Interpersonal neurobiology as a lens to understand the experience of group singing for health and wellbeing

Interpersonal neurobiology as a lens to understand the experience of group singing for health and wellbeing

There has been an explosion of research over the last two decades investigating the benefits of group singing for a range of clinical, non-clinical (community) populations. Such studies commonly take a reductionist approach to the phenomenon of group singing by seeking to identify specific psychosocial and/or neurobiological “mechanisms of action” which produce singing’s health and wellbeing effects. More recent qualitative research has sought to classify group singing as a complex adaptive system which must be understood contextually as comprised of a multifaceted and dynamic interplay of various parts.

This paper takes up this view of singing as a complex system by considering group singing through the lens of Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB), which has been the life’s work of pre-eminent American psychiatrist, Dr Dan Siegel. IPNB is a consilient framework as it seeks to identify and draw upon consilience or agreement between different academic disciplines (including indigenous knowledges and contemplative traditions) about the nature of the mind, the embodied brain, and interpersonal relationships. The touchstone of IPNB is the view that _integration_ lies at the heart of wellbeing. Integration arises when parts of a complex system are differentiated (recognised as unique and valuable) and then linked, to form a whole which is greater than the sum of the parts. This theoretical paper applies the key ideas of IPNB to the phenomenon of group singing, and considers how integration (and hence, wellbeing) arises for both facilitator and participants within complex group singing dynamics.

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