Bernabé Mallo
Doctor en Filosofía por la Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU)
Investigador
en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte. / PhD in
Philosophy – University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
Researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origins of art.
A review of the article "Neuroaesthetics: exploring the role of aesthetic experience in neurorehabilitation" (Frontiers in Psychology, 2025)
Introduction: beyond pleasure, towards repair
For centuries, artistic contemplation has been considered a noble, refined, even spiritual activity. But can it also be healing? Can a painting, a symphony, or a sculpture help repair a brain damaged by a stroke or a neurodegenerative disease?
An article published in 2025 in the journal Frontiers in Psychology addresses precisely this question from the perspective of applied neuroaesthetics (Colombi et al., 2025). The authors analyse the so-called "Michelangelo Effect", a phenomenon demonstrating how observing artworks not only activates brain regions associated with pleasure but also stimulates neuroplasticity mechanisms with therapeutic potential.
The central thesis is revolutionary: aesthetic experience is not a cultural luxury, but a formal clinical tool that could be integrated into cognitive rehabilitation protocols. For patients who have suffered cerebrovascular accidents or who suffer from neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, planned exposure to artistic stimuli could be an effective non-pharmacological intervention.
From the perspective of our research on the S/Y/C model and Surgical Philosophy, this study offers empirical evidence of something we have long held theoretically: that art is not an ornament, but a biological regulation mechanism with deep evolutionary roots (Mallo, 2025, 2026a, 2026b).
What is the "Michelangelo Effect"?
The term "Michelangelo Effect" refers to the capacity of high-aesthetic-quality artworks to generate intense emotional and cerebral responses. The article's authors review previous studies demonstrating that contemplating masterpieces —by Michelangelo, but not exclusively— activates regions of the reward system, the prefrontal cortex, and areas involved in autobiographical memory and sustained attention (Colombi et al., 2025).
What is novel is not that art activates the brain —we already knew that— but that this activation can be channelled for therapeutic purposes. In patients with neurological damage, certain neural networks remain intact or retain some capacity for reorganisation. Aesthetic experience, by mobilising affect, attention, and meaning, could act as a cognitive scaffold that facilitates plasticity and functional recovery.
The "Michelangelo Effect" is thus not a poetic metaphor, but a neuroscientific construct with concrete clinical implications. Its name evokes artistic excellence, but its application extends to any aesthetic stimulus that generates a sufficiently intense emotional response to promote changes in the brain's functional architecture.
Neuroplasticity and rehabilitation: art as a tool
Neuroplasticity —the nervous system's capacity to reorganise itself in response to experience, learning, or injury— is the biological substrate of any cognitive rehabilitation process. Traditionally, rehabilitation protocols have been based on repetitive exercises, memory tasks, attention, or language. The novelty introduced by the article is the inclusion of aesthetic experience as a modulator of that plasticity (Colombi et al., 2025).
Why might art be more effective than a standard exercise? The authors suggest several hypotheses. First, artistic contemplation mobilises multiple brain systems simultaneously: visual perception, emotion, memory, attention, reflection. This distributed activation could favour the reorganisation of damaged networks by involving preserved areas.
Second, aesthetic experience generates pleasure and motivation. A patient who enjoys an artwork is more attentive, more engaged, more predisposed to sustain cognitive effort. This contrasts with the monotony of certain traditional therapeutic exercises, which often prove tedious or demotivating.
Third, art evokes personal and cultural meanings. A painting can trigger memories, associations, reflections on one's own life. This autobiographical dimension is especially relevant for patients with mild cognitive impairment or neurodegenerative diseases, where preserving personal identity is a therapeutic goal in itself.
The authors therefore propose that aesthetic stimuli be considered first-line non-pharmacological interventions for certain patient profiles. The aim is not to replace existing treatments, but to complement them with a tool that is both effective, accessible, and low-cost.
The context of population ageing
The article does not emerge in a vacuum. The authors contextualise their proposal within the increase in life expectancy and the consequent rise in neurodegenerative diseases and cerebrovascular accidents (Colombi et al., 2025). Dementias —especially Alzheimer's—, Parkinson's, and strokes are today major health challenges. And the available pharmacological treatments are, at best, palliative or merely symptomatic.
In this context, the search for effective non-pharmacological interventions has become a priority. Cognitive stimulation, physical training, music therapy, and other approaches have shown moderate benefits. Applied neuroaesthetics now joins this repertoire with a solid empirical foundation and an additional attraction: art not only "exercises" the brain, but does so within a framework of pleasure and meaning, which could increase treatment adherence.
The authors review theoretical models and preliminary evidence, but caution that controlled clinical trials are still needed to validate the efficacy of these interventions. Nevertheless, results to date are promising and justify investment in research.
Connection with research on the origin of art (S/Y/C)
This clinical study resonates deeply with the research we have been developing on the S/Y/C model of neuronal functioning and the Law of Biological Coherence (Mallo, 2023, 2025, 2026a, 2026b). What the authors describe as the "Michelangelo Effect" is nothing other than a manifestation of how art activates the three dimensions of our neural function.
The S (Survival) dimension is expressed in art's potential to mobilise the reward system and reduce stress. In a patient with neurological damage, aesthetic experience can contribute to cerebral homeostasis, regulating emotional arousal and facilitating a neurochemical environment conducive to plasticity. It is no accident that regions such as the nucleus accumbens or the orbitofrontal cortex —implicated in pleasure and valuation— are activated by beauty. Art, from its origins, has been a regulator of internal balance.
