Jazz It Up

Is it too soon to post about a non-physics science story? I will claim this is physics related because they used an MRI. This story caught my attention because in high school, I played the bari sax in the jazz band. Well, researchers have found that when jazz musicians do improv (something I was terrible at), the large region of the brain responsible in monitoring one’s performance shuts down, while a small region involved in organizing self-initiated thought and behaviors is highly activated. The researchers think this and several related patterns are probably indicators of a brain engaged in highly creative thought (makes sense). The study is published in the Feb. 27 issue of the journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) One.

Also makes sense to me, I don’t have many self-initiated thoughts. :P No, actually, what I found interesting in the study was that the complexity of the improvisation didn’t make a lick of difference in the brain scans. So for me, it really didn’t matter that I couldn’t do those hard solos, because if I couldn’t master those easy ones, it wasn’t going to matter. Of course, I could play anything that was written on the page, but if I had to make something up, even something really really simple, forget it.

The best part of the study was how the poor musicians had to play. The researchers had the musicians lay on their backs so their heads and torsos would fit in an MRI scanner, with the knees bent upward. They got this little plastic keyboard, which was shortened to fit inside the scanner and had its magnetic parts removed (because an MRI is a giant magnet, so I’m wondering how the keyboard worked), rested on the musicians’ knees. A mirror was placed over the musicians’ eyes so they could see what they were playing, and they had headphones to hear. I wish I could have seen. Somehow, these musicians were able to play well enough for the scientists to record a significant difference in the brain scans while they were improvising.

The scientists explain that the reason part of the brain shuts down is sort of like how over thinking a basketball shot can ruin the shot. I don’t think that part of my brain ever shuts down. I’m always over thinking things. Anyway, the part that’s really active during improv is the medial prefrontal cortex and is involved in self-initiated thoughts and behaviors. It is also very active when a person describes an event that has happened to him or makes up a story.

They also found that there was increased activity in the sensory areas during improvisation, including touch, hearing and vision, even though there were no significant differences in what they were hearing, touching and seeing during both the memorized and improvised sections.

The researchers pretty much concluded that there wasn’t one creative section of the brain, because of this sensory increase. “One important thing we can conclude from this study is that there is no single creative area of the brain, no focal activation of a single area,” said Dr. Allen Braun, one of the authors. “Rather, when you move from either of the control tasks to improvisation, you see a strong and consistent pattern of activity throughout the brain that enables creativity.”

So are there enough readers out there for me to ask this: What does it feel like when you are in a creative state?

For more on this story, go here.