In September of 2022, I was invited to speak as a keynote speaker at the Parents as Teachers 2022 conference in Denver (the video is here). Additionally, an article about this work can be found here. 
I shared these with a colleague who is a caregiver and takes dance lessons from me at Goddard Riverside Naturally Occurring Retirement Community (NORC), and here is his testimonial: 

• "Thanks for sharing your article on caregiving with focus on parents caring for children and its implication on how this interaction can impact neural connections and network on both the parent or caregiver and the child the care receiver. I like the way you demonstrate the link between art and its impact on the brain. I think ultimately caregiving from parents to children and its mutual impact on the brain, can be extended to caring among any two mutual interactions, children and elders, people and pets, caring for people in need, people in love, or even for some caring for art or inanimate objects, as long as it is triggered by genuine love for it. The plasticity and elasticity of brain, as you have pointed out, is malleable from any input be it caregiving, Love or even something totally opposite of it..." ​

Symbols are an integral part of the Bharatanatyam vocabulary, and we are taught specific mudras (a term used in yoga) or hand gestures (the term used in Bharatanatyam) that act as symbols to help us tell stories. For example, we use the “Mayura” hasta to show a peacock, and by extension, Lord Kartikeya who rides on a peacock. By showing a “Damaru” (a small, two-headed drum), we can show the actual musical instrument as well as Lord Shiva, who is often seen with a damaru. The Abhinaya Darpana (The Mirror of Gestures) contains and systematizes a large number of gestures and symbols for the Devas, the planets, famous emperors, seven oceans, famous rivers, trees, animals, flying creatures, and water creatures [1].

While many of these symbols are taught to us in a systematic way, the language of Bharatanatyam also gives the freedom for us to create new symbols. For example, below is a hasta I created after watching a mother bird feed her babies, and another hasta to show a (male) peacock with its wings and feathers at rest. I also conceived of a hasta to show a bat as it perches upside down a cave. As students of dance, we may not think of this in an obvious way, but by using symbols, we are engaging in semiotics or semiology, the study of “signs, symbols, and signification” [2].

Our brains and minds have a remarkable capacity to take these physical and visual descriptions and give them meaning. What is happening in the brain that helps us make sense of symbols and ascribe meaning to them? How is meaning represented in the brain?
 
The implications of this work are beyond the merely esoteric. For example, a study that did MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) set out to look at how we learn how to read and how our brains comprehend language from arbitrary visual symbols (i.e., alphabets) on a page. This study found a specific role of the ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOT). The study showed remarkable specificity even within the vOT and revealed that there was a gradient such that at first, the rear part of the vOT was engaged, and then as the brain was understanding the meaning of the words, more forward parts of the vOT were involved [3].  
 
One can hypothesize that the way symbols are transformed in Bharatanatyam may overlap in some ways with how we learn to read. There is much more to discover about how we perceive and give meaning to symbols. Bharatanatyam may be a tool to study this aspect of the brain’s functioning. In future posts, I will go through some of what we know from neuroscience on how we make sense of symbols!
 
 
Citations:

1. The Abhiniya Darpana of Nandikesvara compendium, "The mirror of gestures". By Coomaraswamy. https://www.shreelina.com/odissi/alankara/The-Mirror-of-Gestures.pdf. Accessed February 7, 2023.
2. Seiler RM. Semiology // Semiotics. https://people.ucalgary.ca/~rseiler/semiolog.htm. Accessed February 7, 2023.
3. Taylor JSH, Davis MH, Rastle K. Mapping visual symbols onto spoken language along the ventral visual stream. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019;116(36):17723-17728. doi:10.1073/pnas.1818575116.

Caregiving practices change the brains of parents and other caregivers as well as the children they are supporting and play a key role in children’s future success. Scientists have discovered more about the impact that caregiving has on the brain—not only the child’s brain, but also the caregiver’s. Earlier in fall of 2022, I was honored to share some of what I’ve learned at the Parents as Teachers annual conference in Denver.
An article about this presentation can be found on this link. 

In September 1, 2022, I was invited to speak at the Parents as Teachers International Conference in Denver, Colorado. The title of my talk was "Exploring Early Brain Development through Dance and Neuroscience". Some pictures and the recording can be found below: