160. The Neuroscience of Pleasure, Desire, and Creativity

Show Notes: The Neuroscience of Pleasure, Desire, and Creativity

In this episode of The Modern Creative Woman, Dr. Amy Backos explores the fascinating connection between creativity, pleasure, and the brain's reward system. Drawing from neuroscience, psychology, art therapy, and her own recent experience completing a new book manuscript, Amy discusses how creativity activates the same neural pathways associated with fundamental human pleasures such as food and sex. She explains how dopamine, anticipation, awe, and artistic engagement contribute to motivation, joy, and overall well-being.

Amy also shares practical behavioral strategies she used to complete a major writing project, including reward systems, structured scheduling, environmental design, and values-based action. Along the way, she offers encouragement for anyone working toward a meaningful creative goal.

The conversation highlights the work of researchers such as Daisy Fancourt and explores why making art is not a luxury but an essential part of a healthy, engaged human life.

In This Episode

• Why the arts activate the brain's reward circuitry
• The role of the nucleus accumbens and dopamine in pleasure and motivation
• How anticipation increases enjoyment and creative engagement
• Why looking at art slowly can deepen pleasure and insight
• The neuroscience of awe, wonder, and peak experiences
• Stendhal Syndrome and being overwhelmed by beauty
• How creativity promotes new perspectives and unexpected insights
• The concept of "cross-training" your brain through artistic activities
• Why making art is beneficial even when the result is imperfect
• Practical psychology strategies for completing large creative projects
• Using rewards, schedules, and environmental cues to support motivation
• The importance of continuing to live fully while pursuing meaningful goals

Key Takeaways

• Pleasure is a powerful driver of behavior and creativity.
• Anticipation often creates as much enjoyment as the experience itself.
• Art engages neural pathways associated with reward, motivation, and learning.
• Looking at art and making art can increase experiences of awe, wonder, and insight.
• Creative activities serve as cognitive cross-training that may improve performance in other areas of life.
• You do not need artistic skill to benefit from art making.
• Small, consistent creative practices can support emotional well-being, brain health, and psychological flexibility.

Resources Mentioned

• Daisy Fancourt's research on arts and health
• The World Health Organization report on arts and health
• Episode 125 featuring sex therapist and art therapist Skylar Collie
• The Premack Principle
• Flow states and peak experiences
• Art journaling as a daily creativity practice

Reflection Questions

• What creative activity consistently brings you pleasure?
• How might you build more anticipation into your creative life?
• When was the last time you spent several minutes truly looking at a piece of art?
• What would happen if you gave yourself permission to make imperfect art?
• What creative practice could become a daily ritual of joy and connection?

Connect with Amy

• Modern Creative Woman
• Amy Backos Psychology Practice

If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a creative friend and subscribe to The Modern Creative Woman wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

160. 

