Something in our brain responds when we look at a painting.
That experience refreshes and changes us. Afterwards we are more creative and open to learning. We are less mentally fatigued.
Our brains are primed for enjoying art.
For longer than we've had the written word, humans have created and stared at images drawn onto walls in the hopes of invoking something - story, awe, remembrance.
$4, beasts may have been drawn in hopes they'd become more common, or perhaps those images were the work of ancient shamans, trying to account for some mysterious spirit vision.
We don't know exactly why we started doing it but we persist in making and looking at visual art to this day. And while we can only theorize about what inspired us to start making art, modern research helps us understand something about what's going on in our brain when we see it now.
A study $4 of the journal Brain and Cognition looked at the research that neuroscientists have done while scanning the brains of people looking at paintings. In some cases subjects were asked to evaluate the work they looked at, in others they just looked.
Viewing paintings triggered responses in brain regions associated with visual understanding and object recognition, as might be expected, but viewing artwork $4 associated with emotions, inner thoughts, and learning.
Other research tells us more about how art can change the way we see the world.
In Business Insider's 21-day $4, one early $4 in a museum - but the point of that isn't just to have a fun afternoon.
After $4, students show stronger critical thinking skills and are more socially tolerant. Much of the research on this topic involves children or $4 but the benefits are consistent, and other research shows that (more general) $4 keep healthy and stave off cognitive decline, though more studies are needed in the area.
Visiting a museum can relieve mental fatigue and restore the ability to focus in the same way that the outdoors can, $4 from the University of Queensland in Australia - this research wasn't limited to art museums, which is why the assignment doesn't require an art museum specifically.
But in general, going to a museum is a $4, which triggers your brain to be open to learning. Not only does this provide long lasting cognitive benefits, it's also connected to one of the $4 - openness to experience. This is the trait most associated with $4.
Exposing ourselves to art, this thing that has been a part of human experience for thousands of years, has effects on us.
Writing for the National Endowment of the Arts, $4 founder Maria Popova $4 phenomenon as "the power to transcend our own self-interest, our solipsistic zoom-lens on life, and relate to the world and each other with more integrity, more curiosity, more wholeheartedness."