NewsMedical spoke with Susan Magsamen, Government Director of the Worldwide Arts + Thoughts Lab at Johns Hopkins College, throughout SfN 2024. On this interview, Susan shares insights into her groundbreaking work in neuroaesthetics, discussing how the humanities can measurably affect mind operate and well-being, whereas additionally highlighting the transformative potential of arts-based interventions in healthcare, schooling, and group improvement.
Are you able to begin by introducing your self and sharing what first drew you to the intersection of neuroscience and the humanities?
My title is Susan Magsamen, and I’m the Government Director of the Worldwide Arts and Thoughts Lab, Middle for Utilized Neuroaesthetics at Johns Hopkins College College of Medication. I’m additionally the co-director of the NeuroArts Blueprint and co-author of Your Mind on Artwork: How the Arts Remodel Us. For me, this work has been a lifelong journey. I grew up in a inventive family the place we made issues like knitting, cooking, writing, and poetry.
Once I was 12, my twin sister had a traumatic accident and couldn’t hook up with her physique or feelings. My mother instructed she begin drawing, and I noticed how artwork helped her course of what she couldn’t specific in phrases. That have led me to understand the deep energy of inventive expression, which formed my profession. Since then, I’ve labored on the intersection of arts, tradition, and science—creating firms targeted on arts-based studying for youngsters, working in expertise and humanities, and ultimately collaborating with Johns Hopkins to discover arts in well being.
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Your speak at SfN 2024 explored neuroaesthetics, the science of how the humanities change the mind and physique. Might you give us an outline of the important thing methods through which inventive experiences affect mind operate and well-being?
Neuroaesthetics is the science of how the humanities and aesthetics measurably change the mind, physique, and habits. What’s essential is that it’s a translational discipline, which means artists and scientists collaborate, and it really works bidirectionally—artists inform researchers and vice versa. There are lots of examples of how the humanities affect well being and well-being. In healthcare, we all know that digital actuality and dance are getting used to handle power ache.
Dance additionally helps folks with Parkinson’s enhance gait, temper, and even sleep. Singing with Alzheimer’s sufferers reduces agitation and enhances high quality of life, and we’re even seeing financial financial savings as these interventions cut back the burden on caregivers.
In psychological well being, completely different artwork varieties assist decrease cortisol ranges, lowering stress and enhancing cognitive load, which is vital when the mind’s emotional facilities are in overdrive. In schooling, we all know that participating within the arts helps college students make higher choices, keep at school longer, and even delay early pregnancies. Research present the humanities can bodily change the mind, rising cerebral cortex measurement and enhancing resilience by way of stronger neural pathways.
Your latest guide Your Mind on Artwork delves into how the humanities can rework us. Might you share an instance of how participating with artwork has been proven to enhance bodily or psychological well being in measurable methods?
In Your Mind on Artwork, we aimed to validate folks’s intuitive sense that the humanities have a profound affect on well being. One fable we dispelled is that it is advisable be good on the arts to profit from them—that’s not true. Simply 20 minutes a day of inventive engagement may help return the physique to homeostasis. One particular instance within the guide is a examine on music and postpartum despair.
Moms singing to their infants in Scandinavia noticed important reductions in despair, which led to a lower in the usage of antidepressants. It additionally improved bonding and oxytocin launch, which benefited each maternal well being and restoration. What’s highly effective is that these findings assist us perceive why the humanities work, much like how we now perceive the science behind train, sleep, and vitamin.
The idea of “Affect Considering” is central to your work. How does this mannequin assist speed up the sensible utility of arts-based approaches to resolve real-world challenges in well being, studying, and group improvement?
Affect Considering is essential as a result of it integrates a number of methods of realizing—scientific, inventive, indigenous, and lived expertise. This mannequin is about making use of arts-based approaches to resolve particular issues in real-world contexts, from healthcare to schooling to group improvement. It’s a nine-step course of designed to take analysis from principle to utility.
We begin by figuring out an issue, like power ache or trauma restoration, after which deliver collectively completely different methodologies—whether or not it’s qualitative analysis, mind imaging, or biometrics—to assemble insights. From there, we develop options that may be scaled and evaluated for affect. For instance, a multi-country examine discovered that moms singing to their infants reduces postpartum despair, and this data was disseminated and scaled to profit many extra communities. The mannequin is solution-focused, aiming for long-term, scalable change throughout sectors like well being, schooling, and social well-being.
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You’ve been concerned within the NeuroArts Blueprint undertaking, a partnership between Johns Hopkins and the Aspen Institute. How do collaborations like these assist advance the sphere of neuroaesthetics and its affect on society?
The NeuroArts Blueprint is an bold plan designed to construct the sphere of neuroaesthetics into one thing sustainable and impactful. It was impressed by profitable efforts to construct fields like bioethics, local weather change, and getting older. We’ve recognized 5 key suggestions: increasing the analysis base, supporting practitioners, creating schooling and profession pathways, advocating for coverage and funding, and constructing management and communication capability.
We’re already implementing these by way of initiatives just like the NeuroArts Useful resource Middle, a digital hub launching quickly the place folks from around the globe can collaborate. We additionally established the Renee Fleming Investigator Award to assist early-career interdisciplinary groups engaged on arts and well being. Our objective is to make the humanities and aesthetics a core a part of medication and public well being, influencing bodily and psychological well being, studying, and group well-being on a world scale.
How do you envision neuroaesthetics taking part in a job in addressing broader societal points, resembling public well being, schooling, and group well-being?
I imagine neuroaesthetics will develop into a part of mainstream medication and public well being. For instance, the humanities generally is a highly effective instrument in trauma restoration, refugee resettlement, and group therapeutic. In schooling, incorporating the humanities helps enhance studying outcomes and fosters social-emotional improvement.
In healthcare, utilizing the humanities for rehabilitation and psychological well being is changing into more and more acknowledged. Even within the justice system, the humanities have the potential to play a significant position in rehabilitation. Neuroaesthetics can deal with points like stress, anxiousness, and loneliness—issues which might be pervasive in fashionable society. As we proceed to analysis and scale these practices, we’ll see their affect develop to assist people and communities thrive.
As the sphere of neuroaesthetics grows, what future developments or improvements do you imagine may have the best affect on how we perceive and harness the facility of the humanities for human improvement?
There are a number of thrilling developments on the horizon. One is the flexibility to non-invasively examine the mind by way of superior instruments developed by the NIH’s BRAIN Initiative.
One other key space is prevention—utilizing the humanities to reinforce childhood improvement by constructing stronger neural pathways and social-emotional expertise. This provides kids lifelong instruments for resilience. We additionally know that participating with the humanities in midlife can enhance cognitive well being and prolong life expectancy. Lastly, arts-based interventions are inexpensive, accessible, and instantly impactful, making them a beneficial instrument for addressing widespread points like stress, anxiousness, and despair.
I imagine that as we deepen our understanding of the humanities’ results on the mind, we’ll begin to see cures for ailments and main enhancements in public well being outcomes.
Trying forward, what are your hopes for a way neuroaesthetics will proceed to evolve and form the best way we take into consideration well being, schooling, and group sooner or later?
My hope is that neuroaesthetics might be as important to day by day life as train or vitamin. The humanities are wired into our biology, and we will use them to enhance well being, studying, and well-being.
By integrating the humanities into medication, public well being, schooling, and group improvement, we will deal with main challenges like trauma, stress, and cognitive decline. I see neuroaesthetics as a transformative power that may form a more healthy, extra related society, enhancing human potential in methods we’re solely starting to know.
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About Susan Magsamen
Susan Magsamen is the founder and govt director of the Worldwide Arts + Thoughts Lab (IAM Lab), Middle for Utilized Neuroaesthetics, a pioneering initiative from the Pedersen Mind Science Institute at Johns Hopkins College College of Medication. Her physique of labor lies on the intersection of mind sciences and the humanities—and the way our distinctive response to aesthetic experiences can amplify human potential.
Magsamen is the writer of the Affect Considering mannequin, an evidence-based analysis strategy to speed up how we use the humanities to resolve issues in well being, well-being, and studying. Along with her position at IAM Lab, she is an assistant professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins and serves as co-director of the NeuroArts Blueprint undertaking in partnership with the Aspen Institute.
Previous to founding IAM Lab, Magsamen labored in each the personal and public sector, creating social affect packages and merchandise addressing all phases of life—from early childhood to the senior years. Magsamen created Curiosityville, an internet customized studying world, acquired by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2014 and Curiosity Kits, a hands-on multi-sensory firm, acquired by Torstar in 1995.
An award-winning writer, Magsamen has printed eight books together with The Basic Treasury of Childhood Marvel, The ten Better of Every little thing Households, and Household Tales.
Susan’s latest guide, a New York Instances Bestseller, is titled Your Mind On Artwork: How the Arts Remodel Us written with Ivy Ross, Vice President of Google {Hardware}. It’s a journey by way of the science of neuroaesthetics that gives proof of how our brains and our bodies are reworked once we take part within the arts and aesthetic experiences, and the way this data can enhance our bodily and psychological well being, assist us study and flourish, and construct stronger communities.
Magsamen is a Fellow on the Royal Society of the Arts and a strategic advisor to a number of revolutionary organizations and initiatives, together with the Academy of Neuroscience for Structure, the American Psychological Affiliation, the Nationwide Affiliation for the Training of Younger Kids, Mind Futures, Studying Landscapes, and Creating Wholesome Communities: Arts + Public Well being in America.
