Meeting the multidimensional self: fostering selfhood at the interface of Creative Arts Therapies and neuroscience.

Intriguing explorations at the intersection of the fields of neuroscience and psychology are driven by the quest to understand the neural underpinnings of "the self" and their psychotherapeutic implications. These translational efforts pertain to the unique Creative Arts Therapies (CATs) and the attributes and value of the self-related processes they offer. The self is considered as a multi-layered complex construct, comprising bodily and mental constituents, subjective-objective perspectives, spatial and temporal dimensions.

The Embodied-Enactive-Interactive Brain: Bridging Neuroscience and Creative Arts Therapies.

The recognition and incorporation of evidence-based neuroscientific concepts into creative arts therapeutic knowledge and practice seem valuable and advantageous for the purpose of integration and professional development. Moreover, exhilarating insights from the field of neuroscience coincide with the nature, conceptualization, goals, and methods of Creative Arts Therapies (CATs), enabling comprehensive understandings of the clinical landscape, from a translational perspective. This paper contextualizes and discusses dynamic brain functions that have been suggested to lie at the heart of intra- and inter-personal processes.

The autism-mutated ADNP plays a key role in stress response.

Activity-dependent neuroprotective protein (ADNP), discovered and first characterized in our laboratory (IG), is vital for mammalian brain formation and presents one of the leading genes mutated de novo causing an autistic syndrome, namely the ADNP syndrome. Furthermore, a unique mouse model of Adnp-haploinsufficiency was developed in the laboratory (IG), with mice exhibiting cognitive and social deficiencies. ADNP is regulated by vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP), and pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating peptide (PACAP).

Moving Along and Beyond the Spectrum: Creative Group Therapy for Children With Autism.

Group therapy for autism confronts the core of the syndrome. Non-directed dynamic approaches, in which moment-to-moment spontaneous expressions drive the content of group sessions, are even more intricate. The implementation of nonverbal creative techniques holds the key to self-expression and self-other exploration, promoting communication and play.

The role of the amygdala in enhanced remembrance of negative episodes and acquired negativity of related neutral cues.

Prior research on the interaction between emotion and episodic memory established that negatively charged events are better remembered compared to neutral events (i.e. enhanced remembrance), as well as that a priori neutral cues that were present in the environment during a negative event can attain aversive meaning by themselves (i.