When What Once Excited Us Becomes Mundane: A Call for Neuroaesthetics in the Healing Ecosystem

How often do we see initial excitement about a new experience fade, to then be replaced by a return to the status quo?  Why do so many efforts to improve our environments fail after time?  Why did that raise I got last year initially feel so important, but now appears trivial?  And we find ourselves right back where we started.

It's all because of “hedonic adaptation”.  What in the world am I talking about? Why is this important?  Why should the Care Collaboratory consider this as yet another aspect of our entrance into neuroaesthetics and what might we do to advance the healing ecosystem we see as so desperately needed?

Hedonic adaptation is the tendency for people to return to a baseline level of emotional experience after positive or negative events.   We adapt to new circumstances quickly such that what once excited us becomes routine and mundane.

In healthcare settings this means new buildings become “just another building”, new technology becomes expected, higher salaries or benefits lose their motivational impact, organizational initiatives lose their emotional energy.  Even recovery from a serious illness can become eventually taken for granted.

People become accustomed to conditions and consciously stop noticing them.  This human tendency creates a fundamental challenge for healing ecosystems:  if humans adapt to almost everything, how do we create environments that continually support engagement, meaning, connection, and healing?

Our healing ecosystem framework in some respects could appear to be exactly that shiny new object (as we saw in Boston at a workshop for over 50 attendees) that with time fades and becomes just something we now ignore.  Neuroaesthetic experiences may help interrupt or soften hedonic adaptation.  Why is that?

Unlike many typical interventions, aesthetic experiences often capture attention anew, generate awe or wonder, curiosity, appreciation.  They activate emotional and sensory pathways simultaneously and create meaning as well as provide utility.  They also foster connection to self, others, and place.

The beautiful sunset over Lake Mille Lacs may be viewed hundreds of times yet still evoke a subtle emotional response.  A piece of music can move us repeatedly.  A meaningful story continues to inspire us long after we’ve heard it before.

This suggests that aesthetic experiences are not merely amenities, but may truly be one of the few mechanisms that repeatedly reawaken awareness in environments to which we would otherwise adapt.

With regard to our model, leaders are subject to hedonic adaptation.  We become accustomed to burnout, staff distress, dysfunction, slow decline.  Neuroaesthetic experiences can help leaders see with “fresh eyes.”

Traditional structures often focus on efficiency, standardization, and control. With time, people adapt and disengage emotionally.  Use of natural light, music, art, restorative spaces, rituals, and ceremonies can provide ongoing sensory cues that continually invite people back into the awareness they saw initially.

Hedonic adaptation causes people to stop noticing the emotional climate around them. Neuroaesthetics can refresh climate by evoking positive emotions, increasing feelings of belonging, and creating moments of shared meaning.  A healing climate is sustained not by constant excitement, but by repeated experiences that reawaken attention.

Individuals adapt to both suffering and stress.  Neuroaesthetic experiences can restore awareness by engaging mind, body, and emotion simultaneously. They may not make people only feel better but may help them become more present.

Hedonic adaptation explains in part why traditional well-being efforts and initiatives often fail to sustain the initial gains. Neuroaesthetic experiences built into the elements of our healing ecosystem framework provide a mechanism for continually renewing attention, meaning, connection, and engagement. In time people adapt to systems, so we need experiences that help them notice, feel, and engage.  Neuroaesthetics may be one of the most powerful ways to create those experiences.