Speaker Series: Susan Magsamen

April 11, 2023 - 7:00 PM EDT

Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

• How our brains and bodies transform when we participate in the arts
• How engaging our senses can help strengthen memory
• Ways that this knowledge can improve our health and wellbeing

This session will include information from the Johns Hopkins Center for Music and Medicine about how music is being used to help people with PD.

About Susan Magsamen

Susan Magsamen is the founder and executive director of the International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab), Center for Allied Neuroaesthetics, a pioneering initiative from the Pedersen Brain Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her body of work lies at the intersection of brain sciences and the arts—and how our unique response to aesthetic experiences can amplify human potential.

Magsamen is the author of the Impact Thinking model, an evidence-based research approach to accelerate how we use the arts to solve problems in health, well-being, and learning. In addition to her role at IAM Lab, she is an assistant professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins and serves as co-director of the NeuroArts Blueprint initiative in partnership with the Aspen Institute.

The author of eight books, Susan’s newest book with Random House is called Your Brain On Art: How the Arts Transform Us written with Ivy Ross, Vice President of Design for Hardware at Google. It is a journey through the science of neuroaesthetics that offers proof of how our brains and bodies are transformed when we participate in the arts and aesthetic experiences, and how this knowledge can improve our physical and mental health, help us learn and flourish, and build stronger communities.