N/NY-TE-33.2 - Exploring Art Therapy Assumptions through the Lens of Neuroscience

The lens of neuroscience will be used to explore assumptions that underlie the practice of art therapy and increase understanding of connections between artmaking, emotional processing, and emotional expression. Experiential components will reinforce information about interconnections between art making and brain regions associated with visual-motor, emotional, autonomic, and cognitive behaviors.

Learning Objectives

Participants will be able to identify central nervous system circuits that may be instrumental in the integration of art making with cognition and emotions.
Participants will be able to identify the connections between emotions and regulation of autonomic and motor systems.
Participants will integrate information about central and autonomic circuits that may provide the biological basis to support two central assumptions of art therapy.

Dr. Christianne Strang

Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology

University of Alabama

Christianne Strang PhD, ATR-BC, CEDCAT-S is an art therapist with more than 30 years of clinical art therapy experience and is past president of the American Art therapy Association. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in neurobiology, behavioral neuroscience, developmental neuroscience, and creative arts therapies. Her research is focused on how visual processing is affected in disease states such as Alzheimer’s and macular degeneration. She also provides art therapy services to individuals in treatment for anorexia and bulimia.