A study of jazz musicians shows something that I have always thought:
you can't improvise unless you turn off your inner critic.
Quote:
The study included six full-time professional jazz musicians. They got their brains scanned while playing a scale or a memorized jazz piece exactly as written and again when they were free to improvise, riffing off the assigned music.
When they improvised, the brain's dorsolateral prefrontal and lateral orbital regions were far less active -- and another brain area, the medial prefrontal cortex, was more active.
The brain regions that were quiet during improvisation are involved in consciously monitoring, evaluating, and correcting behaviors, write the researchers.
In contrast, the medial prefrontal cortex allows self-expression, in this case in the form of jazz improvisation, according to the study.
But creativity isn't just about self-expression. The brain's sensory regions were more active during improvisation.
"It's almost as if the brain ramps up its sensorimotor processing in order to be in a creative state," researcher Charles Limb, MD, says in a news release.
"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," says Allen Braun, MD, in the news release. "You see a strong and consistent pattern of activity throughout the brain that enables creativity."
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I think this is why mood can have a strong impact on whether or not you can improvise. When you feel a little unhinged and your brain is racing emotionally, it's much easier to free your mind and let things flow. Sometimes you think too much about the output instead of trying to create what you're feeling.
