In pain? Take one masterpiece, three times a day
18 September 2008
THE power of art to heal emotional wounds is well known, but could contemplating a beautiful painting have the same effect on physical pain?
To investigate, Marina de Tommaso and a team from the University of Bari in Italy asked 12 men and women to pick the 20 paintings they considered most ugly and most beautiful from a selection of 300 works by artists such as da Vinci and Botticelli.
They were then asked to contemplate either the beautiful paintings, or the ugly painting, or a blank panel while the team zapped a short laser pulse at their hand, creating a pricking sensation.
The subjects rated the pain as being a third less intense while they were viewing the beautiful paintings, compared with contemplating the ugly paintings or the blank panel. Electrodes measuring the brain's electrical activity suggested a reduced response to the pain when the subject looked at beautiful paintings (Consciousness and Cognition, DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2008.07.002 ).
While distractions are known to reduce pain in hospital patients, de Tommaso says this is the first result to show that beauty plays a part. "Hospitals have been designed to be functional, but we think that their aesthetic aspects should be taken into account too," she says.
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From issue 2674 of New Scientist magazine, 18 September 2008, page 14
link: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19926744.900-in-pain-take-one-masterpiece-three-times-a-day.html
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