Neuroscience meets Dance: Towards a neuroscientific approach to mental health and wellbeing

我们正在为一系列倡议寻求AHRC资金，这些倡议将激发创意和表演艺术以及医学人文领域的新研究，特别是舞蹈运动心理疗法，它利用当代神经科学的优势，使实践社区以及普通公众能够接触到现有的研究。舞蹈运动心理疗法是一种心理疗法，利用动作帮助个人实现情感、认知、身体和社会的融合。研究表明，舞蹈运动心理治疗可以用于减压、疾病预防和情绪管理，以及作为一种治疗特定精神疾病的工具，包括抑郁和焦虑。这种形式的治疗可以改善积极结果的概念和机制相当不透明。这些益处的一些原因可能与刺激大脑可塑性、增强对身体意识、神经系统调节重要的神经回路有关，但也与加强自我概念、同理心和人际联系有关。然而，研究人员通常会评估干预前后的幸福感和情绪变化、抑郁评分或其他心理结果的主观测量，这些并不总是提供可靠和有效的结果。因此，需要更严格的实验方法，包括定量和客观的生理和神经生理学数据收集与主观自我报告相结合的混合方法。这就是当代神经科学可以在澄清舞蹈运动心理疗法的作用机制方面提供帮助的地方，例如，澄清舞蹈运动心理疗法是否提高了人们的身体意识和倾听身体内部信号的能力，还通过解开通过治疗而成为目标的特定认知和情感机制。我们将带来学者、创造性治疗师和表演者来发展创新的协作研究，包括基于实践的研究和实践引领的研究。该网络将开展三项活动：1)三个跨学科讲习班。前两个将集中于围绕舞蹈观察(工作坊1)和舞蹈表演(工作坊2)的大脑机制的核心问题。第三个工作坊将聚焦于“内在舞蹈身体”的主题，即舞蹈如何通过身体意识和基于感官的想象来帮助塑造一个人的体验。2)为期一天的会议，包括公开活动。这是一个论坛，供该领域的新学者和最近的学者在友好、支持性的氛围中展示他们的工作和发展他们的想法，并与来自神经科学、艺术和创意疗法的专题演讲者一起发言。对舞蹈和创意疗法的使用感兴趣的公众也将被邀请参加。在当天的后半天，一项公共活动将包括现场舞蹈表演，旨在创造性地总结会议的关键主题，并建立可经验检验的大脑变化和身体运动指标。3)网站和博客平台，托管各种相关内容和互动功能。该项目将通过丰富合作和跨学科研究的可能性，激发新的研究项目，并激励新的研究应用和治疗干预措施，使学者、心理健康从业者、艺术家、相关利益攸关方(如艺术中心和艺术节人员)和普通公众受益。处于学术生涯初期的早期职业研究人员和研究生将从他们的工作将通过网络获得的曝光中受益。虚拟资源将确保网络在面对面活动之外继续发展，同时使那些不能参加活动的人也能参加。

We are seeking AHRC funding for a series of initiatives that will inspire new research at the edge of creative and performing arts, and medical humanities, particularly dance movement psychotherapy which takes advantage of contemporary neuroscience to make existing research accessible to communities of practice, as well as to the general public.Dance movement psychotherapy is a type of psychotherapy that uses movement to help individuals achieve emotional, cognitive, physical, and social integration. Research has shown that dance movement psychotherapy can be used for stress reduction, disease prevention, and mood management as well as, as a treatment tool across specific psychiatric conditions, including depression and anxiety. The concepts and mechanisms by which this form of therapy may improve positive outcomes are rather opaque. Some reasons for these benefits may be related to stimulating brain plasticity, boosting neural circuitry important for body awareness, nervous system regulation, but also strengthening self-concept, empathy, and interpersonal connection. Nevertheless, researchers have typically assessed subjective measures of wellbeing and mood change, depression scores or other psychological outcomes pre- and post-intervention, which do not always provide reliable and valid outcomes. Therefore, there is a need for more rigorous experimental methods including mixed-methods quantitative and objective physiological and neurophysiological data collection in combination with subjective self-reports. This is where contemporary neuroscience can help both in terms of clarifying the mechanisms of how dance movement psychotherapy works, for example, by clarifying whether it improves people' body awareness and ability to listen to their internal bodily signals, but also by disentangling the specific cognitive and emotional mechanisms being targeted through therapy. We will bring scholars, creative therapists, and performers to develop innovative collaborative research, including practice-based and practice-led research. Three activities will be developed by the network:1) Three interdisciplinary workshops. The first two will focus on core questions around the brain mechanisms underlying dance observation (workshop 1) and dance performance (workshop 2). The third workshop will focus on the topic of the 'inner dancing body' that is how dance may help with shaping one's experience through body awareness and sensory-based imagination. 2) A one-day conference, including a public event. A forum for new and recent scholars in the field to present their work and develop their ideas in a friendly, supportive atmosphere with featured speakers from neuroscience, the arts, and creative therapies. Members of the public interested in dance and the use of the creative therapies will be also invited to attend. On the second half of the day, a public event will include a live dance performance aimed at creatively summarise key themes from the conference and to establish empirically testable measures of brain change and body movements. 3) A website and a blog platform hosting a variety of relevant content and interactive features. The project will benefit scholars, mental health practitioners, artists, related stakeholders, e.g., arts centres and festival personnel, and the general public by enriching collaborative, interdisciplinary research possibilities, inspiring new research projects, and motivating new research applications and therapeutic interventions. Early career researchers and postgraduate students who are at the beginning of their academic careers will benefit from the exposure that their work will receive through the network. The virtual resources will ensure that the network will continue to develop outside the face-to-face events while enabling those who could not attend them to participate as well.