Connecting to Create: Expertise in Musical Improvisation Is Associated with Increased Functional Connectivity between Premotor and Prefrontal Areas

Abstract

Musicians have been used extensively to study neural correlates of long-term practice, but no studies have investigated the specific effects of training musical creativity. Here, we used human functional MRI to measure brain activity during improvisation in a sample of 39 professional pianists with varying backgrounds in classical and jazz piano playing. We found total hours of improvisation experience to be negatively associated with activity in frontoparietal executive cortical areas. In contrast, improvisation training was positively associated with functional connectivity of the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortices, dorsal premotor cortices, and presupplementary areas. The effects were significant when controlling for hours of classical piano practice and age. These results indicate that even neural mechanisms involved in creative behaviors, which require a flexible online generation of novel and meaningful output, can be automated by training. Second, improvisational musical training can influence functional brain properties at a network level. We show that the greater functional connectivity seen in experienced improvisers may reflect a more efficient exchange of information within associative networks of importance for musical creativity.

Music and words in the visual cortex: The impact of musical expertise

“…Previous studies have shown correlates of music processing in the form of increased functional connectivity across distributed cerebral networks, during beat perception (Grahn and Rowe, 2009), musical improvisation (Pinho et al, 2014), and motor synchronization to auditory stimuli (Krause et al, 2010). We extend these results by putting to light an increase of long-distance connectivity of the music-selective visual region, during the perception of musical notation in musicians.…”

The neuroscience of musical improvisation

“…Several notable differences in task design are apparent in the literature: while some studies contrasted improvisation with memory retrieval (Bengtsson et al, 2007;Limb and Braun, 2008), others contrasted specific modes of improvisation, such as melodic and rhythmic (Berkowitz andAnsari, 2008, 2010;de Manzano and Ullén, 2012a). Moreover, some researchers have been interested in analyzing the effects of musical expertise (e.g., Berkowitz and Ansari, 2008;Pinho et al, 2014) and collaboration (Donnay et al, 2014) on brain activity during improvisation. Such methodological differences are important to consider when comparing results across studies.…”

“…Other researchers have sought to determine the role of improvisational expertise by studying pianists with a variety of improvisational experience (Pinho et al, 2014). Pinho and colleagues contrasted brain activation during improvisation with activation at rest, and correlated this activity with self-reported lifetime improvisation hours.…”

“…Neuroimaging studies have shed light on the role of domainspecific training on brain activation during improvisation (e.g., Berkowitz and Ansari, 2010;Pinho et al, 2014). But to what extent does improvisation involve domain-general processes?…”

Olfactory Network Differences in Master Sommeliers: Connectivity Analysis Using Granger Causality and Graph Theoretical Approach

“…Functional connectivity has been studied in musicians (Pinho et al, 2014), creative writers (Lotze et al, 2014), functional network organization in chess experts (Duan et al, 2014), and olfactory memory (Meunier et al, 2014). These studies investigate network-based functional connectivity.…”