Exploring the intersection of the arts and mental health w/ Sasha Gusikhin

Today on Creative Currents, we explore the intersection of music and mental health. Our guest is Sasha Gusikhin, an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan pursuing a fascinating and surprisingly common double major: Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience (BCN) in LSA  plus Voice Performance in our School of Music, Theatre & Dance.

Sasha Gusikhin is an arts-organizer, vocalist, and multidisciplinary artist in her third year studying neuroscience and voice performance at the University of Michigan. She is the executive director of the Aphasia Community Friendship Center of Michigan, which fuses principles of neuroscience and the arts to foster community healing for persons with communication disorders.  As a UMS 21st Century Artist Intern, Sasha collaborates with the Philadelphia Orchestra to develop programming at the intersection of arts and health.  Her mission is to utilize the arts to raise mental health awareness through a uniquely science-integrated lens and to advocate for precise mental health treatment, leading her to launch the new arts-presenting organization, NeuroArts Productions.

Sasha Gusikhin's Linkedin Profile: www.linkedin.com/in/sasha-gusikhin-255a03217 

Company social media: @neuroartsprod on Instagram

Link to view "All in Your Head Project" https://vimeo.com/911006161  

Contact gusikhin@umich.edu

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Transcript

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Today on Creative Currents, we explored the intersection of the arts and mental health. Our guest is Sasha Gusev, an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan pursuing a fascinating and surprisingly common double major bio psychology, cognition and neuroscience in the College of Arts. Plus, vocal performance in our School of Music, theater, and dance. Sasha doesn't see these two paths a separate. In fact, her work displays how deeply intertwined the scientific and artistic fields can be. She recently organized a multimedia performance on campus titled All in Your Head, that provided an artistic window into the experience of depression through image, dance and jazz. Her hope is to destigmatize mental health challenges and to help explain a condition that affects so many, but is often misunderstood. She aspires to take her artistic vision worldwide through her organization, Neuro Arts Productions. Stay tuned for a great conversation about the interplay of the arts and the mind all ahead. In this episode of Creative Currents. Welcome, Sasha again to the Creative Currents Studios. We really want to focus on, you know, how all of this work that the university is doing, this big investment in the arts, creating the arts initiative, how that's impacting students and what students are doing here. So, Sasha, you, as I understand it, are a double major and you're at the School of Music. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Absolutely. So first of all, thank you so much for having me on this podcast today. I'm really thrilled and honored to be part of, you know, this, this beginning of an incredible podcast series, creative, current. So thank you so much for having me. So yeah, I am a double major. I am a voice performance major at the School of Music, theater, dance, as well as a neuroscience major in LSA here. And yeah, I'm really, really interested in the intersection between these different disciplines and specifically how, you know, merging these really disparate, fields. You know, the arts and neuroscience can really lead to some tangible changes. It relates to mental health policy, increasing mental health access, and specifically using kind of this neuroscience based lens, for advocacy. So, that's kind of really been the direction I've gone in. I've been really interested in. Yeah, music as healing and kind of how do we use the arts in different, you know, healing capacities, working with individuals, with communication disorders. And now I'm kind of also really interested in specifically science communication and the way that that can be propelled through the arts as one of the most, you know, universal forms of communication. Well, that's fantastic, but let's just rewind a little bit. How did you become a singer? Is singing something you've always done? I mean, you're an amazing voice. I've heard you. Thank you. Yeah. So, I just I started out singing in my, wrestling community choir at, like, maybe seven years old or so and really fell in love with it. It was really, you know, supported by my community. And, I kind of just kept singing it through childhood. And it was actually, I think I made the decision to, you know, audition for music school very late in the process. I think it was actually right before my senior year of high school where I was like, you know what? I think dual degree is actually what we're interested in pursuing. It was always originally going to be just neuroscience. But it was, you know, my senior year of high school, I'd created a sort of capstone project, evaluating the effect of music interventions on, the depression symptoms of individuals, in residence homes and retirement homes. And, I just absolutely fell in love with, you know, how is it that when we sing familiar tunes to individuals with dementia, you know, they're able to remember and kind of have some of