U-M Creative Currents

Music, Neuroscience, and Mental Health with Sasha Gusikhin

• Arts Initiative • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Today on U-M Creative Currents, we dive into the connection between music and mental health. Our guest, Sasha Gusikhin, is a third-year University of Michigan student double-majoring in Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience (BCN) and Voice Performance in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance.

Sasha is an arts organizer, vocalist, and multidisciplinary artist whose work bridges science and the arts to promote healing and awareness. She serves as executive director of the Aphasia Community Friendship Center of Michigan, where she integrates neuroscience and creative practice to support people with communication disorders. As a UMS 21st Century Artist Intern, she has collaborated with the Philadelphia Orchestra on arts-and-health programming, and she recently founded NeuroArts Productions, a new organization dedicated to raising mental health awareness and advocating for more precise treatments through the arts.


Mark Clague:

Today on Creative Currents, we explored the intersection of the arts and mental health. Our guest is Sasha Gusikin, an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan, pursuing a fascinating and surprisingly common double major, biopsychology, cognition, and neuroscience, in the College of LSA, plus vocal performance in our School of Music, Theater, and Dance. Sasha doesn't see these two paths as separate. In fact, her work displays how deeply intertwined the scientific and artistic Thank you so much for joining us. and the mind. All ahead in this episode of Creative Currents. Welcome, Sasha Gusikin, to the Creative Currents studios. We really want to focus on 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.

Sasha Gusikhin:

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 this beginning of an incredible podcast series, Creative Currents. So thank you so much for having me. in me. So yeah, I am a double major. I am a voice performance major at the School of Music, Theater, and 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 merging these really disparate fields, the arts and neuroscience, can really lead to some tangible change as 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 music as healing and kind of how do we use the arts in different 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 universal forms of communication.

Mark Clague:

Well, that's fantastic. Well, let's just rewind a little bit. How did you become a singer? Is singing something you've always done? always done. I mean, you have an amazing voice. I've heard you perform.

Sasha Gusikhin:

Thank you. Yeah, so I started out singing in my Russian 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 musical very late in the process. I think it was actually right before my senior year of high school where I 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 this 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 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 could we use that to, yeah, I realized, 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.

Mark Clague:

That's amazing. I would have thought you discovered neuroscience here, but this was an interest. So how did you get interested in neuroscience?

Sasha Gusikhin:

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 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 of these different unique factors of someone's personhood affects their subjective reality when they 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 neuroscience and mental health and our conversations about awareness. I think that I'm really, really interested in how we can bridge these two 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 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,

Mark Clague:

so. Well, coming to Michigan was the right choice. Yes, I think so, for sure. We have a great program at the School of Music, Theater, and Dance, and a great program in neuroscience, and it's a surprisingly common double major. I used to be associate dean at the School of Music, Theater, and Dance, and there were, I think it was the most popular double major was between music and neuroscience, which is pretty amazing. So one of those ways, I mean, I think the arts help us grapple emotionally with understandings, like to lean into discomfort, and one of the issues around mental health, of course, is the the way it's stigmatized, right? The way we see this as disease or something 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 adopting the Akhenaten Charter and sort of leaning into mental health is to embrace that. You recently did a performance that I was at at the Dieterstadt Center where you had a bunch of jazz musicians and dancers and then also people who were working through mental health issues themselves sort of on the stage. Can you tell us a little bit about your neuro arts partnership? 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.

Sasha Gusikhin:

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 I just kind of founded this arts presenter entirely focused on science communication as it relates to mental health advocacy. So again, 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 they might finally find the right fit. But oftentimes, they never find the right fit. And that's because we do not have this sort of precise custom-tailored treatment process. So we want to advocate for 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. And I have a lot of personal ties to this. One of my incredible best friends, Luke Mostead, 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 a 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 used 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. She danced throughout the entire four movements. And we also had projections and visuals as curated by Sinyu Deng. And we had 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 provide that sort of access to neuroscience that most people might not be able to just be in the loop in the neuroscience community unless they're 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 mental health trial and error treatment system can be 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 how our mental health system needs a lot of work and is 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. Then we also explored the 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 So, 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, neurons firing and creating these- I remember the pictures on the wall as this was happening. Yes, yes, yes. Creating networks and connections with one another.

Mark Clague:

Sasha, this just sounds so fantastic. And I know that, you know, as a podcast, we can't really see and 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 the difference between the healthy brain and the depressed brain.

Sasha Gusikhin:

So the first example here is going to be of dorsal nexus 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 we have two improvisers, one improvising over image A, which is the depressed participant, and image B, which is healthy control. So for image A, you're going to hear kind kind of this increased intensity, you know, faster, more rapid notes, you know, more florid lines, and maybe increased volume, just sort of displaying this, you know, increased connectivity, a little bit more chaotic, if you will, 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 of a smooth line. So kind of the ways that we can represent these two images musically as if they were graphic scores. So you'll listen to a little bit of that. So our third movement was, you know, I think one of 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 and visible 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 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 what we had, you know, we had fMRI images showing kind of the difference in functional connectivity between a 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.

Mark Clague:

And you can start to see these as structural problems with the brain, chemical problems with the brain, as a disease that needs to be treated rather than a flaw or a 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.

Sasha Gusikhin:

Absolutely. 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, are 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 things. environmental factors, because ultimately brain and environment creates mind. And so there's so many different layers to 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 your brain, but it's also how the environment affects your brain, how 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 the way forward and what we're trying to advocate for. So that is kind of the whole pilot project that we just launched and I'm really looking forward to seeing how it continues to evolve.

Mark Clague:

No, it was amazing. So what are the next steps? What are you hoping happens?

Sasha Gusikhin:

Yeah, so right now with a lot of support from the university, incredible mentors, working with Arts Engine, potentially Arts Initiative and the Excel program we have here at SMTD, 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 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 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 audio visual 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 neural arts but also right now the field of neural 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 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.

Mark Clague:

Well, it's so fantastic to see what you're doing. And just to see, I mean, your entrepreneurial approach to sort of developing this in multiple phases, reaching outside the university, having this larger social mission, and inventing your own new field. That's fantastic. Exactly what we want to see the arts do and Michigan students do. So thank you for being a guest on Creative Currents.

Sasha Gusikhin:

Yeah, thank you so much, Professor Clegg. Really, really looking forward to seeing the future of Creative Currents and really glad to be on this podcast. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Mark Clague:

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 creativecurrents at umich.edu. This episode of Creative Currents was produced by Mark 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 arts.umich.edu. Thanks for listening.