Your brain on improv Charles Limb

so I am a surgeon who studies creativity

and I have never had a patient tell me

that I really want you to be creative

during surgery and so I guess there’s a

little bit of irony to it I will say

though that after having done surgery a

lot it’s um it’s somewhat similar

playing a musical instrument and for me

it’s sort of deep and enduring

fascination with sound is what led me to

both be a surgeon and also to study the

science of sound particularly music and

so I’m going to try to talk to you over

the next few minutes about about my

career in terms of how I’m able to

actually try to study music and really

try to grap all these questions of how

is the brain able to be creative I’ve

done most this work at Johns Hopkins

University but also at the National

Institutes of Health where I was

previously I’m going to go over some

science experiments to try to cover

three musical experiments let’s start

off by playing a video for you and this

video is a video of Keith Jarrett who’s

a well-known jazz improviser and

probably the most well known iconic

example of someone who takes

improvisation to a really higher level

and he’ll improvise entire concerts off

the top of his head and he’ll never play

it exactly the same way again and so as

a form of intense creativity I think

this is a great example and so why don’t

we go ahead and click the video

I’ve always just as a listener as just a

fan I listed that I’m just astounded I

think how can this possibly be how can

the brain generate that much information

that much music spontaneously and so I

set out with this concept scientifically

that artistic creativity is its magical

but it’s not magic meaning that it’s a

product from the brain there’s not too

many brain-dead people creating art and

so with this notion that artistic

creativity is in fact a neurologic

product I took this thesis that we could

study it just like we study any other

complex neurologic process I think

there’s some sub questions that I put

there is it truly possible to study

creativity scientifically and that’s a

good question I’ll tell you that most

scientific studies of music they’re very

dense and when you actually go through

them it’s very hard to recognize the

music in it in fact they seem to be very

unmusical entirely to miss the whole

point of the music and so it brings the

sin question why should scientists study

creativity maybe we’re not the right

people to do it well it may be but I

will say that from a scientific

perspective we talked a lot about

innovation today the science of

innovation how how much we understand

about how the brain is able to innovate

is in its infancy and truly we know very

little about how we are able to be

creative and so I think that we’re going

to see over the next 10 20 30 years a

real science of creativity that’s

burgeoning and is going to flourish

because we now have new methods that can

enable us to take this process of

something like this complex jazz

improvisation and study it rigorously

and so it gets down to the brain and so

all of us have this remarkable brain

which is poorly understood to say the

least I think that neuroscientists have

much more questions and answers and I

myself I’m not going to give you many

answers to just ask a lot of questions

and fundamentally that’s what I do in my

lab I ask questions about what is this

brain doing to enable us to do this this

is the main method that I use this is

called functional MRI if you’ve been in

an MRI scanner it’s very much the same

but this one is outfitted in a special

way to not just take pictures of your

brain but to also take pictures of

active areas of the brain now the way

that’s done is by the following there’s

something called bold imaging which is

blood oxygen level dependent imaging now

when you’re in an fMRI scanner you’re in

a big magnet that’s aligning your

molecules in certain areas when an area

of the brain is active meaning

areas act if it gets blood flow shunted

to that area that blood flow causes an

increase in local blood to that area

with a deoxyhemoglobin change in

concentration deoxyhemoglobin can be

detected by MRI whereas oxygen woven

can’t sew through this sort of method of

inference and we’re measuring blood flow

not neural activity we say that an area

of the brain is getting more blood was

active during a particular task and

that’s sort of the crux of how fMRI

works and it’s been used since the 90s

to study really complex processes now

I’m going to review a study that I did

which was really jazz in an fMRI scanner

and this was done with a colleague of

mine Alan brown at the NIH this is a

short video of how we did this project

this is a plastic mini camo keyword that

we use for the jazz experiments

is designed to fit both inside the

scanner magnetically safe and minimal

interference that would contribute to

any artifact and have this cushions that

it can rest on requires legs while

they’re lying down scanner like on their

back

and it works like this this doesn’t

actually produce any sound it sends out

what’s called a MIDI signal or ocean

with digital interface through these

wires into the box in the computer which

then trigger high quality panel samples

like this

okay so it works and so through this

piano keyboard we now have the means to

actually take a musical process and

study it so what do you do now that you

have this cool piano keyboard you can’t

just sort of you know it’s great we got

this keyboard we actually have to come

with a scientific experiment and so the

experiment really rests on the following

what happens in the brain during

something that’s memorized and over

learned and what happens in the brain

during something that is spontaneously

generator improvised in a way that’s

matched motorically and in terms of

lower lower level sensory motor features

and so I have here what we call the

paradigms there’s a scale paradigm which

is just playing a scale up and down

memorized and then there’s improvising

on a scale quarter notes metronome right

hand scientifically very safe but

musically really boring and then there’s

the bottom one which is called the jazz

paradigm and so we did was he brought

professional jazz players to the NIH and

we had them memorize this piece of music

on the left the lower left which is what

you heard me playing and then we had

them improvise to the same exact chord

changes and if you can hit that lower

right sound icon that’s an example of

what was recorded in the scanner

so in the end you know it’s not the most

natural environment but they’re able to

play real music and you know I’ve listed

that solo 200 times and I still like it

and so and the musicians were they were

comfortable in the end and so we first

measured the number of notes where they

in fact just playing a lot of more notes

when they were improvising that was not

what was going on and then we looked at

the brain activity I’m going to try to

condense this for you

these are contrast maps that are showing

subtractions between what changes when

you’re improvising versus when you’re

doing something memorized in red is area

that’s active in the prefrontal cortex

frontal lobe of the brain and in blue

this area that was deactivated and so we

