Beta and theta oscillations correlate with subjective time during musical improvisation in ecological and controlled settings: a single subject study

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the results of a single subject study attempting at a better understanding of the subjective state during musical improvisation. In a first experiment, we setup an ecological paradigm measuring EEG on a musician in free improvised concerts with an audience, followed by retrospective rating of the mental state of the improviser. We introduce Subjective Temporal Resolution (STR), a retrospective rating assessing the instantaneous attention of the musician towards short or long musical events. We identified high and low STR states using Hidden Markov Models in two performances, and were able to decode those states using supervised learning on instantaneous EEG power spectrum, showing increases in theta and alpha power with high STR values. In a second experiment, we found an increase of theta and beta power when experimentally manipulating STR in a musical improvisation imagery experiment. These results are interpreted with respect to previous research on flow state in creativity, as well as with the temporal processing literature. We suggest that a component of the subjective state of musical improvisation may be reflected in an underlying mechanism responsible for modulating subjective temporal processing of musical events.

The brain in flow: a systematic review on the neural basis of the flow state

“…We identified 9 studies addressing the neural correlates of flow by means of EEG ( 4were case studies) while trying to induce flow state through different experimental protocols (Farrugia et al, 2021;Katahira et al, 2018;Knierim et al, 2018;Leroy and Cheron, 2020;Moreno et al, 2020;Núñez Castellar et al, 2019;Wolf et al, 2015;Wollseiffen et al, 2016;Yun et al, 2017).…”

“…Furthermore, case studies provide an opportunity to collect (neural) data in ecological contexts and a fine-grained characterization of the flow experience. We identified 3 relevant case studies using this approach (Farrugia et al, 2021;Leroy and Cheron, 2020;Moreno et al, 2020). In general, their results point to brain rhythms, especially alpha, beta and gamma, as potential markers of flow state arising in tasks requiring highly specialization such as playing a musical instrument (Farrugia et al, 2021), writing a scientific manuscript (Moreno et al, 2020) or crossing a 15-metre-high tightrope (Leroy and Cheron, 2020).…”

“…We identified 3 relevant case studies using this approach (Farrugia et al, 2021;Leroy and Cheron, 2020;Moreno et al, 2020). In general, their results point to brain rhythms, especially alpha, beta and gamma, as potential markers of flow state arising in tasks requiring highly specialization such as playing a musical instrument (Farrugia et al, 2021), writing a scientific manuscript (Moreno et al, 2020) or crossing a 15-metre-high tightrope (Leroy and Cheron, 2020). Interestingly, these studies suggest the use of peripheral psychophysiological measures (e.g., electrocardiogram or galvanic skin conductance) as complementary measures that may help identify and characterize flow state (see Peifer and Tan, 2021, for a review).…”