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The Neuroscience of Jazz

The neuroscience of creativity is a topic brimming with impenetrable unknowns. A new study published in the journal Scientific Reports peels back another layer, revealing further mysteries.

No single area of the brain accounts for musical creativity. It is brain-wide enterprise.It is a given that music has a profound, yet variable, impact on the human brain.On the one hand, there is the joy or sorrow (or sometimes revulsion) that a melody generates within the listener.

This complex emotional shading experienced by the audience is overlaid with the creative aspects of the human brain responsible for writing and performing the piece.The present study, carried out by Malinda McPherson and her team at the University of California-San Francisco, took brain scans of jazz musicians as they improvised "happy" or "sad" melodies.Building on previous work by her colleague Dr. Charles Limb, the investigation finds variety in the role of a specific brain area dependent on musical mood.Although insightful, the research adds more intriguing questions to the field of study.

The creative brainCreativity itself (musical or otherwise) can not be pinned down to one single area of the brain. The scientific consensus is that creativity depends on a myriad of factors and recruits regions across the entire brain.Some brain area's activities are dampened, some are ramped up; some connections are strengthened, others are quietened.

Although music has a palpable esoteric mysticism about it, every scientist knows that, despite the way it might feel, heavenly emotions, deep musings and sublime euphoria always have their genesis in chemicals and cells.That is the wonder of the human brain.

The current study follows on from work conducted by Dr. Charles Limb, previously at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD.One of Dr. Limb's studies investigated the differences between brain activity when playing rehearsed music, compared with improvisation. He found that improvisation was:"Characterized by a dissociated pattern of activity in the prefrontal cortex: extensive deactivation of dorsolateral prefrontal and lateral orbital regions with focal activation of the medial prefrontal (frontal polar) cortex."In other studies, brain areas known to be important in the semantic processing of language were heavily involved in the creative process.Some of these areas showed an increase in activity, including the inferior frontal gyrus and posterior superior temporal gyrus.

Other language areas were found to become deactivated during improvisation, including the angular gyrus and supramarginal gyrus. Dr. Limb also found that an area synonymous with language - Broca's area - is important for determining whether a note is off key

.In short, the perception and creation of music recruits a wide array of neural modules.