Engaging in creative activities such as music, dance, drawing, and even certain types of video games may support healthier brain aging, according to a large international study published in Nature Communications. The research provides new evidence that people who frequently engage in creative pursuits tend to have brain patterns associated with younger biological age. The study suggests that these activities may have measurable benefits for brain health, regardless of whether someone is a professional artist or simply a casual participant.
The idea that creative experiences might promote well-being has received increasing attention. Prior studies have connected artistic engagement to emotional regulation, social connection, and cognitive benefits. However, most of this research has relied on self-reported outcomes or general cognitive measures. While these studies offer support for the potential benefits of creativity, they leave open the question of whether these effects are also reflected in the biological processes of brain aging.
To explore this, researchers turned to the concept of “brain clocks.” These models use brain data to estimate a person’s biological brain age, which may differ from their actual chronological age. A younger-than-expected brain age is considered a potential indicator of healthier brain function, while an older-than-expected brain age has been linked to neurodegenerative and psychiatric conditions.
The researchers hypothesized that engaging in creative activities over time may be linked to patterns in brain activity associated with delayed aging. They also aimed to explore the underlying mechanisms of this relationship by analyzing brain network properties and testing whether short-term creative learning could produce similar, if smaller, effects.
“I’ve always been a musician. When I was younger, I played guitar while traveling across Europe, and music helped me cope with ADHD. It gave me focus, flow, and balance,” said senior author Agustin Ibanez, a full professor at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, director of the Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat), and professor at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) at Trinity College Dublin.
“Later, as a neuroscientist, I became fascinated by how creative experiences like music and dance can regulate stress and reshape brain dynamics. Yet, despite the growing evidence linking arts and health, we still lacked biological proof that creativity affects the brain. With this study, we wanted to close that gap by using brain clocks to measure whether creativity can literally slow brain aging.”
To examine this relationship, the researchers analyzed brain data from a large and diverse sample of 1,472 healthy adults across 13 countries. This included 1,240 participants whose brain scans were used to train machine learning models, and 232 participants whose creative experiences were analyzed in detail. The second group consisted of both creative experts—such as experienced tango dancers, musicians, visual artists, and strategy video game players—and individuals who completed a short-term learning program in gaming.
The team used a machine learning approach called support vector regression to create “brain clocks” based on resting-state brain activity recorded through electroencephalography (EEG) or magnetoencephalography (MEG). These tools measure the brain’s electrical signals and offer insight into how different areas of the brain are functionally connected.
By comparing each participant’s predicted brain age with their actual age, the researchers calculated a “brain age gap.” A negative gap, meaning the brain appeared younger than expected, was taken as a possible sign of healthier brain function.
After developing their brain clock model, the researchers used it to estimate the brain age of participants in two groups. The first included experts and matched non-experts across four creative domains: dance, music, visual arts, and video games. The second group included individuals who underwent 30 hours of training in a real-time strategy video game (StarCraft II) to assess whether learning a new creative skill could affect brain age.
The findings were consistent across creative disciplines. Experts in each domain had lower brain age gaps compared to non-experts, suggesting that their brains appeared younger than their actual age. This effect was seen in tango dancers, musicians, visual artists, and gamers. On average, experts had brain ages that were five to seven years younger than their chronological age. The researchers also found that the greater the level of creative expertise—as measured by years of experience or training—the larger the delay in brain age.
In the learning group, participants who completed the short-term gaming program also showed a modest reduction in brain age, although the effects were smaller than those seen in experts. The study included an active control group trained in a non-creative video game (Hearthstone), which did not show any significant brain age changes. This comparison helped isolate the role of creativity from other factors such as general cognitive engagement or game mechanics.
Ibanez was surprised by the consistency of the findings: “Across multiple creative domains, creative engagement was linked to delayed brain aging—an impact comparable to, and sometimes stronger than, the benefits reported for physical exercise or diet. This suggests that creativity should be seen as a true lifestyle factor.”
The brain regions showing the largest differences in connectivity tended to be those most affected by age in the general population, particularly areas involved in attention, motor coordination, and visual processing. These regions also showed increased functional connectivity in participants with more creative experience.
