Susan Magsamen - Neuroscience, NeuroArts, and the mystery that life really is

Susan Magsamen makes her life at the frontier: the frontier of neuroscience, of institutional change, of the intersection of art and science. Her's is a life full of wisdom for how to live amongst mystery and befriend complexity.

Susan's work focuses on how the arts and aesthetic experiences measurably change the brain, body and behavior and how this knowledge can be translated to inform health, wellbeing and learning programs in medicine, public health and education.

Susan is the founder and executive director of the International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab), Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics, a groundbreaking neuroaesthetics initiative at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She is also the co-director of the field-defining NeuroArts Blueprint project in partnership with the Aspen Institute, defining, sparking, and cultivating the new area of inquiry at the intersection of science, art, and technology.

She is also a practicing artist and wonderfully unapologetic singer in all contexts, which I learned first hand when she spontaneously led a room of 200 people in "You are my sunshine" as a way of creating connection. Part of her art is her beautiful writing. She's the author of eight books, including the New York Times Bestseller Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us with Ivy Ross, written for the general public.

Magsamen is a Fellow at the Royal Society of the Arts and a strategic advisor to several innovative organizations and initiatives, including the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture, the American Psychological Association, and the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

I wanted to have Susan on to talk with her about how to make a life at the edge of understanding, how to engage with mystery. So this is a conversation about mystery and unsettledness, and how those are factors in leading an enriched and flourishing life; timeless sensibilities yet for which new lives like Susan's offer growing wisdom.