Flowers in the brain
How Neuroscience is proving the healing power of observing flowers
Have you ever seen a flower and felt repulsion or fear? Of course not, you can’t. It is neurological, biochemical and evolutionary not possible.
Neuroaesthetics is a rapidly growing research field that uses neuroscience to investigate the neurological effect of the “perception, creation and response to” art, beauty, design and scenes that evoke an - intense -feeling of pleasure. In other words, what effect having an Aesthetic experience has on our brain, cognition, biochemistry and ultimately, our emotions.
Even though traditionally, Beauty is a sphere only explored by the arts and philosophy fields, it is also true that science is getting closer to understanding concepts or to answer questions that were exiled to the spiritual realm in the past. It is no longer strange that several fields of study intertwine in an attempt to define and measure abstract concepts such as beauty or happiness, undeniable existential parts of the human experience.
In that field, Neuroscience is pioneering in explaining how emotions are formed. And what is it the owe and appreciation one feels when observing beauty if not an emotion for what is being observed?
Consequently, one wonders how the mere observation of the inherent beauty of flowers could change emotions from fear to safety, from sadness to happiness or from stress to calmness.
Dr. Nancy L. Etcoff, a Harvard professor is studying how flowers may decrease stress levels and improve focus and attention—as we all have been able to experience in our own home bodies. In an interview, she used evolutionary theory to explain it “We know that although flowers have little practical use, they have powerful effects on people’s behavior and feelings. People give flowers for forgiveness, at funerals, to celebrate. They provide solace, joy, forgiveness, compassion. Looking back on evolution, flowers might have signaled that the environment was positive for human habitation. And so it makes sense that they lower stress levels.”
By blending different fields, Science can no longer dismiss the healing power of flowers neither as a mere subjective experience nor as a pseudo medicine; but as an integrative part of the healing power of Nature.
And what we see is, that once more, it seems like humans need to build complex machinery to measure and prove what is encrypted in our DNA as ancestral wisdom. Did we need technology to proof we can experience in our body? One may argue that our lack of trust in our inner wisdom required that evolutionary step to return to old roots and rewrite it as new knowledge.
“Beauty is one of life’s basic pleasures,” Dr. Nancy L. Etcoff said.
The beauty of flowers does not exist as vain, but as health.
Article - Miriam Jornet @aintfinit
Illustration - Flowers, watercolours on paper, 2024 - Anna Antonova @a_antonova