Neuroaesthetics and the Art of Transformation

Through an imaginative engagement with neuroaesthetics, this vividly illustrated book presents the imagery of the forest as a creative metaphor for re-envisioning the structures of the brain, distressing mental health conditions such as anxiety and OCD, the potential for transformation, and the process of finding a new pathway forward. The book offers a highly innovative and accessible framework for approaching basic neuroanatomy and related mental processes. The metaphorical imagery of deer trails through the woods provides a suggestive means to visualize what it might look like if a person could see inside their own brain when they are peaceful and content, and to view the pathways that form through the repetition of their thought patterns. This would be like having a window into the inner world of the mind and the brain. Within the human nervous system, neurons are nerve cells that transmit information, and all thoughts leave a neuronal trail. Both the trails and the information that passes through them provide the building blocks of a neuroaesthetic fairytale. Divided into three parts, the book examines the structural similarities between the forest and the brain, tells a story about getting lost in the woods and finding your way back again, and then builds on resonant themes of growth, transformation, and finding a new path forward. Featuring exercises including imaginative visualizations, reflective journaling questions, and creative writing prompts, this book will be a useful supplement to those already practicing, and those studying to be expressive arts therapists, educators, therapists, counsellors, social workers, and psychologists, as well as people who wish to utilize this material for their own journey. This book builds on the insights and aesthetic approach featured in the author's previous books The Colors of Life: Exploring Life Experiences Through Color and Emotion and Approaching SEL Through Emotion and Color with Advanced Learners: A Companion to The Colors of Life.

Marcia Brennan, Ph.D., is a career educator and an award-winning teacher and author. She is the Carolyn and Fred McManis Professor of Humanities at Rice University in Houston, Texas, USA, where she also serves as professor of art history and professor of religious studies. Since 2009, she has served as artist in residence in the Department of Palliative, Rehabilitation, and Integrative Medicine at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. In 2021, she expanded this practice to serve as Literary Artist at the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where she works in both general oncology and transplantation oncology. She is the recipient of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Research Center Book Prize, the Steve Thorney Award for the Promotion of Humanitarian and Spiritual Care in the Clinical Field, and Rice University's George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching.

Part I: The Brain and the Forest: A Neurocognitive Fairytale 1. Deer Trails Through the Woods: Finding a New Path Forward 2. This Book Is a Gift: Who Deer Trails is For 3. The Magical Classroom: The Superpowers of Observation and Description 4. Knocking Down Dams and Reuniting Rivers: Moving Stuck Energies 5. Your Brain is a Mansion: Neurotransmission Within Majestic Wired Architecture 6. A Wetland in the Forest: Neurotransmitters and Synaptic Junctions 7. The Brain of the Forest: Dendrites, Axons, and Synaptic Clefts 8. Footsteps and Shoe Mending: Neuronal Pathways and Hebb's Rule 9. Neurocognitive Architecture: Some Basic Neuroanatomy 10. A Party in the Mansion: The Limbic System 11. Like a Shiny Silver Antenna: Empathy and the Anterior Precuneus 12. Connections Light Connections: Intuition, the Pituitary Gland, and the Prefrontal Cortex Part II: The Art of Holding On By Letting Go: Reenvisioning Anxiety and OCD 13. Life is Not Always a Party: The Brain, Anxiety, and OCD 14. Cutting Down Trees: Carving Pathways of Destruction 15. Uprooted Ground and Tangles of Thorns: Recognizing Chaos and Despair 16. Tying Yourself to a Reality That Makes Sense to You, and Untangling the Knots 17. Old Haunts and Sour Fruits: Visualizing Anxiety and OCD 18. Like Birds With Open Wings: Holding On By Letting Go 19. Flyfishing in the Trout Stream: Letting Yourself Off the Hook 20. Going Through the Forest With a Garbage Bag: Clearing Old Ground 21. Taking a Good Bath and Starting Fresh: Practicing Self-Care Part III: Deer Trails Through the Woods: Finding a New Path Forward 22. When Compost Becomes New Soil: Neuroplasticity 23. I Have Visions Most People Don't Have: Reenvisioning the Relations Between Beauty and Trauma 24. Webs of Connection and Protection: Spider Lilies and Arachnoid Mater 25. Networks and Lattices: Rose Arbors and Neuronal Arborization 26. Snowflakes are Miniature "Star Trees": Geological, Neuronal, and Stellar Dendrites 27. As Snow Falls in the Forest, Light Shines in the Mansion: Dendritic Connections in an Illuminated World 28. The Mirror Transforms: Living Between Memory and Epiphany - Return to the Magical Classroom: Neuroaesthetics and the Art of Transformation 30. The Living Map: Deer Trails Through the Woods