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This is your brain on Jazz.....

RESEARCHERS USE MRI TO STUDY


SPONTANEITY, CREATIVITY--Johns Hopkins researcher also trained as a jazz musician
A pair of Johns Hopkins and government scientists have discovered that when jazz
musicians improvise, their brains turn off areas linked to self-censoring and inhibition, and
turn on those that let self-expression flow. The joint research, using functional magnetic
resonance imaging, or fMRI, and musician volunteers from the Johns Hopkins Universitys
Peabody Institute, sheds light on the creative improvisation that artists and non-artists use
in everyday life, the investigators say.
It appears, they conclude, that jazz musicians create their unique improvised riffs by
turning off inhibition and turning up creativity.
In a report published Feb. 27 in Public Library of Science (PLoS) ONE, the scientists from
the Universitys School of Medicine and the National Institute on Deafness and Other
Communications Disorders describe their curiosity about the possible neurological
underpinnings of the almost trance-like state jazz artists enter during spontaneous
improvisation.
When jazz musicians improvise, they often play with eyes closed in a distinctive, personal
style that transcends traditional rules of melody and rhythm, says Charles J. Limb,
M.D., assistant professor in theDepartment of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at
the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a trained jazz saxophonist himself. Its a
remarkable frame of mind, he adds, during which, all of a sudden, the musician is
generating music that has never been heard, thought, practiced or played before. What
comes out is completely spontaneous.
Though many recent studies have focused on understanding what parts of a persons brain
are active when listening to music, Limb says few have delved into brain activity while
music is being spontaneously composed.

Curious about his own brain on jazz, he and a colleague, Allen R. Braun, M.D., of NIDCD,
devised a plan to view in real time the brain functions of musicians improvising.
For the study, they recruited six trained jazz pianists, three from the Peabody Institute, a
music conservatory where Limb holds a joint faculty appointment. Other volunteers
learned about the study by word of mouth through the local jazz community.
The researchers designed a special keyboard to allow the pianists to play inside a functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, a brain-scanner that illuminates areas of the
brain responding to various stimuli, identifying which areas are active while a person is
involved in some mental task, for example.
Because fMRI uses powerful magnets, the researchers designed the unconventional
keyboard with no iron-containing metal parts that the magnet could attract. They also used
fMRI-compatible headphones that would allow musicians to hear the music they generate
while theyre playing it.
Each musician first took part in four different exercises designed to separate out the brain
activity involved in playing simple memorized piano pieces and activity while improvising
their music. While lying in the fMRI machine with the special keyboard propped on their

laps, the pianists

all began by playing the

C-major scale, a well-memorized order of notes that every beginner learns. With the sound
of a metronome playing over the headphones, the musicians were instructed to play the
scale, making sure that each volunteer played the same notes with the same timing.
In the second exercise, the pianists were asked to improvise in time with the metronome.
They were asked to use quarter notes on the C-major scale, but could play any of these
notes that they wanted.
Next, the musicians were asked to play an original blues melody that they all memorized in
advance, while a recorded jazz quartet that complemented the tune played in the
background. In the last exercise, the musicians were told to improvise their own tunes with
the same recorded jazz quartet.

Limb and Braun then analyzed the brain scans. Since the brain areas activated during
memorized playing are parts that tend to be active during any kind of piano playing, the
researchers subtracted those images from ones taken during improvisation. Left only with
brain activity unique to improvisation, the scientists saw strikingly similar patterns,
regardless of whether the musicians were doing simple improvisation on the C-major scale
or playing more complex tunes with the jazz quartet.
The scientists found that a region of the brain known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a
broad portion of the front of the brain that extends to the sides, showed a slowdown in
activity during improvisation. This area has been linked to planned actions and selfcensoring, such as carefully deciding what words you might say at a job interview. Shutting
down this area could lead to lowered inhibitions, Limb suggests.
The researchers also saw increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, which sits in the
center of the brains frontal lobe. This area has been linked with self-expression and
activities that convey individuality, such as telling a story about yourself.
Jazz is often described as being an extremely individualistic art form. You ca

n figure out which jazz musician is


playing because one persons improvisation sounds only like him or her, says Limb. What
we think is happening is when youre telling your own musical story, youre shutting down
impulses that might impede the flow of novel ideas.
Limb notes that this type of brain activity may also be present during other types of
improvisational behavior that are integral parts of life for artists and non-artists alike. For
example, he notes, people are continually improvising words in conversations and
improvising solutions to problems on the spot. Without this type of creativity, humans
wouldnt have advanced as a species. Its an integral part of who we are, Limb says.

He and Braun plan to use similar techniques to see whether the improvisational brain
activity they identified matches that in other types of artists, such as poets or visual artists,
as well as non-artists asked to improvise.
This research was funded by the Division of Intramural Research, National Institute on
Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institutes of Health.
Article from the Johns Hopkins website
Thanks to Bill (Monk's Dream) for the link to this article

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