What if picking up a paintbrush, dancing to music, or learning a new game could help your brain stay biologically younger? A new study in Nature Communications suggests exactly that. Creative engagement may not only elevate mood or self-expression. It may actually slow the clock on brain aging.

Researchers analyzed more than 1,400 people across dance, music, visual arts, and strategy-based gaming. Then they used EEG and machine learning to estimate each person’s “brain age gap,” a measure showing whether your brain is aging faster or slower than expected. The results were striking.

People with more creative engagement had younger brains across every domain. The deeper the expertise, the greater the delay in brain aging. And even short-term learning helped.

Let’s break down what this means for your cognitive resilience.

In this study,

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