had this focal area called the medial

prefrontal cortex that went way up in

activity we had this broad patch of area

called the lateral prefrontal cortex

that went way down in activity I’ll

summarize that for you here now these

are multifunctional areas of the brain

as I like to say these are not the Jazz

areas of the brain okay they do a whole

host of things that have to do with

self-reflection introspection working

memory and so forth really consciousness

is it seated in the frontal lobe but we

have this combination of an area that’s

thought to be involved in

self-monitoring turning off in this area

that’s thought to be autobiographical or

self expressive turning on and we think

at least in this preliminary you know

it’s one study so it’s probably wrong

but it’s one study we think that at

least a reasonable hypothesis is that to

be creative you have to have this weird

dissociation in your frontal lobe one

area turns on and a big area shuts off

so that you’re not inhibited so that

you’re willing to make a stake so that

you’re not constantly shutting down all

of these new generative impulses now a

lot of people know that music is not

always a solo activity sometimes it’s

done communicatively and so the next

question was what happens when musicians

are trading back and forth something

called trading fours which is something

that they do normally in a jazz

experiment so this is a 12 bar blues and

I’ve broken it down into four bar groups

here so you would know how you would

trade now what we did was we brought our

musician into the scanner same way had

them memorize this melody and then had

another musician out in the control-room

trading back and forth interactively

musician Mike Kroeger the world’s best

bassist and a fantastic counter player

now playing the piece that you just saw

just by coming in I may before dude lets

you pop a great night huh nothing for my

father okay

you have to have the right attitude to

agree to it it’s kind of fun actually

so now we’re playing back and forth he’s

in there you could see his legs up there

and then I’m control room here going

back and forth okay that’s a pretty good

representation of what it’s like um it’s

good that it’s not too quick you know

the fact that you do it over and over

again lets you acclimate you know to

your surroundings so the hardest thing

for me was the kinesthetic thing you

know I’m just you know looking at my

hands through two mirrors laying on my

back and not able to move at all except

that was that was a challenging but

again you know it was there were there

were there were moments for sure you

know

you’ll honest-to-god musical interplay

for sure so at this point I’ll take a

few moments and so what you’re seeing

here and I’m doing a cardinal sin in

science versus to show you preliminary

data okay this is one subjects data this

is in fact Mike Pope’s data so what am i

showing you here when he was trading

fours with me improvising verses

memorized his language areas lit up his

Broca’s area which was inferior frontal

gyrus on the left he actually had it

also homologous on the right and this is

an area thought to be involved in

expressive communication this whole

notion that music is a language well

maybe there’s a neurologic basis to it

in fact after all and we can see it when

two musicians are having a musical

conversation and so we’ve done actually

this on eight subjects now and we’re

just getting all the data together so

hopefully we’ll have something to say

about them meaningfully now when I think

about improv improvisation in the

language well what’s next

rap of course that freestyle and so I’ve

always been fascinated by freestyle and

let’s go ahead and play this video here

around skin of Easton and boxers I’m

stocking it when I be in your vicinity

whole style synergy recognize symmetry

go to the end Jimmy broke them down

chemically Nathan Overton MC talk about

Hobby Lobby started like Indy late like

a 10-degree we’re not saying will not be

girls safe and Nike good and so there’s

a lot of analogy between what takes

place in freestyle rap and jazz there in

fact a lot of correlates between the two

forms of music I think in different time

periods and a lot of ways rap serves the

same social function that jazz used to

serve so study rap scientifically and my

colleagues kind of think I’m crazy but I

think it’s a very viable and so this is

what you do you have a freestyle artist

come in and memorize a rap that you

write for them they’ve never heard

before and then you have them freestyle

so I told my lab members that I would

rap for Ted and they said yo you won’t

so and then I thought

no I guess not but here’s the thing with

this big screen you can all rap with me

okay

so what we had them do was memorize this

lower-left sound icon please this is the

control condition okay this is what they

memorized memory thump thump of the beat

in a known repeat rhythm and rhyme make

me complete the climb is sublime when

I’m on the mic spitting rhymes that hit

you like a lightning search a search for

the truth in this eternal quest my

passion sound passion you can see how

I’m dressed

psychopathic words in my head appear

whisper these lyrics only I can heart

the art of discover and that would just

hover in inside the mind of those

unconfined all these words keep pouring

out like rain

I need a mad scientist to check my brain

stop

I guarantee you that will never happen

again

so now what’s great about these

freestylers they will get cute different

words they don’t know what’s coming but

they’ll hear something off-the-cuff

going to hit that right sound outcome

they’re going to be cue these three

square words like not and had freestyle

doesn’t know what’s coming

like stop so again it’s an incredible

thing that’s taking place is doing

something that neurologically is

remarkable whether or not you like the

music’s are relevant creatively speaking

it’s just a phenomenal thing this is a

short video of how we actually do this

in a scanner manual that was recorded in

the scanner by the way that’s a manual

in the scanner so he he’s just memorized

a rhyme for us

Mike spinning rocks that I hit you I

know lighting strategy search for intro

finish user Louis you see on dress

so I’m going to stop that there so what

do we see in his brain well this is

actually for rappers brains and what we

see if we do see languages lighting up

but then eyes closed when you are

freestyling versus memorizing you’ve got

major visual areas lighting up you’ve

got major cerebellar activity which is

involved in motor coordination you have

heightened brain activity when you’re

doing a comparable task when that one

task is creative and the other task is

memorized

it’s very pointed but I think it’s kind

of cool and so just to conclude we’ve

got a lot of questions to ask and like I

said well ask questions you’re not

answer them but we want to get at the

root of what is creative genius

neurologically and I think what these

methods were we’re getting close to

being there and I think hopefully in the

next 10 20 years you’ll actually see

real meaningful studies that say art and

you know science has to catch up to art

and maybe we’re starting now to get

there and so I want to thank you for

your time

you