Science  Write  Now

This week on the podcast, SWN’s Bianca Millroy joined by Dr Sue Wilson and Helen Carrington for our final conversation in this series – and on that note, if you’ve been a regular listener of Cognitive Conversations, thank you for coming along with us on this journey for ten episodes!

New to this series? With topics ranging from navigating neurodivergence and brain preservation to chronic pain and speech pathology, narrative medicine, psychiatry and philosophy, why not go back to #1 Synergy and explore them all?

This episode focuses on the role of music as a therapeutic intervention, and perspectives on somatic symptoms and chronic or persistent pain from two experts in the field - and how they came to specialise in a field at the intersection of mind, brain and body.

Helen, a senior music therapist, takes us through the fundamentals of Music Therapy and how it’s used specifically in clinical practice – from playing the drums, guitar or piano and singing to curating personalised playlists and even dabbling in songwriting.

Sue, a specialist psychiatrist, speaks to the interdisciplinary nature of paediatric and adolescent psychiatry, including aspects of medical practice that need to be approached differently when it comes to Functional Somatic Symptoms (FSS).

Helen explains the neuroscience behind music and its effects on the brain and nervous system, and Sue dives deep on the topic of somatisation, and how advancements in neuroscience are progressing our understanding of functional brain networks and predictive processing.

Finally, we discuss how music (and other forms of creative and artistic practice) can influence and inspire — and we share a beautiful ekphrastic poem to leave you lingering on the transformative power of art and storytelling.  

For further details on this episode (and some truly fascinating research on the neuroscience of music), check out the Show Notes below.

Now, it’s over to Sue, Helen and I, in-conversation… 

Show Notes

Meet our guests on this episode:

Dr Sue Wilson is an infant, child and adolescent psychiatrist who trained in Brisbane and Melbourne. She has worked in a public, hospital-based consultation liaison mental health service since 1998, first at the Mater Children’s Hospital and for the last 11 years at the Queensland Children’s Hospital. She also works as a psychiatrist with the Queensland Interdisciplinary Paediatric Persistent Pain Service. Her interests include mind-body health, functional somatic symptoms including functional neurological disorder, and persistent pain.

Helen Carrington is a registered music therapist with 20 years' experience supporting children, adolescents, and families. She is the senior music therapist within QIPPPS, where she helps young people engage with music to manage and recover from chronic pain. Helen leads quality initiatives involving service evaluation, literature review, and international benchmarking to strengthen evidence-based music therapy practice. She is also an active member of the Australian Music Therapy Association. Guided by a long-standing passion for the therapeutic power of music, Helen’s career centres on creating safe, engaging, and enjoyable music experiences that help young people, and their families, connect with themselves, and the world around them.

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Further recommended reading and resources:

The Australian Music Therapists Association website

“The neuroscience of music shows that listening to and making music has a powerful effect on nervous system functioning. It can help someone to relax, feel energised, experience pleasure, release stress and emotion, particularly when musical experiences are shared. This makes music an ideal medium for working with someone whose nervous system is sensitised and protecting them with pain… Music Therapy provides a way of meeting their young patients where they are at in their lives.” (Source)

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Ways that Music Therapy can be used to treat patients with chronic pain:

• Listening to music: creating playlists of songs together with the young person that validates and expresses their emotions/experiences, and gently shifts them towards a place/experience where they would rather be.

• Singing: expressing through using their own voice, in terms of words, emotion, and body sensations such as breath.

• Playing or learning an instrument: experiencing mastery and a sense of success through overcoming the frustration of learning a desired instrument, and contributing to the formation of a positive sense of identity.

• Moving to music: creating multi-sensory ‘safe’ messages for the nervous system (through musical sound, sight, touch) to begin to explore safety in movement again.

• Song writing: connecting with and expressing themselves and their individual experiences through their own song (lyrics, melody, harmony, instrumentation, timbre). Writing a song can provide a containing medium for a young person to reflect on their experiences, explore their identity, and deepen their understanding of pain.

