Science Friday Podcast Recap: Your Brain on Jazz

In a recent podcast episode of the Science Friday podcast with host Ira Flatow, he and his guest Charles Limb who is a researcher and musician discussed a study Limb conducted that looked at how jazz affects the brain and where the unique aptitude for improvisation jazz musicians seem to have comes from. Limb started his experiment by creating an fMRI-safe keyboard that he would use to study brain activity among multiple jazz musicians when they use the piano and improvise with each other based on another piece of jazz music. He said the purpose of his experiment was to understand the musical conversation - it is a musical conversation in that it does not involve words - concept that takes place between jazz musicians when they improvise. He went about trying to understand this by studying neurological activity that occurs when this musical conversation is going on. The procedure for this experiment consisted of two musicians taking turns or going back and forth with a musical conversation as is seen to be done frequently in jazz. The results that this experiment yielded were that when musicians engage in musical conversations, language areas of the brain responsible for the syntax are very active compared to the level of activity of that area of the brain during a memorized musical exchange. Also, there was a lack of activity found in the part of the brain that analyzes the meaning of words. This means that language is good for conveying meaning while music is good for conveying emotion with less precise meaning. Areas of the brain linked to aversion were suppressed as well during this process which means that music is processed as a reward, thus deactivating that part of the brain. The goal of the conduction of this experiment was to gain a deeper understanding of human innovation by using artists to tap into creativity from a scientific and neurological standpoint. Limb's research raised questions like: How do we acquire creativity? How does creativity differ from child to adult, beginner to expert?