Simple artistic enterprises can improve learning ability, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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What if I told you improving your academic performance or learning new job skills was a simple matter, involving something you’ve probably been told not to do your whole life? Susan Magsamen, director of the Arts+Mind lab at Johns Hopkins and coauthor of a book called Your Mind on Art, explains.

Magsamen: What I think we’re seeing now is that the arts are the way we learn. And the way we learn better. They help us retain information, they help us use information, they help us be creative, they also help us collaborate, they help us regulate our emotions and help us socialize. We’re starting to see really progressive systems bring the arts in. they’re not bringing them in in a rarefied, way, it might be that they’re saying to kids look, doodling is good for you. Because it turns out that doodlers retain information better, they remember longer, and their focus and attention is better than non-doodlers.  :33 

Doodling is just one artistic endeavor that helps, Magsamen says. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.