ART AND THE BRAIN
Round Table AIRI
Speakers:
Yuka Azegami,
Fresco Parkinson Institute Italia
Lice Ghilardi,
Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Neurology, CUNY
and President of the Melvin Yahr Foundation for Parkinson’s Disease
Monica Norcini,
Research Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology, NYU School of Medicine
Elisa Tatti,
Research Associate, Research Foundation of the City University of New York, CUNY, School of Medicine
Art making is essentially a fantastic gymnasium not only for the brain of the artist, but also for that of the viewer. Art making and observation may help increasing brain health, by reinforcing reward mechanisms, increasing pleasure, improving mood, releasing anxiety, and enhancing social interactions. Also art can help in optimizing visual exploration, restoring sensory perception, improving visuo-motor integration and motor performance. In summary, art, as a healing and rehabilitative gymnastic, can promote beneficial changes in brain structure, plasticity and function.
In this perspective, in 2015, Drs. Alessandro Di Rocco and M. Felice Ghilardi approached Dr. Ikuko Acosta at the Graduate Art Therapy Program at New York University to design an Art therapy program for people with Parkinson’s disease.
They reasoned that, in Parkinson disease, not only brain plasticity is severely reduced and depression and social stigma are present, but also visual processes may be impaired at different levels. Such abnormalities are important contributors to different motor and non-motor symptoms that limit the autonomy and quality of life of both patients and caregivers. They thought that art therapy could have been an effective tool to improve the overall well being of these people. Indeed, art therapy is a wholesome treatment that fuses art making with applied psychology within a psychotherapeutic framework. Credentialed art therapists promote creativity and human experience in small patient groups by providing artistic and psychological support and a continuous assessment of the psychological and physical progress through personal interactions and the art making processes. Credentialed art therapists undergo an intensive training that integrates psychotherapy and visual arts practice that engages the creative power of art for clinical assessment and treatment. The person-centered clinical orientation is guided by humanistic and contemporary approaches to psychoanalytic theory that include ego psychology, object relations, self and social psychology, and that are grounded especially in attachment and trauma theories. Therefore, the benefits for the patient are not limited to a rehabilitative perspective. They are further enhanced by the psychological expertise and personalized approach of the art therapist. The art therapists clinical impressions can also be used to enhance the quality of patient care. The ten-week program at NYU that finally started in 2017 was very successful and led to the finding that the motor function significantly improved at the end of the program. The program is still active and thriving in New York and continued even through the COVID emergency with virtual sessions.
Following the success of the art therapy program conducted by credentialed art therapists, in 2020 in Florence, Italy, was established an art program led by expert art teachers, that provided support both from a technical and motivational point of view to patients with Parkinson disease. In the same time, in another Italian city, Vicenza, a similar program was initiated by artists that invited patients with Parkinson to freely interpret everyday life activities in the context of a group work.