Taking Note: Stress, Music, and Epigenetics in Heart Disease Patients

Last September, in opening remarks during a National Academy of Sciences workshop on the arts and aging, I posed some questions about research in this field. As reported in Aging and the Arts: Building the Science (2013), an account of the workshop, jointly sponsored by the NEA and the National Institutes of Health, I asked, “Are there theoretical models that explain how participation in the arts affects the health and well-being of older Americans?”

For researchers in the social sciences, assumptions of this type are often illustrated through a “theory of change” diagram or a logic model. But in biomedical research, there’s an additional layer of terminology to describe how we think different variables rub off each other to produce a result. We talk about plausible “pathways” or “mechanisms of action.” And every so often a study emerges that invokes this impressive argot to reflect on how art works.