 Brain regions activated by the arts are exactly the same as those activated by your essential human needs. I'm talking about sex and food, and to your brain, the arts are bringing the same kind of joy. And that explains a whole lot. Welcome to the Modern Creative Woman podcast, where we are exploring the art and science of creativity. And today we're talking about the joy and the pleasure that region of the brain can provide sex, food and art. I'm Doctor Amy Backos. I am a licensed psychologist and a board certified and registered art therapist. I've been doing this for over three decades, and I am delighted that you're here and ready to focus on your creativity. So let's get into this. Let's get this started. Before we dive into pleasure, I want to say thank you so much for being here and for all of your amazing feedback on the beginning of season four of The Modern Creative Woman, and on a post that I made on Instagram the other day, and I locked myself away in a writing retreat this weekend, and for two days straight, I focused on editing every last detail, organizing the Art therapy toolkit coming out soon and finished it, sent it off to my editor, and I love my editor. Her name is Darcy and I've been with her almost 20 years. She's incredible and it was such a thrill to finish, and I wanted to share a few tips and tricks from the field of psychology that I use to motivate myself and what felt like pull myself over the finish line. In December, I made a purchase of a journal, an art journal, and had it all wrapped up and tucked it away where I could see it occasionally. And that was my reward for when I send the book to the editor. And so on Friday, I pulled the book out and I was practicing pre Mac principle. I would do what I wanted to get done and then afterwards I could have my art treat. I was so excited to finally open this journal. The box has been wrapped with a bow almost six months. And so it's a great way to think about moving your behavior towards where you want it is to figure out a reward system. Rewards are the basis of changing our behavior. Remember, there's only a couple reasons we would change to increase pleasure or to decrease suffering. And for this I had a little bit of both the pleasure of a new art journal and decrease what felt like suffering the last month or two where I was writing. And then I would procrastinate for a really long period of time. And so the journal pulling it out, setting it on my art table really helped. The gift wrapping was amazing as well. So when you're struggling to finish a project, set up basic rewards, the reward can be M&Ms. That's my other favorite reward. This project seemed, in my mind to deserve more than a bag of M&Ms. Another thing that I did was clear my schedule for two days, let my family know I would be in my office, and then I made a paper schedule and I hung it on my wall. And this schedule is how I run my writing retreats. It's hour by hour what I will be doing. And it doesn't just say write. It says edit Table of Contents for one hour, which turned into, you know, two and a half. It is the only way that I've found that I can really get things done in a timely way when I'm on retreat. If I just showed up this weekend in my office and told myself to write, that would be challenging. So this specific thing that I was doing was coupled with a tight schedule, and I did not deviate from the schedule. I flipped, flopped a couple of things. I worked through lunch, so I moved my lunch back an hour, and at one point I went and got coffee with my kid, and so that I just flip flopped with my lunch break. Other than that, I just stuck to this schedule. And a lot of people tell me this schedule feels restrictive. Or what if you want to do something else, or even making a commitment or a goal can feel stressful because we end up thinking, well, what if it changes? And I almost did that on Saturday morning. I had set aside one hour to prepare, and I thought, well, maybe I shouldn't make a schedule because I don't know what time the kid's going to want to get coffee or what time I might get hungry. And then I remembered I can change the schedule, but without the schedule, I will get into some trouble by not knowing what I'm supposed to be doing and not keeping track of time in the same way. So the schedule really freed me up to stay on task, and I sent everything over. Table of contents. Dedication 100 references Sunday evening. Right on schedule. And I want you to know you can work like this too. It is not some special skill that I have. It's just me using psychology tricks. Rewards that are big enough to fit the situation. A proper schedule and clear instructions. And if you think back to school, we all had a proper structure schedule and we went from one thing to the next every hour. It didn't deviate because the teacher felt like talking more about history instead of math, and it didn't deviate because we felt tired. We just followed the schedule. And so I do not find following a schedule to be challenging for me personally. It's a schedule I chose, so there's nothing to rebel against. It's just me. And the idea that I can be flexible with my schedule has a huge impact on my willingness to commit to it. I commit to the structure, and within that structure that follows my values, I will make my schedule and I can be flexible within that structure. A couple more things I did that really worked. A friend gave me a beautiful potted plant with flowers, and so I brought that into my office for beauty. And I also brought in my, um, current favorite candle. And so I had that going. So I had a lot of beauty. I've described