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Brain Awareness Week 2010 |
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Written by Mark Zinn
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Brain Awareness Week is March 15-21st.
What is Brain Awareness Week?
Brain Awareness Week (BAW) is a world-wide event with the objective to increase public awareness of the inner workings of the brain as well as the latest important neuroscientific findings.
The Society for Psychology in the Performing Arts (SPPA) is a proud partner of the The Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives who launched BAW in 1996. BAW partners now includes more than 2,000 universities, K-12 schools, hospitals, patient groups, museums, government agencies, service organizations, and professional associations. SPPA relates music learning and performance to cognitive neuroscience and offers opportunities for music students to engage in fun educational activities and participate in neuroscientific studies. We use projected presentations, tours of exhibits and public lectures, and other activities to:
- Motivate students, parents, teachers, professional performers, though increased understanding of brain function as it pertains to the arts.
- Increase basic understanding of brain functions within the context of music and the performing arts.
- Improve wellness through greater awareness of neuroscentific issues involving the performing arts.
- Make the connection between increased neuroscientific research findings and benefits to student musicians.
While SPPA sponsors Brain Awareness Week each year in March, principles regarding neuro-education are being applied throughout the entire year.
The BAW campaign is proud to be celebrating Its 15th Anniversary! In celebration of the 15th anniversary of BAW, the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives is offering a new promotional flyer.
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A Note from the President |
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Written by Dr. Marcie Zinn
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 Welcome to the Society for Psychology in the Performing Arts (SPPA). We are an interdisciplinary organization, dedicated to cross-disciplinary research, dissemation and practice for bringing social science to the performing arts.
Neuroeducation is an exciting new integrative field which promises to bring cognitive neuroscience and social science to education. What this means for the arts is an end to simply focusing on the music (or art) itself. In going beyond current practices, 21st century teachers would come to have a sound knowledge of individual differences and vulnerability to risk for problems that can emanate from instructional practices. These teachers would be wise consumers of research and, while having a vast knowledge of the subject areas they utilize, refrain from going beyond their personal expertise. As such, NeuroEducation will look at basic and applied research in Childhood Psychology, clinical Health Psychology, Learning, Cognitive Neuroscience, and traditional arts teaching, rehearsal and performance practice. Neuroeducation is about drawing from these seemingluy diverse dimensions to produce information about the interdependence of social & biological science, and the performing arts.
Recently the Society for Neuroscience sponsored a Summit to help launch this new and extremely relevant approach to education. Here are some links which are a "must read":
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Written by Dr. Marcie Zinn
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Every year hundreds of thousands of students enter the arts via private instruction, and every year just about as many drop out. Do we know the exact numbers? Do we have an approximation? No, we do not. No one has 'run the numbers.'
Do you know what learning "looks like" in the brain? Are you aware that you cannot feel your brain from the outside? Learning is a neurochemical change, so it can't be seen, and if you could feel your brain, you would not be alive long.
These paragraphs have something in common; that is, they present the need to bring science into the arts. In order to find the answer in the first paragraph, one would have to do a large scale longitudinal study. The second paragraph was taken from a presentation I saw at an arts conference. The presenter showed two slides, each with a neuron (brain cell) on the slide. The second slide showed a slight fatter neuron. The presenter claimed that was the physiological basis for learning. Later in the day another presenter claimed she could feel her cerebellum sticking out from underneath her skull. If that were true, she would have died in infancy. It is these plus many other "neuromyths"1 that permeate our profession (the arts). I am calling for all Arts Societies to aid in positive neuoreducation so as to debunk these myths. Myths find their way into educational policy and when they do, are very difficult to undo.
How many individuals do you know from your training who had significant anxiety symptoms? Even if you have arts training only, you still may be able to reflect on the incidence of clinically significant anxiety in the arts (it's upwards of 80%). Did any of those individuals ever seek treatment, did they seek treatment for the symptoms only (anxiety produces body symptoms, and treating the body symptoms won't treat the anxiety), or did they simply work around the issue by avoidance of anxiety-provoking situations?
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SPPA is a multidisciplinary organization of research and clinical scientists, practicing clinicians, psychologists, performing artists, students and others. The mission of SPPA is to advance research, education, treatment and professional practice related to the following:
- Facilitate the direct application of psychological, neurological, educational and neuroscientific research findings to the performing arts
- Integrate that research into practice (use of psychological and psychophysiological techniques into all aspects of the performing arts)
- Disseminate the products of this research to the larger community of psychologists and performing artists so as to be useful in common, everyday practice.
What this means is that we stay focused on what is known in the scientific community as applied research. What is applied research, and what other types of research are there? |
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