Faculty of Physics - University of Bucharest

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FACULTY OF PHYSICS

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2024-11-23 17:52

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Conference: Bucharest University Faculty of Physics 2009 Meeting

Section: Biophysics; Medical Physics

Title:

Blues jamming: how the brain does?

Authors:

Radu Mutihac

Affiliation:

Faculty of Physics, University of Bucharest

E-mail

mutihac@astralnet.ro

Keywords:

Functional brain imaging, magnetic resonance, exploratory data analysis

Abstract:

This is to shed light on brain activity as well as challenge my knowledge, experience, and deep beliefs about performing and composing music. In a more general sense, I pretend to analyze any genuine art generation process and disclose the cerebral activity involved in. Yet I reserve the right to be quite wrong and, therefore, open to your criticism and productive suggestions. To this end, my biased choice was blues compositions and interpretations. It has long been believed that the right and left hemispheres of the cerebral cortex perform dissimilar functions: the right hemisphere controls artistic creativity and the use of language, whereas the left side controls analytical thinking and working with numbers. As for instance, in most left-handed people, the right cortex appears to be dominant, whereas the reverse is true in right-handed people. Blues and jazz improvisations to the expert audience is an aural flight of fancy, borne aloft by a musician’s on-the-spot skill, culture, and imagination. But functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) results show the brain actually following a grounded process of activation and deactivation during these spontaneous musical riffs. In jam sessions, musicians employ a composition’s underlying chord structure and melody as the contextual framework and basis upon which a novel solo is extemporaneously improvised. The present research refers to data on six musicians that underwent blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI while performing on a non-ferromagnetic keyboard. They first played a one-octave scale in C major, then improvised a melody in that same key. Next, they played an original composition at a first glance and finished up with their own improvisations of that same score. Confined in an MRI scanner, inferences on how the brain runs when the musicians are improvising as opposed to playing a simple melody from memory were spotted and analyzed. The imaging results demonstrated, in all cases, that spontaneous improvisation was associated with specific patterns of activation and deactivation in the prefrontal cortex and the sensorimotor, as well as limbic regions of the brain. Specifically, deactivation was noted in all the lateral prefrontal cortices along with activation in the medial prefrontal cortex. Activation occurred as well in the superior and middle temporal gyri along with other sensorimotor areas. Among the limbic regions, selective deactivation occurred in the amygdala and hippocampus. Moreover, it was 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 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 part of the brain (medial prefrontal cortex) increases in activity. The medial prefrontal cortex is involved in self-initiated thoughts and behaviors, and is very active when a person describes an event that has happened to him or makes up a story. A sound explanation might be that medial prefrontal cortex serves as an index of internally motivated behavior. During improvisation, the absence of self-regulation triggers other regions of the brain that encourage unfiltered and creative expression. The conclusion drawn from this study is that there is no single creative area of the brain, that is, no focal activation of a single area is observed. Rather, when moving from either of the control tasks to improvisation, a strong and consistent pattern of activity is elicited throughout the brain that enables creativity. Previous research indicated that similar deactivation in the prefrontal cortices occurs during altered states of consciousness, such as meditation or hypnosis.