Daphne was born prematurely and required incubator care while facing multiple infections. Her mother, unable to touch her or enter fully, stayed just inside the door in full PPE, singing lullabies over alarms and equipment. Singing calmed her and may have supported Daphne’s physiological stability. Research indicates that singing to babies in intensive care can reduce heart rate, improve breathing, and encourage feeding. The work connects to psychobiology research on how social connections and behaviors affect health. A book for general readers argues that arts are not only aesthetic but linked to wellbeing from cellular processes to cognition, memory, and mood. The proposed method breaks arts experiences into active ingredients that can be tested, refined, and prescribed like drug combinations.
"Unable to touch her baby or even properly enter the room, Fancourt kept vigil just inside the door, dressed head to toe in PPE, singing lullabies over the whir of instruments and alarms. The songs calmed her, and may have been crucial for Daphne too. Studies show that singing to babies in intensive care reduces their heart rate, improves their breathing, and encourages them to feed."
"In Art Cure, her first book for a popular audience, she aims to make a scientific case that the arts from playing music to theatre-going to painting aren't a merely aesthetic aspect of life. Instead, they are deeply entwined with our mental and physical wellbeing at every level from the workings of our cells and molecules to cognition, memory and mood. In an era of shrinking arts funding and overstretched healthcare systems, her message is urgent."
"But how to compile rigorous evidence for something as holistic, indefinable and, perhaps, resolutely unscientific as art? She argues that every arts experience can be broken down into active ingredients' Fancourt's answer is to dissect artistic interventions and practices into their component parts. She argues that every arts experience can be broken down into active ingredients; could even if we had the processing power be converted into binary code."
"Singing to sick babies becomes a mix of noise buffering, neurological stimulation, human contact and stress reduction. These ingredients trigger biological mechanisms that lead to health outcomes, she explains, and we can test, refine and prescribe them just as we might any cocktail of drugs. With this approach in mind, she su"
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