these, like, challenges and depression symptoms alleviated through familiar music. You know, and they're not able to remember, you know, other semantic facts. And then, you know, it really got me into this interest of what what is the neuroscience behind this? How does this work? And how can we also kind of harness the power of music on the level of your biology and everything? How can we use that to, yeah, kind of facilitate healing, improve quality of life. So then I realize, you know, I'm really interested in pursuing this dual degree. But more so than just, you know, research on music in the brain, but really being able to, you know, take performance at that kind of high level that the University of Michigan can offer. So, yeah, that's kind of how I wound up in the dual degree. And I'm so, so grateful for it. That's amazing. I would have thought you discovered neuroscience here, but this was an interest. So how did you get interested in neuroscience? So yeah, I think since about 15 years old, I've always just been absolutely fascinated by the way that the brain works. I've always kind of almost used it as like, you know, this guidebook for explaining just about everything that happens to me or anyone. And it's also kind of it provides that tangible, kind of experience of, okay, so, you know, if somebody is experiencing mental health challenges, I kind of think, how can we use neuroscience as sort of, you know, something that can help explain it in a way that is really, you know, material. And then also being able to combine that with, you know, holistic life experience and, how all these different, unique factors of, you know, someone's personhood affects their subjective reality when they, you know, go through life and experience things. And all of this, I think, can be so well connected to just the inner workings of the brain. And it's always been fascinating to me. And, I think that there's just a huge gap between, you know, neuroscience and mental health and our conversations about awareness. I think that, you know, I'm really, really interested in how we can bridge these to and really translate what we know about the inner workings of the brain. And, you know, neuroscience behind mental health, depression and how can we, you know, actually bring that into the clinic, out of the lab, into the clinic to really create these sort of custom tailored treatment plans for people. So this has been a passion of mine since I was, you know, really young when I first discovered the idea of precision medicine. And, you know, how can this be used to actually, you know, find individuals the treatment that is right for them. And yeah, since but since I discovered that I just started writing my little, you know, high school papers on this topic, I just I knew that this is probably going to guide the rest of my life direction. So coming to Michigan was the right choice? Yes, I think so. Great program and at the school music, theater, dance, direct program, neuroscience. And it's a surprisingly common double major I like I used to associate dean at the School of Music and Dance and, and there were I think it was the most popular double major was between music and neuroscience, which is pretty, pretty amazing. So one of those ways, I mean, I think the arts help us grapple emotionally with understandings, like to just to lean into discomfort. And one of the issues around mental health, of course, is the way it's stigmatized, right? The way we see this as a disease or something that to be frightened of or something to deny, something to pretend doesn't exist or is not a pervasive social problem. And I think one of the things the university is doing by, you know, adopting Knock-knock and charter and sort of leaning into mental health is to embrace that. You recently did a performance that I was at at the dispatch center where you had a bunch of jazz musicians and dancers, and then also people who were, you know, working through mental health issues themselves, sort of on the stage. Can you tell us a little bit about your neuro arts partnership? And, and you've built like an entire, I mean, school wide, but also national and international consortium, really to focus on the arts and mental health. So tell us about that project and what inspired it. Yeah, thank you so much. So I was also, you know, really grateful to have you there as well as, you know, just incredible mentors and audience members just, really engaged in, you know, this intersection between neuroscience and the arts. So, a little bit about neuro arts productions, which we had just honestly officially launched after this pilot project. So, you know, I just kind of founded this, arts presenter entirely focused on science communication as it relates to mental health advocacy. So, again, you know, really interested in bringing precision medicine to light and actually raising these critical conversations about the state of our mental health system today. The fact that it is a trial and error treatment system where individuals will be trying medications, therapies and treatments over and over again until we might finally find the right fit. But oftentimes they never find the right fit. And that's because, you know, we do not have this sort of precise, custom tailored treatment process. So we want to advocate for, you know, really taking into account an individual's unique life experience, their neurobiology and all of these different factors that are custom tailored to the individual in creating that treatment plan. So, you know, and I have a lot of personal ties to this, you know, one of my incredible best friends, Luke fostered, this is all kind of an honor of him. And. Yeah, it's just, really, really passionate about this topic. And so I found that one of the ways that I can most effectively kind of bring these conversations to light is through the arts. That's sort of been kind of the tried and true experience I've had over the last few years here at Michigan is how can we actually raise these critical conversations and, you know, kind of use the arts to, allow for that emotional connection, that kind of personal resonance with the topic so much more effectively than maybe just, written word or just speaking aloud. It's because it really creates that relatability. So this pilot project that we had, it was called the All in Your Head project, and it was this four movement multimodal work. We use, you know, a jazz composition. By two of our incredible composers, Liam Sharon and Cameron Wilson. Choreography and dance. Our incredible dancer is also a neuroscience and dance major. So she danced throughout the entire four movements. And we also had projections and visuals as curated by Senior Dang. And we had, you know, a lot of incredible collaborators on this from a variety of disciplines, really all coming together to create this work that is intending to explore the inner workings of the brain, kind of, you know, provide that sort of access to neuroscience that most people, you know, might not be able to just, you know, be in the loop in the neuroscience community unless they're, you know, in academia, things like that. So how can we use the arts to, you know, really kind of make neuroscience accessible and engaging and interesting, but also connect that to conversations around mental health. So our first movement was all about the trial and error treatment system. So we had kind of this repetitive motif kind of circling over and over again. And our dancer kind of showing this depletion of energy after each trial, kind of really creating this analogy to, our, you know, mental health trial and error treatment system can be, you know, really challenging and destructive for individuals and sort of just bringing light to the fact that this exists. A lot of conversations we have are all about, you know, how our mental health system can, you know, needs a lot of work and it's really inaccessible to a lot of individuals. But a lot of the time we don't dig into the reasons why. And so that's kind of our whole mission is to really dive into this through the arts. So that was movement one that we also explored. So the, you know, neural connectivity and the way that our own brains actually can provide an analogy and a model for how our medical systems could work. So, you know, you know, connection and all of these interdisciplinary professionals working together as treatment teams to provide that kind of custom tailored experience, you know, our own brains, our neurons are communicating with one another constantly. Synapses, item, neurons firing and creating pictures. Exactly. Yes, yes, yes. Creating networks and connections with one another. So this sounds so fantastic. And I know that, you know, as a podcast, we can't really see and can be, you know, be at the performance. But maybe we could do a quick example. I wonder if you could share some of the music from the performance, maybe showing that the difference between the healthy brain and the depressed brain. And so the first example here is going to be of dorsal and connectivity in the depressed participant. And that's going to show this sort of increased functional connectivity. And the way that we will represent that musically is, you know, we have two improvisers, one improvising over, you know, image A, which is, the depressed participant, and image B, which is how control. So for image A, you're going to hear kind of this increased intensity, you know, faster, more rapid notes. You know, more florid lines and maybe an increased volume just sort of displaying this, you know, increased connectivity, a little bit more chaotic if you were a little bit more, you know, disorganized. And then you'll also have, an improviser working with, you know, image B, which is about, you know, more decreased dorsal connectivity. This is in the healthy control. So you're going to hear kind of, again, less rapid notes, more more of a smooth line. So kind of the ways that we can represent these two image images musically, as if they were graphic scores. So you'll listen to a little bit of that. Hey. And so our third movement was, you know, I think one of the, the biggest displays of what we're intending to do is, kind of tangibly show. So I think one of the first steps to reducing stigma is to kind of showing that mental health is just as real and valid and serious as any other traditionally physical invisible illness. So, you know, one thing I've noticed is when I'm having conversations with folks who don't kind of have that access to, you know, mental health science. When we show people, you know, pictures of brain scans of this is what your brain looks like with depression, this is what a control, you know, study brain looks like. There's actually some, you know, there's a greater level of understanding once you're able to see those visuals. So. Well, we had, you know, we had infirmary images, showing kind of the difference in functional connectivity between, your brain with depression and a brain without depression. And, you know, we had our jazz musicians improvise over each of these images, kind of really creating that musical analogy. And so kind of putting sound to visual to science. I think it's the merge of all these different disciplines that can really allow for that greater understanding. So you start to see these as, as like structural problems with the brain, chemical problems on the brain as a, as a disease that needs to be treated rather than a floor, right, or, or moral stigma or some kind of failure on the part of the individual to do something, you start to really see this as a medical problem. Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, but it's so much more than that as well. But I think definitely the first step is to really, you know, show the science and then also continue integrating it with, you know, our actually leads us into movement four, which is all about, you know, everybody has a different starting place when seeking treatment. So, you know, this can all be affected by your, you know, culture, socioeconomic background, you know, just stigma, internal, like, you know, shame or self stigma, all of these different factors, environmental factors. Because ultimately brain and environment creates mind. And so there's there's so many different layers to, you know, how access can be affected and also how your brain ultimately is affected by treatment. So there's just a million different factors that need to be taken into account in this really personalized manner. So it's not only just, you know, your brain, but it's also how the environment affects your brain, how, you know, adverse experiences can also shape your brain and make them more conducive to certain treatments and medications versus others. And so looking at all of this in this really holistic, cohesive lens, I think is, you know, the way forward and what we're trying to advocate for. So that is kind of the the whole pilot project that we just launched. And, really looking forward to seeing how it continues to evolve. Now is amazing. So what are the next steps? What are you hoping happens? Yeah. So, right now with, you know, a lot of support from the university, incredible mentors, working with Arts Engine, you know, potentially Arts initiative and the Excel program we have here at SMC, which is also fantastic. Optimize Michigan, just, a variety of sources of support. Now I'm working on kind of building out the longer term program for arts presenting neural arts productions companies. So, I'm working on this summer, maybe planning some, some tours around, New York, Philadelphia, kind of in the East Coast, because we have a lot of really exciting collaborations going on there. Also working on just some introducing some new modes. You know, we're thinking about creating this exhibition in the summer, where it's going to be kind of some more audiovisual installations. We're really interested in the use of the emerging technologies, augmented reality, VR, these kinds of different ideas to, yeah, really kind of provide greater insight into this. You know, this is the internal experience of depression. This is what your brain looks like. This is also, you know, what we see on the outside, kind of, you know, we're working on developing this photography series, you know, a lot of just different, really exciting artistic endeavors. So, yeah, really just continue to continuing to build a team, build out a longer term program. And yeah, paving the way forward for kind of neuro arts. But also right now the field of neuro arts is really focused on, the effect of arts and music on the brain. But I'm really interested in adding a new dimension to this field, which is kind of sort of the reverse. How can we leverage the arts to create this sort of tangible change in awareness as it relates to mental health, public policy and mental health awareness? And I think this is a new field I'm trying to call socio neuro arts. So, yeah, a lot of really exciting things moving forward. What's so fantastic to see what you're doing and just to see, I mean, your entrepreneurial approach to, to sort of developing this in multiple phases, reaching outside the university, having this larger social mission and, and inventing your own new field, that's fantastic is exactly what we want to see the arts do and Michigan students do. So thank you for being a guest on Creative Currents. Yeah, I. Thank you so much. Physically, I really, really looking forward to, you know, seeing the future of Creative Currents then, you know, really glad to be on this podcast. Thank you so much. Creative currents is a project of the University of Michigan Arts Initiative. Please subscribe to hear more great conversations with artists, scholars, and arts leaders from across the campus and across the globe. Send your comments and suggestions via email to Creative Currents at U. Mesh.edu. This episode of Creative Currents was produced by Marc Clegg and Jessica Jenks, and our audio engineer is Audrey Banks. Our original theme music is composed and performed by Ansel Neely, a student at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater and dance. To learn more about the University of Michigan's Arts initiative, please visit our website at artsy. You mentioned Edu. Thanks for listening.