Social and Physical Pain Share Neural Architecture

The old adage, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” may be more defensive than accurate. Indeed, most languages rely on words that represent pain — hurt feelings, heartache, broken hearts — to communicate feelings of social distress. Recent findings in neuroscience suggest that sayings such as these may reflect more than poetic metaphor, and instead indicate an overlap in neural systems used to represent physical and social pain in humans.

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In Hypermusic Prologue, physicist Lisa Randall re-imagines her extradimensional theories of the universe as opera

Since writing a bestselling book on her fascinating and complex extra-dimensional theory of the universe, Harvard physicist Lisa Randall has been busy re-imagining it as an appropriately cerebral art form—opera. After three years of development, Hypermusic Prologue: A Projective Opera in Seven Planes premiered at Paris’s prestigious Centre Pompidou in June and, like Randall’s book Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions [Buy], it manages to translate the impenetrable world of theoretical physics into something that not only appeals to scientists, but to anyone willing to look beyond the obvious for clues about the nature of reality.

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Let's Dance to Health

Dancing can be magical and transforming. It can breathe new life into a tired soul; make a spirit soar; unleash locked-away creativity; unite generations and cultures; inspire new romances or rekindle old ones; trigger long-forgotten memories; and turn sadness into joy, if only during the dance.

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Singing for self-healing, health and wellbeing

Outside of Western practices, group singing is an important social and cultural force. Emergent studies in the area of music therapy and music and health demonstrate that group singing can promote feelings of health and wellbeing. Studies provide evidence of the physiological, cognitive and emotional benefits of group singing for an improved quality of life. Considering the potential for young and old across the lifespan, it is proposed that group singing should be encouraged for all people, without placing demands on music reading skills.

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ArtsHealth at the University of Newcastle

ArtsHealth is the connection between the humanities and creative arts, and health, medicine, science and well-being.

ArtsHealth: Centre for Research and Practice brings together the research of academics and post-graduate students in the creative arts with those of academics in the social sciences, sciences, humanities, education, architecture and medicine to focus on studies that investigate and promote community health and public and community-based arts and the development of culturally rich and sustainable social environments.

The research focus of the centre falls into three broad areas:

• The Humanities/Creative Arts and Medical Science
• Creativity, Culture, Community and Wellbeing
• Practice-based Research

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" The one cogent argument for including art schools in Universities is the possibility for cross departmental research and collaboration. This is sadly rare in most of our Universities or at best token but here in Newcastle the cooperation between Health, Art and Architecture has been excellent. The powerful connection between memory, objects, spaces and emotional engagement with the real world makes this a natural area for common interest but as far as I know it is most clearly articulated in this University and this community."

Anthony Bond OAM
Assistant Director, Curatorial & Head Curator International Art
Art Gallery of NSW