Summary: Creativity is notoriously difficult to study as it develops, but musical improvisation offers a rare opportunity to observe the spontaneous generation of ideas in action. In a new imaging study, researchers examined how the brains of 16 skilled jazz pianists reorganized themselves as they played a familiar melody from memory, improvised around its melody, or freely improvised on its chord changes.
The findings show that different levels of creative freedom activate different patterns of brain network coupling, moving from more evaluative and controlled processing in structured improvisation to intensified sensorimotor and pleasure-related responses during freer creativity.
The work reveals how the brain dynamically transitions between networks to support innovation in real time. These insights offer a scalable framework for probing the neural architecture of human creativity as it naturally develops.
Key facts
Structured vs. free creativity: Constrained improvisation engaged more executive and evaluative networks, while freer improvisation increased auditory, motor, and salience activity. Dynamic brain substates: Levels of improvisation produced distinct recurrent network configurations linked to planning, perception, and spontaneous creativity. Real-time reconfiguration: The brain continually reorganized network patterns depending on how much creative freedom the musician had.
Source: BIAL Foundation
Creativity is generally defined as the ability to generate ideas or products that are simultaneously new and appropriate for a given context.
Despite decades of research, studying creativity in action remains challenging due to its abstract nature and the difficulty of capturing creative processes in real time.
Musical improvisation is considered an extraordinary manifestation of human creativity. Being spontaneous and structured, it allows us to observe how the brain generates novel and relevant ideas in real time.
It was precisely this characteristic that led an international team of researchers to probe the brains of 16 skilled jazz pianists as they performed the classic “Days of Wine and Roses” under three different conditions: playing from memory (byHeart), improvising based on the melody (iMelody), and freely improvising based on chord changes (iFreely).
In the article Creativity in Music: The Brain Dynamics of Jazz Improvisation, published in September in the scientific journal Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, the researchers explain that they examined how different levels of creative freedom activate specific brain networks, using functional magnetic resonance imaging and the Leading Eigenvector Dynamics Analysis method (which tracks how the brain dynamically reorganizes into different network substates over time).
With support from the Bial Foundation, the project was carried out at the Center for Music in the Brain at Aarhus University, Denmark. The team led by Henrique Fernandes (Aarhus University/Royal Academy of Music), supervised by Peter Vuust, observed that, in the two improvisation conditions, there was greater activation in the auditory, motor and salience networks associated with musical perception, motor performance and pleasure.
On the contrary, networks linked to thinking, reflection and spontaneous decision-making, such as the Default Mode Network and the Executive Control Network, participated differently depending on the level of freedom of improvisation. Freer improvisation (iFreely) was marked by greater coactivation of these networks in a distinct substate, possibly supporting complex planning.
“The results revealed that the increase in the freedom of improvisation corresponds to a change in the participation of brain networks, from a greater participation of executive and evaluative networks in restricted improvisation to intensified activity in auditory-motor and salience networks during freer forms of creative expression,” says the project coordinator, whose team also includes Portuguese researchers from ICVS (Research Institute for Life and Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Minho).
By identifying specific substates associated with different levels of creative freedom, this study provides new insights into the brain dynamics underlying musical improvisation, proposing a scalable method to explore the neural bases of spontaneous creative behavior.
“These results extend existing models of improvisation by emphasizing the dynamic reconfiguration of specific and general networks, also highlighting the importance of interaction between networks over time rather than isolated static activation,” says Henrique Fernandes.
Funding: This study was funded by a grant from the Medical Research Council and was also supported by the La Caixa Foundation, Spain (LCF/BQ/PR22/11920014), the Foundation for Science and Technology, Portugal (UIDB/50026/2020, UIDP/50026/2020), the BIAL Foundation (263/20), the Salling Foundation and the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF117).
Key questions answered:
A: It combines structure with spontaneity, allowing researchers to observe creative idea generation in real time.
A: Auditory, motor, and salience networks show greater involvement when musicians freely improvise.
A: It more strongly recruits executive and evaluative networks associated with planning and controlled decision making.
Editorial notes:
This article was edited by a Neuroscience News editor. Magazine article reviewed in its entirety. Additional context added by our staff.
About this research news on creativity and neuroplasticity.
Author: Sandra Pinto
Source: BIAL Foundation
Contact: Sandra Pinto – BIAL Foundation
Image: Image is credited to Neuroscience News.
Original research: Open access.
“Creativity in Music: The Brain Dynamics of Jazz Improvisation” by Henrique Fernandes et al. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
Abstract
Creativity in Music: The Brain Dynamics of Jazz Improvisation
Jazz improvisation is a controlled but ecologically valid framework for investigating spontaneous creative behavior.
We examined spatiotemporal brain dynamics when expert musicians applied different strategies to improvise on a jazz standard.
We performed task- and rest-based fMRI on 16 expert jazz pianists who performed “Days of Wine and Roses,” with varying levels of improvisational freedom: (1) playing the melody from memory (byHeart); (2) improvise on the melody (iMelody); and (3) improvise freely (iFreely) on chord changes.
Behaviorally, higher levels of improvisational freedom were associated with greater number of notes, greater melodic entropy, and lower pitch predictability.
Using Leading Eigenvector Dynamics Analysis (LEiDA), we found increased activity in the reward system for all conditions compared to rest, including the orbitofrontal cortex.
In the improvisation conditions compared to rest, there was a significantly higher probability that a brain state comprised auditory and sensorimotor areas related to musical performance and that the right insula belonged to the posterior salience network.
The highest level of improvisational freedom (iFreely) had a greater occurrence of a brain substate, including default mode, executive control, and linguistic networks.
These networks participate in the planning of complex behaviors, decision making and motor control, all of which are relevant to understanding the neural signatures of creativity.
