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Home Study: Prefrontal Cortex In Jazz Musicians Winds Down When Improvising
Physical Science Submitted by News Account on 27 February 2008 -
Earth Science 12:34am. Psychobiology
Biology
Scientists funded by the National Institute on Deafness
Medicine
Neuroscience and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) have found
Anthropology that, when jazz musicians are engaged in the highly
Psychiatry creative and spontaneous activity known as improvisation,
Psychobiology a large region of the brain involved in monitoring one’s
Psychology performance is shut down, while a small region involved in
Culture organizing self-initiated thoughts and behaviors is highly
activated.

User login The researchers propose that this and several related
patterns are likely to be key indicators of a brain that is
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engaged in highly creative thought.

During the study, six highly trained jazz musicians played

the keyboard under two scenarios while in the functional
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MRI scanner. Functional MRI (fMRI) is an imaging tool that measures the amount of blood traveling to various regions
of the brain as a means of assessing the amount of neural activity in those areas.

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Physical Science
Physics
Georg von
Hippel
Hontas Farmer
Alan Gillis
Nithyanand Rao
Dimitrios
Micha... Three-dimensional surface projection of activations and deactivations associated with improvisation during the Jazz
Qrystal MqKenzie paradigm. Medial prefrontal cortex activation, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex deactivation, and sensorimotor activation
Pandian Chelliah
can be seen. The scale bar shows the range of t-scores; the axes demonstrate anatomic orientation. Abbreviations: a,
David Austin
anterior; p, posterior; d, dorsal; v, ventral; R, right; L, left.
Yaseer Musa
Sagagi

Astronomy “The ability to study how the brain functions when it is thinking creatively has been difficult for scientists because of
Amara Graps the many variables involved,” said James F. Battey, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., director of the NIDCD. “Through some creative
Mary Hrovat thinking of their own, these researchers designed a protocol in which jazz musicians could play a keyboard while in the
John Felix confines of a functional MRI scanner. And in doing so, they were able to pinpoint differences in how the brain
Brad Guth
functions when the musicians are improvising as opposed to playing a simple melody from memory.”
Chemistry
Jean-Claude The study was conducted by researchers of NIDCD’s Division of Intramural Research. Authors on the study are
Bradley Charles J. Limb, M.D., who was then a research fellow with NIDCD, and Allen R. Braun, M.D., chief of the division’s
Robert Ingalls Language Section. Dr. Limb is now an otolaryngologist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and faculty
Mathematics member at the university’s Peabody Conservatory of Music.
Garth Sundem
The first scenario, called the Scale paradigm, was based on a simple C major scale. Using only their right hand, the
Abu Murad
Jim Myres volunteers first played the scale up and down in quarter notes, an activity they, as accomplished musicians, had
vilichgenij performed many times before. Next, they were asked to improvise, though they were limited to playing quarter notes
Scot Adams within the C major scale. “Although the musicians were indeed improvising, it was a relatively low-level form of
James West improvisation, musically speaking,” said Limb.
Stephen
Ferguson The second scenario, called the Jazz paradigm, addressed higher level musical improvisation. This paradigm was
based on a novel blues melody written by Limb that the volunteers had memorized beforehand. Again, using only their
Aerospace
Navid Ghaemi

Earth Science
Atmospheric
Energy
2 of 4 Howard Bloom 5/25/08 6:23 PM
Study: Prefrontal Cortex In Jazz Musicians Winds Down When Impr... http://209.85.215.104/search?q=cache:xBc8M0U3LX4J:www.scienti...

right hand, the musicians would play the tune exactly as they had memorized it, only this time accompanied through
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headphones by a pre-recorded jazz quartet. When they were asked to improvise, the musicians listened to the same Category Feeds
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audio background, but they were free to spontaneously play whatever notes they wished.
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All of this was accomplished while the musicians lay on their backs with their heads and torsos inside an fMRI scanner POLICY Featured Authors Feed
and their knees bent upward. The plastic keyboard, which was shortened to fit inside the scanner and which had its Physical Science
magnetic parts removed for safety, rested on the musicians’ knees. A mirror placed over the volunteers’ eyes, Earth Science
together with the headphones, helped the musicians see and hear what they were playing. The resulting fMRI scans
Biology
recorded the amount of change in neural activity—increases and decreases—between the improvised and memorized
Medicine
versions.
Neurosciences
Turning Off ‘the Monitor’ Culture
One notable finding was that the brain scans were nearly identical for the low-level and high-level forms of Add our widget
improvisation, thus supporting the researchers’ hypothesis that the change in neural activity was due to creativity and Search
not the complexity of the task. If the latter were the case, there would have been a more noticeable difference
between the Scale and Jazz paradigms, since the Jazz paradigm was significantly more complex.

Moreover, the researchers found that much of the change between improvisation and memorization occurred in the
prefrontal cortex, the region of the frontal lobe of the brain that helps us think and problem-solve and that provides Search

a sense of self. Interestingly, the large portion responsible for monitoring one’s performance (dorsolateral prefrontal
cortex) shuts down completely during improvisation, while the much smaller, centrally located region at the foremost Featured Columns
part of the brain (medial prefrontal cortex) increases in activity. The medial prefrontal cortex is involved in
What Is Financial
self-initiated thoughts and behaviors, and is very active when a person describes an event that has happened to him or
Mathematics?
makes up a story. The researchers explain that, just as over-thinking a jump shot can cause a basketball player to fall
Epic Fail: Evolution and
out of the zone and perform poorly, the suppression of inhibitory, self-monitoring brain mechanisms helps to promote
Creationism in America's
the free flow of novel ideas and impulses. While this brain pattern is unusual, it resembles the pattern seen in people Classrooms
when they are dreaming.
Evolution: Winning in
Another unusual finding was that there was increased neural activity in each of the sensory areas during improvisation, Court But Losing In
Class?
including those responsible for touch, hearing and vision, despite the fact that there were no significant differences in
Autism And Brain Scans:
what individuals were hearing, touching and seeing during both memorized and improvised conditions. “It’s almost as if
Snake Oil Or The Real
the brain ramps up its sensorimotor processing in order to be in a creative state,” said Limb. The systems that
Deal?
regulate emotion were also engaged during improvisation.
Cost Savings Equals
“One important thing we can conclude from this study is that there is no single creative area of the brain—no focal Conservation Equals
activation of a single area,” said Braun. “Rather, when you move from either of the control tasks to improvisation, you Being Green
see a strong and consistent pattern of activity throughout the brain that enables creativity.” What Makes Cells Tick?
Reverse Engineering
Article: Limb CJ, Braun AR (2008), Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An fMRI Study of Jazz Biological Cycles
Improvisation, PLoS ONE 3(2): e1679. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001679 Oekologie, Oekologie,
Golly What A Day
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