In addition to estimating brain age, the researchers examined how creativity might influence the brain’s efficiency. They used tools from network science to study how well different brain areas communicate with one another. People with more creative experience showed higher levels of local and global efficiency, meaning their brains were better organized for processing information. These patterns were linked to lower brain age gaps.
“In many studies, we see accelerated brain aging linked to inequality, pollution, or disease. Here, we saw the opposite: creativity delayed aging. That was both surprising and inspiring.”
Finally, the researchers used a computational model to simulate brain activity and assess the strength of connections between regions. They found that individuals with more creative expertise had stronger inter-regional coupling, which reflects more coordinated communication across the brain. This effect was specific to long-term expertise and did not appear in the short-term learning group.
“Creativity can help your health. Our results show that engaging in creative activities like music, dance, visual arts, or even gaming is associated with younger, healthier brain patterns. You don’t need to be a professional artist; creative play, learning, or expression in any form can contribute to brain vitality and emotional well-being.”
Although the findings suggest a link between creativity and delayed brain aging, the study does not establish cause and effect. It is possible that people with younger brains are more likely to engage in creative activities, or that other factors—such as education, lifestyle, or socioeconomic status—contribute to both creativity and brain health.
The researchers took steps to control for variables such as age, sex, and education, and they included matched control groups to strengthen their conclusions. Still, more research is needed to rule out alternative explanations.
“These are correlational findings, not causal. Creative engagement recruits systems for attention, emotion, memory, and movement; and these are the very networks that decline with age. So even if it’s not the sole cause, it’s part of the protective process. More research is need to establish causal effects.”
The study also relied on a combination of existing datasets, with each creative domain examined separately. While the results were consistent across domains, larger studies with more diverse forms of creativity—such as writing, acting, or crafts—could help expand the findings.
Future research could also examine whether creative engagement leads to improvements in other aspects of aging, such as memory, mood, or physical health. The researchers plan to extend their work by combining brain clock models with molecular aging markers and applying them in populations with neurodegenerative conditions. They are also developing studies that look at how lifestyle and cultural factors interact with creativity to influence the aging process.
“We’re expanding this research to include other lifestyle and cultural factors like exercise and multilingualism, integrating brain imaging with molecular aging clocks. Together with Daisy Fancourt and other colleagues, we’ve just launched the GRACE-Epi Project, funded by Wellcome Trust (starting in 2026), to test whether arts and cultural engagement influence biological aging markers such as metabolomics, proteomics, and epigenetics.”
“In parallel, I’m contributing to the forthcoming Lancet Series on Arts and Health, which will give global visibility to the biological and social mechanisms linking arts and well-being. We also plan to extend this work to neurodegenerative conditions, exploring how creativity and artistic engagement might foster resilience and slow disease progression.”
The study, “Creative experiences and brain clocks,” was authored by Carlos Coronel-Oliveros, Joaquin Migeot, Fernando Lehue, Lucia Amoruso, Natalia Kowalczyk-Grębska, Natalia Jakubowska, Kanad N. Mandke, Joana Pereira Seabra, Patricio Orio, Dominic Campbell, Raul Gonzalez-Gomez, Pavel Prado, Jhosmary Cuadros, Enzo Tagliazucchi, Josephine Cruzat, Agustina Legaz, Vicente Medel, Hernan Hernandez, Sol Fittipaldi, Florencia Altschuler, Sebastian Moguilner, Sandra Baez, Hernando Santamaria-Garcia, Alfredis González-Hernández, Jasmin Bonilla-Santos, Bahar Güntekin, Claudio Babiloni, Daniel Abasolo, Gaetano Di Caterina, Görsev G. Yener, Javier Escudero, John Fredy Ochoa-Gómez, Marcio Soto-Añari, Martin A. Bruno, Pedro A. Valdes-Sosa, Renato Anghinah, Rodrigo A. Gonzalez-Montealegre, Ruaridh A. Clark, Adolfo M. García, Laura Kaltwasser, Martin Schürmann, Jil M. Meier, Aneta Brzezicka, Robert Whelan, Brian Lawlor, Ian H. Robertson, Christopher Bailey, Lucia Melloni, Nisha Sajnani, and Agustin Ibanez.