the picture across from my desk, so I always have something aesthetic to look at. And I also sorted through my meals in advance. I kind of thought, oh, this is what I'll eat and this is when I will eat it. So I didn't have decisions to make. I also did not. When I had to send an email about the book, I did not respond to the emails that were popping up. They were coming in over the weekend. I did not answer those and I did not return any phone calls. I really closed myself off to doing stuff. Normally I would do laundry on the weekend and I did not do that. So there are a few things that I just had to catch up with later, and that worked just fine. And I always felt guilty about shutting off other responsibilities. However, in service of my value to finish this book, it was exactly the right thing to do. And I chose the weekend because nobody is usually looking for me work wise. On the weekend final stretch, I do something in the evening enjoyable. I always walk the dog, but after my writing retreat walk, I then did a little reading and a little knitting, so something enjoyable to close off my day that was not just like more of the same, where I had to edit and think I could just read for pleasure, knit a few rows, and that was that. It took me a year to work on the book. That's usually what it takes. I always asked the publisher for a year and three months, because then my editor and I will have some wiggle room. I can get it to her with time to read it and time to spare. Things that did not work well included feeling like I couldn't do too much the last few months. Like I said no to invitations. I canceled some things and I don't like that, but I'm not sure how to get around that this time. So I think next time I will just have a more clear schedule the last two months of writing. So I feel sad about some of those cancellations, and I do think my friends understand. I also made sure that I kept having fun, I kept making art, and the book was not my entire focus at all. I had a lot of great things happening this year. My son graduated from high school, so we had lots of celebrations and award ceremonies, and I went to all of them. There was. Just not in my psychological interest to skip any of those, to stop knitting, to stop making art, to stop enjoying good food, baking cookies every week, etc. to be able to complete a large project. I would love to hear what your tips and tricks are, because I can always apply them to the next one. And when you are thinking about how to accomplish a large scale project, the rewards and the celebrations and doing what you love along the way has to be a part of it. We cannot defer life. We can defer or delegate things like laundry, but we cannot defer living our life and being creative. So thank you once again for all of your kind words and encouragement. And it it's so nice to see the book goes to the publisher in August and maybe be out December or January. I'm guessing based on previous times I've worked with this publisher. Let's get into a little bit more about the desire based aspects of making art, and how it does seem to provoke so much pleasure in people who are making art. It's so much fun to talk about desire and sex and creativity. And I know you think so too, because of how much energy and enthusiasm you all generated for a conversation I had with a sex therapist, Skylar Collie, and she's also an art therapist. It's episode 125 if you want to go back and have a listen to that. And it's really fun and engaging, and she has such a playful approach to desire and sex and being respectful of your own wishes and your own desires to orient you to the brain. Science. The area of your brain that gets activated during pleasure is the nucleus accumbens, and it's just this critical part of our pleasure response. And that nucleus accumbens is part of this specific reward pathway related to dopamine. It's called the dopaminergic mesolimbic system like dopamine dopaminergic. And when that pathway is activated the nucleus accumbens gets all this hormone. The neurotransmitter dopamine. And dopamine, as you know, helps us feel pleasure. It also helps us feel motivation. It's the thing that makes you want to shop and buy something. You get pleasure and you're motivated to push the buy button. And then when you push it, you don't have that dopamine anymore. It's about motivation. So that's how dopamine impacts motivation. It's not so much about what happens afterwards. It's like getting you to take the pleasurable action. And it really gives us that sense of euphoria. The dopamine release really happens in response to intense emotional moments in the arts, and it's about the feeling of awe. Wonder and awe are very similar, and it's the are we get when we're gazing at a beautiful painting or maybe listening to kind of the final chorus in a song. If you go to the symphony, it might happen. If you're dancing in harmony with your partner, maybe you're watching something on stage and and feeling incredible, or it also happens earlier, the anticipation of this pleasure, like I mentioned, with the wanting to push the shopping button. So it might sound strange that you get pleasure before, but it makes sense when you think about it. The role of anticipation foreplay is so pleasurable in insects, and it works in other things too. Right before you have that dopamine experience of the climax in the song by the symphony, you're having that anticipatory pleasure. It's already surging through you, and you're motivated to listen intently. This anticipatory pleasure is a little bit like looking into a crystal ball, even if it's just a few moments away. That