The Y (Symbolon) dimension is central to understanding art's therapeutic power. Art is not just form: it is shared meaning. When a patient contemplates a work, they do not only process colours and lines; they evoke memories, interpret symbols, connect with their personal and cultural history. This symbolic dimension allows aesthetic experience to have lasting effects, beyond the moment of contemplation. Symbolon —the act of recognition through shared codes— is the bridge between neurobiology and biography.
The C (Wholeness) dimension manifests in the search for coherence that underlies aesthetic experience. The human brain yearns for totalities, closed patterns, emergent meanings. Art satisfies this drive, offering an order that calms uncertainty and reduces cognitive entropy. In a patient with neurological damage, whose world may have fragmented, the experience of wholeness that art provides is doubly valuable: it not only exercises cognition, but restores a sense of existential coherence.
Surgical Philosophy invites us to make a precise analytical cut in this therapeutic proposal. It is not about reducing art to a mere clinical tool —that would be impoverishing— but about recognising that its healing efficacy is a natural consequence of its original biological function. Art was born as homeostatic technology, and neuropsychological rehabilitation is nothing other than a modern, systematised, scientific application of that ancestral function.
Implications for future research
The Frontiers in Psychology article opens several promising lines of work (Colombi et al., 2025). The most urgent is the design of randomised clinical trials comparing the efficacy of art-based interventions with conventional treatments or placebos. How many sessions are necessary? What type of stimuli are most effective? Are there differences according to patient profile (stroke, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's)? Does familiarity with art modulate the effect?
Second, the authors suggest the need to develop standardised protocols that allow neuroaesthetics to be integrated into rehabilitation centres. The goal is not merely to take patients to museums —though that would also be beneficial— but to design interventions with rigorous dosing, control, and evaluation.
Third, the study invites exploration of the underlying neurobiology using imaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging or electroencephalography. Which networks are activated during artistic contemplation in patients with brain damage? How do they differ from activations in healthy subjects? Can therapeutic benefits be predicted from activation patterns?
From our perspective, these studies should also incorporate a phenomenological dimension. It is not enough to measure what happens in the brain; we must ask patients what they feel, what meaning they attribute to the experience, how they integrate the work into their personal narrative. Art heals, perhaps, not only because it stimulates neurons, but because it restores the sense of being someone in a meaningful world.
Final considerations: art as medicine for the embodied spirit
The article on neuroaesthetics and rehabilitation reminds us of something traditional cultures never forgot: that art has healing power. But now we have tools to understand why. It is not magic, not placebo. It is biology.
Art activates the same neural networks as reward, emotion, and meaning. It mobilises plasticity, facilitates reorganisation, reduces stress. And it does so, moreover, within a framework of pleasure that increases motivation and adherence. In an ageing world, where neurodegenerative diseases are increasingly prevalent, art presents itself as an accessible, low-cost tool with few side effects.
From our research on the origin of art in the Homo species, we see in these findings an empirical confirmation of our theses (Mallo, 2025, 2026a, 2026b). Art was not born as luxury, but as necessity. It is not an ornament of culture, but a biological regulation mechanism. That it can now be used in hospitals and rehabilitation centres is not an absolute novelty, but the recovery of ancestral wisdom under the guise of science.
The "Michelangelo Effect" teaches us that beauty not only moves the soul. It repairs the body. And it does so because, deep down, soul and body were never separate. Art heals because it speaks directly to that functional unity we call S/Y/C: survival, symbol, and wholeness. And that unity is precisely what makes us human.
References
Colombi, F., Varesio, G., Selini, E., Amighetti, E., Crepaldi, M., Fusi, G., Ronga, I., Cancer, A., Antonietti, A., Geminiani, G. C., & Rusconi, M. L. (2025). Neuroaesthetics: exploring the role of aesthetic experience in neurorehabilitation. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, Article 1671220. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1671220
Mallo, B. (2023). La construcción neuro-simbólica. Una aproximación al funcionamiento del cerebro desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar [Doctoral thesis, University of the Basque Country - Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea]. ADDI Repository. http://hdl.handle.net/10810/62701
Mallo, B. (2025). Arte y biología: Una aproximación neurofilosófica al origen de la experiencia estética. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0E8Y5WZMK
Mallo, B. (2025). Art and biology: A neurophilosophical approach to the origin of aesthetic experience. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0E8Y6C2XN
Mallo, B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57196
Mallo, B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo [Kindle edition]. Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYGTJD5C
Mallo, B. (2026b). From surgical philosophy to the law of biological coherence S/Y/C: Toward a study of the origin of art in the Homo lineage. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57197
Mallo, B. (2026b). From surgical philosophy to the law of biological coherence S/Y/C: Toward a study of the origin of art in the Homo lineage [Kindle edition]. Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GY89SZS1
Autor / Author
Bernabé Mallo
Doctor en Filosofía – Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Investigador independiente en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte.
Bernabé Mallo
PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Independent researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origin of art.
Enlaces / Links
Página de autor Amazon / Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9002-9728
Plataforma EHUenRed / Link EHUenRed: https://www.ehu.eus/es/web/masterrak-eta-graduondokoak/red-latinoamericana-de-posgrados
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@neuroideas815
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBsf6OZ482NjST6QA-hvYtQ
Publicaciones y proyectos en desarrollo / Publications and projects:
https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
https://ehuenred.theglocal.network/ideas/el-origen-del-arte-en-el-cerebro-de-makapansgat-al-moma-del-primate-al-sapiens
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