Julia Basso, the director of the Embodied Brain Lab at Virginia Tech, readily admits that few college students choose to double major in the unlikely tandem of dance and neuroscience.
But sort of like the pairing of cheddar cheese and apple pie, the intriguing combination works, and Basso is putting her education and past research to the test in hopes of benefitting people with autism spectrum disorder. Autism refers to a broad range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech, and nonverbal communication.
Basso, an assistant professor in the Department of Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise in Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, is teaming with Rachel Rugh, an adjunct faculty member at Virginia Tech and the owner of the local dance studio New River Moving Arts, to begin recruiting people for a study on how dance affects those with autism spectrum disorder.
“One of the symptoms of this disorder comes in social skills, such as the inability to look others in the eye, read emotional expressions, engage with others, and utilize mirroring,” Basso said. “So there’s a big connection with what we’re training for in dance and the difficulties we see in this disorder.”
Basso, along with Medha Satyal, a former Virginia Tech Ph.D. student in translational biology, medicine and health, and Rugh, collaborated on a paper called "Dance on the Brain: Enhancing Intra- and Inter-Brain Synchrony." The paper, published last year in the National Library of Medicine and other publications, served as a composition of their observations and research on parallels between dance and the brain.
The paper revealed their hypothesis, called the Synchronicity Hypothesis of Dance. First, though, they redefined dance from traditionally held views, laying out what it really is and really does.
...
The paper hypothesizes that dance enhances “neural synchrony” in the brain region supporting various neural behaviors. In simpler terms, when people dance and engage with others, the two brains become synchronized.
They hypothesize that dancing enhances intra-synchrony within one’s own brain and inter-synchrony, or the synchrony between two brains. Scientists possess the ability to measure brain activity between two individuals through a technique called hyper-scanning, a termed coined by Read Montague at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech Carilion, who is involved in this type of research.
Using an electroencephalography, or EEG, cap that fits on a person’s head, researchers can measure brain activity. Traditionally, researchers measure this when a person sits still, but newer types of mobile EEG caps enable them to measure brain activity in multiple individuals while in motion. The brain activity between two individuals can be correlated through statistical methods.
...
What is the end game with this study? How will this research potentially benefit those with autism spectrum disorder?
People with autism tend to lack social skills. They avoid eye contact, prefer solitude, and in many cases, feel isolated. Often, they struggle to understand other people’s feelings.
Basso hypothesizes that dance will stimulate those social elements of the brain and that individuals with autism spectrum disorder will feel connected with someone who shares their movements and behaviors, helping to understand their thoughts and feelings.
“If you and I did a practice of moving our finger together, our sensory-motor cortices, what we’re feeling in the brain regions that map out the human body, we would expect those brain states to be in tune with one another,” she said. “But we’re also hypothesizing because of the training in dance and this link between sensory, motor, social, and emotional aspects of dance, that as we train in dance and cultivate these states with our partner, we’ll be able to see enhancement of the social elements of the brain.
“We think you’ll see behaviorally that, when you start to connect at the somatosensory-motor level, that the partners start to tune into each other’s empathy. It’s this idea of ‘Theory of Mind’ and connecting with one another physically through eye contact and touch. … The physical processes can transform into emotional connections as well. This is a process that begins to happen really early in development through the connection between parent and infant.”
Basso and Rugh currently seek individuals 18 years and older and at level 1 among those with autism spectrum disorder to participate in the project. They plan to hold sessions at New River Moving Arts, Rugh’s dance school and the new site of The Embodied Brain Laboratory located on North Main Street in Blacksburg.
Eventually, they hope to bring or cultivate an arts and science hub at Virginia Tech that further focuses on mind-body research, a place that could be a resource for the community in addition to being a scientific endeavor. They are currently applying for a National Endowment of the Arts Research Labs grant for this exact purpose.
“There are so many ways that we can bring in arts-based research on a quantitative and qualitative level that would have meaning for us as artists,” Rugh said. “We really want to create choreographic work and then examine what’s happening between the performers themselves, as well as between the performers and the audience.”
But in the short term, they’re excited about the possibilities and potential outcomes of this project.
“We’ve been running studies on neurotypical individuals, especially during the pandemic when there is all this social isolation going on,” Basso said. “So, our preliminary studies have shown that even one single session of dance can enhance positive feelings and decrease negative ones, as well as enhance social togetherness and feelings of social connectedness. No matter who you are, you can benefit.”
# # #
Online Link:
No comments:
Post a Comment