Alongside Dr. Elizabeth Bast, the cellist and composer has been named a recipient of the 2026 Renée Fleming Neuroarts Investigator Awards for the study ’Music for Autonomic Rehabilitation in Long Covid’
Cellist and composer Joshua Roman has been named a recipient of the 2026 Renée Fleming Neuroarts Investigator Awards, joining Dr. Elizabeth Bast of the Miami Veterans Medical Center on a research team exploring the effects of music on Long COVID.
Administered through the NeuroArts Blueprint Initiative, a partnership between Johns Hopkins University and the Aspen Institute, the awards were established in 2024 by acclaimed soprano Renée Fleming through her foundation to support research at the intersection of neuroscience and the arts.
Roman and Bast will receive a $25,000 grant to fund a pilot study examining how music may modulate autonomic function in individuals experiencing Long Covid.
The team will conduct a randomised crossover trial with 30 veterans, comparing three delivery modes: live interactive performance, live-streamed sessions, and self-guided recorded listening. The study will measure heart rate variability, brain-heart coherence, and inflammatory markers to understand the psychophysiological mechanisms underlying music’s therapeutic effects.
The study aims to build on preliminary findings from Roman’s ongoing Immunity project, which investigates the role of music in health, healing, and resilience. Roman has been open about his own experience with long-term illness following Covid‑19, focusing his artistic practice on collaborative, research‑driven work that bridges performance and medicine.
The work will aim to advance the field of neuroarts by establishing mechanistic understanding of aesthetic experience’s physiological effects, comparing delivery science across engagement modes and creating a scalable artist-clinician model.
Bast is an early-career clinician-researcher at the Miami Veterans (VA) Medical Center, with appointments at both the Nova Southeastern University Institute for Neuro Immune Medicine (INIM) and Florida International University. As co-director of the Miami VA Long Covid and Chronic Multisymptom Illness Clinic, her research focuses on improving understanding of the pathophysiologic basis of Long Covid, as well as developing treatments for patients.
The Renée Fleming Neuroarts Investigator Awards support early‑stage, evidence‑based research that advances the growing field of neuroarts, which studies how artistic engagement affects brain health and overall wellbeing.
Award recipients are selected for projects that demonstrate strong potential to inform clinical practice while deepening scientific understanding of the arts’ impact on human physiology.
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