MUSE Initiative

The MUSE Initiative at Center for Healthy Minds is a collaborative research and practice-based initiative aimed at exploring and harnessing the healing power of music and the arts. 

About the MUSE Initiative

MUSE stands for Multidisciplinary Understanding of Self-Evolution.

MUSE is a research and community initiative at the Center for Healthy Minds exploring how music and the arts shape human flourishing. MUSE launched in 2025 and is led by neuroscientist and artist Dr. Dalal Abu Amneh, alongside CHM Founder and Director Dr. Richard J. Davidson.

Grounded in contemplative science, neuroscience, psychology, and the arts, MUSE investigates how aesthetic experience—especially music—can support emotional regulation, well-being, prosocial behavior, and collective resilience.

We define MUSE as a Multidisciplinary Understanding of Self-Evolution: a framework that examines how human beings grow, adapt, and transform across emotional, cognitive, social, and spiritual dimensions—and how artistic practices can actively facilitate this evolution.

Why MUSE Now?

Modern societies face unprecedented levels of stress, fragmentation, and loneliness. At the same time, the arts are often marginalized in health and policy conversations.

MUSE asks a simple but urgent question: What if music and the arts are not peripheral to well-being—but central to it?