crystal ball is letting you know you're predicting by the sound of the music and the extra movements of the conductor. The volume increases. The audience is starting to lean forward. You're anticipating, and that reward is so pleasurable. Consider all the ways in which you anticipate something pleasurable, and it might be music at a concert, or a club, or even a pop song you're listening to in the car, and you anticipate right before the beat drops in to a new, intense level. You have a lot of pull like that anticipation, and it creates a tension between what you're expecting to happen and how long it takes to happen. And this shows up in film. So you might understand the predictable pattern of a scary movie or how a jump scare works in film. And yet when they break that rule and they jump scare you when it was completely unexpected, there was no anticipation, no buildup to the jump scare. It feels qualitatively different to just have a jump scare instead of the tension building up. You know it's coming to the end of the film. And how will they survive? Will they survive? That anticipation for the finale of the film is creating extreme tension, and what we know in the research, the greater the tension, the more pleasure we're likely to experience. Planning a vacation will start early because it'll give you more anticipatory pleasure. You've, of course, heard that half of our vacation pleasure happens before the trip. And it's true, because of this biological pathway that I just described and the idea of anticipation and the. Dopamine we get from anticipation. What about other forms of art besides music and theater and horror film? What about looking at art? Now, often the artist knows this idea of anticipation or changing your expectation. So the longer you look at a piece of art, the more you will see and discover. And so as your anticipation of seeing the whole image builds, you will then begin to see more of the image. So looking at a picture is different from truly seeing it. And I encourage you to just stop in front of any picture that's hanging in your house or a magazine picture and add in a magazine, a billboard, wherever you are. Look at a piece of art. Obviously, more scholarly art will have more complex things than a piece of advertising, which is trying to just capture your attention quickly, but have a good long look and your anticipation and dopamine will build. Until you see so much that you're feel like that, that concluded your experience. Here's what I want you to remember about this. And this is coming from the research of Daisy Fancourt. And she was the primary investigator on the World Health Organization meta analysis of the impact of arts on health. And she talks. She writes about the tension reduction pleasure and then that associated dopamine release that this pleasure happens just because we are simply changing our focus or because of how the time plays out. And what I mean is you start to predict what will happen in a film, in the theatre, in the music, in the art. You'll have this idea that you're you're going to see something in a certain way. And then you'll have an extra bit of dopamine, as if it was like, aha! I was right, I found it there it is. The pleasure of finding Waldo in the Where's Waldo books. You know that he the little drawing of him in a crowd of other similarly dressed characters. The pleasure of finding him gives you an aha, I found him, I knew it, I knew he was there. And that you do. You know he's there. You look and look and the pleasure comes from both looking and how difficult it was to find him in the sea of people. And then the pleasure also increases when you do find him. The. Aha! Engaging in the arts, according to Daisy Fancourt, is essentially giving your brain more of what it wants, more pleasure. We play around with our expectations. Sometimes when we make art, it comes out the way we think. For me, almost never, and most of the time it doesn't. And so we're surprised that there's something different. Yet there's a pleasure in anticipation that we're finishing the project and there's the pleasure of. Aha! I knew I could do it. When the project is done, I've been giving myself a challenge to look at art for two minutes, and I'll do it once or twice a week. Having a look at a piece of art and it's not the same one. I might find an image online, but having an opportunity to gaze at a piece of art for an extended period of time is promoting that dopamine it's giving you the pleasure of. I know I could look at this, I know I could see more things, and the more you look, the more you see. Another exciting aspect related to looking at art. You've heard me talk about before, flow. There's also the idea of peak experience, and it's when we experience a chill or a thrill, when we're looking at a piece of art or experiencing a piece of art, or when we're making a piece of art. And a peak experience really is just like this moving moment. And you get feelings like awe and wonder. As I mentioned before, you might have reverence for the art. You might feel at ease. You might have memories of past pleasurable experiences as well. They're really triggered by kind of complex stimuli, but it gives you a lot of sensory input when you spend a long time looking at a piece of art. When we are looking at things that we perceive as beautiful, which is generally the arts or nature, that thing that we perceive is beautiful leads to increased synchronization across central parts of our brain, the medial, and that can produce feelings of enlightenment and even epiphany. These peak experiences in response to the art can be so profound that