abacus experience tend to engage brain regions associated with linguistic processing when tasked with arithmetic problems (i.e. Broca’s area, Wernicke’s area). These findings support Hatano’s theory and illustrate the influence of culture on neuroplasticity.

Cultural neuroscience and arithmetic processing

A significant example of cultural neuroplasticity involves the famous “taxi driver” study by Maguire et al. (2000). They used structural MRI to compare the brains of experienced London taxi drivers to controls who did not drive taxis. Taxi drivers had larger posterior hippocampi, but smaller anterior hippocampi, compared to controls. Posterior and anterior hippocampal volume was positively and negatively correlated, respectively, with time spent as a licensed taxi driver. These findings support the hypotheses that a) the posterior hippocampus is involved in spatial/navigational memory and b) environmental stimuli can essentially “reshape” the brain.

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