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Minky van der Walt (she/her) of Tempo Therapy

“Nourishing therapists, clinicians and service providers to hold onto themselves whilst holding space for others. Tempo offers evidence-based, practical and immersive supports and professional learning, incorporating neuroscience, and creative arts, music and somatic processes, within a framework of social justice, community and collective care.”

Delve into Minky’s blog (starting with a very cool and timely piece on the power of music in Stranger Things!)

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An excerpt from The New York Times article with the poem by Robert Hayden

When I’m Sick of Doomscrolling, I Turn to This Poem

“Monet’s ‘Waterlilies,’” by Robert Hayden, reflects on what art can (and can’t) do in tumultuous times. Critic A.O. Scott shows you why he loves it.

The proclamation that art matters — that, in difficult times, it helps — can sound like a shop-worn self-care mantra. So instead of musing on generalities, maybe we should focus our attention on a particular aesthetic experience. Instead of declaring the importance of art, we could look at a painting. Or we could read a poem. A poem, as it happens, about looking at a painting...

Monet’s “Waterlilies” by Robert Hayden

Today as the news from Selma and Saigon

poisons the air like fallout,

I come again to see

the serene great picture that I love.

Here space and time exist in light

the eye like the eye of faith believes.

The seen, the known

dissolve in iridescence, become

illusive flesh of light

that was not, was, forever is.

O light beheld as through refracting tears.

Here is the aura of that world

each of us has lost.

Here is the shadow of its joy.

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Born in Detroit in 1913, Hayden, the first Black American to hold the office now known as poet laureate of the United States, was part of a generation of poets who came of age between the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and the Black Arts movement of the ’60s.

A poet of modernist sensibilities and moderate temperament, Hayden didn’t adopt the revolutionary rhetoric of the times, and was criticised by some of his more radical peers for the quietness of his voice... but his contemplative style makes room for passion.

Stepping back into “Monet’s ‘Waterlilies,’” we can sense the storm in the midst of the calm. The first sentence coils... as it encompasses a cosmos of physical, personal and spiritual phenomena. We’re in the domain of the intangible, the invisible, the impossible. We touch eternity, and then descend into a fallen world of sorrow and loss. The painting may be “serene,” but it arouses a tempest...

Art can’t save us from anything, but we need it as a reminder of something better — of a world that is the antithesis of what we inhale with the news. We might imagine this place as Eden, as childhood, as a vanished golden age.

Whatever name we choose, it’s something we know only through its absence, through the ghostly demarcations that artists are sometimes able to convey.

– Nov. 6, 2025

Poem and further analysis also available on AllPoetry.com.

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Quote from Dr Sue Wilson:

“I have a longstanding personal interest in many aspects of the arts through my attendance at live music, theatre, dance and writing festivals.

I am an avid reader mainly of fiction. I feel that all these domains of the arts and creative life can convey aspects of lived experience of health and ill health, relationships and many other parts of life that cannot always be explored adequately through purely scientific writing. 

I have also had a wonderful experience of working alongside creative arts therapists for many years in my professional roles – music therapy, art therapy (for young people and supervision for our team of mental health professionals) and of course Dr Jules [Mead] from the persistent pain team who has introduced me to the role that creative writing may play for and by young people.

In my own work I take a narrative approach, working with the young people I see to help them share their story using timelines to assist with meaning making.”

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A final note (from the heart...)

Hosting and producing this series for Science Write Now has been such an incredible experience; a real highlight for me both professionally and personally. I have learned so much! What a joy it has been to bring together artists, writers, philosophers and creators of all kinds in-conversation with scientists (neuroscientists, neurologists, psychiatrists, a speech pathologist, an emergency physician, a paediatric pain specialist, to name a few!) There have been so many moments along the way to wonder, reflect, imagine and celebrate the synergy of art and science, and the enriching and luminous cognitive links between creativity and neuroscience. I hope you've enjoyed listening to this series as much as I've enjoyed creating it!

- Bianca Millroy, December 2025

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This podcast is recorded and produced on the lands of the Jaegara/Yugara and Turrbal People, and we pay our respects to Elders past and present. Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land; a place of community, creativity, scientific discovery and, of course, storytelling.

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