people really have collapsed in ecstasy and, um, Stendhal syndrome is what that's called. And it's named after this French writer who was repeatedly overcome by beauty. The beauty of art makes sense, but the idea of enlightenment or epiphany really stood out to me for a variety of reasons. Today, the idea of an enlightened way of doing something where you suddenly have a new idea or a new insight. I was journaling this morning about same topic that I've journaled about many, many times, and I had a new insight about it. I was like, whoa, what brought this on? And I think the intense focus of my weekend writing, allowing myself to be in flow, spending more time looking at art for the purpose of actually seeing the art, and then having, I think, mentally like a clean slate after submitting to my editor. Gave me greater access to insight. And keep in mind, I'd been making art. I'd been knitting throughout the last few months. It wasn't just this single solitary focus. I really had a diverse range of artistic experiences and I had new insights. Let me introduce to you the idea of cross-training through art. You can do cross-training for a variety of reasons. I first heard that word when I was running a lot and training for my first half marathon. I thought, oh, cross training, that's what I need to do. And I started taking classes where we used weights and the Pilates springs and lo and behold, guess what happened? My running time dropped directly because of cross training, and before that I was just running for running and sake. The more I run, the better. I'll do cross training. Oh yeah, it makes sense. So the same thing applies mentally. Cross training works. Scientists who make art have great insights and vice versa. People who are interested in science often have new insights into whatever it is that they are studying. Seema is the founder of Art lust and if you don't know her, definitely go check her out. She is focused on visual literacy and helping us connect the dots between what we're seeing visually in photos, in news photos, in all kinds of artistic experiences, and also situations culturally where the camera captured. Whatever was going on in the news. She's really outstanding art historian for explaining these kinds of things. She spoke about Victor Wembanyama, who is one of the basketball players on the San Antonio Spurs, and he's the tallest player in the league. She shared a video of him hanging out in Central Park with his family, and he's drawing. He has a sketchpad and pencils, and he's drawing just the nature scene in front of him. This idea that cross-training with art is such a genius way that Sima described it. Being able to copy something that we see in nature, whether or not it looks good or accurate or realistic, the time it takes to capture that image is a huge investment in our brain, and it's for all the reasons that we've just been talking about the pleasure, the reward, the buildup, the tension, the dopamine, so much pleasure goes into art. You're probably thinking, wait a minute, I'm criticizing myself while I'm drawing. That's chatter. And you can recognize that for what it is. Just your brain doing what your brain does out of perhaps old habit from your art classes in elementary or junior high school. The wish for it to be different than it is is purely an act of relating to yourself, instead of relating to what's in front of you. Anytime we're busy judging our drawing ability ourselves, other people, it's just us thinking about ourselves and what we imagine things maybe should be versus what they really are. And when we just stop to enjoy what things really are, we end up with so much access to that dopamine and pleasure. Now, Victor is not, as far as I know, trying to become an artist and make a living through his drawing. Maybe later, but that's not why he's drawing. He's drawing for the pleasure of drawing. We are all not in the art Olympics and trying to make a living out of art. However, we all can and for good health reasons. Dare I say should be making art. I think we should. Every day. A little bit of art is good for so much about our physical body, our brain aging, and this idea of wonder and awe, cross-training for insight and new awareness. There's so much benefit to being willing to just make bad art. Art is not to be hung on a museum wall. For most of us, art is to be made and maybe even just thrown out. It's for the pleasure of doodling, drawing, coloring, painting, sculpting. If I could leave you with a prescription. Go get yourself a fresh art journal and pull it out of your cupboard if you have one, or order one by one at your local art store. Would be the best option. If not, then find some paper scraps and staple them together. Make yourself a little book that you doodle in every day. Let it become a ritual of pleasure and joy and anticipation. And within a week or two, you will be looking forward to it as the pleasurable experience that it was intended to be. Always. Being a part of creativity is the human experience, and so much of our lives are lived online. So much of our work is done in isolation and making sure that we stay engaged with our human experience. The art of being a human, as well as connecting with others, happens through art. So now that you know all of this about your brain and dopamine and the pleasure and desire that emerges from art, what will you create? Thank you so much for joining me here today on the Modern Creative Woman podcast. You can check out some free resources on Modern Creative Women. Com find me over on Instagram and I will be looking forward to speaking with you again in the next episode.