Embodied neuroscience: artistic practice meets science

In my presentation, I will pin-point compelling arguments for a more holistic scientific approach, instigated by artistic practice and supported by scientific evidence. Over ten years, I collaborated at the intersection of art (in particular dance) and cognitive neuroscience. Fortunately, dance has received much attention in scientific research during this time and is now even present in scholarly textbooks. The main interest in using dance was to study the so-called mirror neurons. These neurons are activated during action execution and during passive action observation, as if mentally simulating the observed action. As has been shown by means of dance, the degree of the neural activity is dependent on spectators' motor or visual experience. Furthermore, more ecological artistically valid stimuli of long duration recently allowed researchers to disentangle individual brain functions of the mirror neuron network. I thus propose that embodied neuroscience (i.e. artists' and scientists' participation in each other's research practice) will lead to more fruitful collaborations and propel our understanding of the brain in action.