Cortical Regions Involved in the Generation of Musical Structures During Improvisation in Pianists

Abstract

Abstract& Studies on simple pseudorandom motor and cognitive tasks have shown that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and rostral premotor areas are involved in free response selection. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate whether these brain regions are also involved in free generation of responses in a more complex creative behavior: musical improvisation. Eleven professional pianists participated in the study. In one condition, Improvise, the pianist improvised on the basis of a visually displayed melody. In the control condition, Reproduce, the participant reproduced his previous improvisation from memory. Participants were able to reproduce their improvisations with a high level of accuracy, and the contrast Improvise versus Reproduce was thus essentially matched in terms of motor output and sensory feedback. However, the Improvise condition required storage in memory of the improvisation. We therefore also included a condition FreeImp, where the pianist improvised but was instructed not to memorize his performance. To locate brain regions involved in musical creation, we investigated the activations in the Improvise-Reproduce contrast that were also present in FreeImp contrasted with a baseline rest condition. Activated brain regions included the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the presupplementary motor area, the rostral portion of the dorsal premotor cortex, and the left posterior part of the superior temporal gyrus. We suggest that these regions are part of a network involved in musical creation, and discuss their possible functional roles. &

Activation and connectivity patterns of the presupplementary and dorsal premotor areas during free improvisation of melodies and rhythms

“…In line with this reasoning, it can be observed that our classical pianists activate a network including the pre-SMA, PMD and DLPFC, typically associated with explicit processing of novel motor sequences, while jazz pianists rely on regions for implicit routine and automated behavior, showing a more caudal distribution of activity in the SMA and PMD, in conjunction with activity in limbic regions and the basal ganglia (Doyon and Benali, 2005). Notably, all previous imaging studies on piano improvisation (Bengtsson et al, 2007;Berkowitz and Ansari, 2008;de Manzano and Ullen, 2012;Limb and Braun, 2008) as well as the present investigation, find that the PMD is involved in musical creativity.…”

“…Thus, this is the third study (incl. Bengtsson et al, 2007;de Manzano and Ullen, 2012) in which improvisation is not accompanied by a deactivation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, as reported by Limb and Braun (2008) during improvisation. In Limb and Braun (2008), improvisation was compared to execution of over-learned musical sequences at two levels of complexity.…”

“…We, and others, have already explored brain activity which is related to musical improvisation as compared to e.g. sight-reading (de Manzano and Ullen, 2012), pseudo-random sequence generation (de Manzano and Ullen, 2012), reproductions of a previous improvisations (Bengtsson et al, 2007) or overlearned sequences (Berkowitz and Ansari, 2008;Limb and Braun, 2008). In these studies, a number of regions (e.g.…”

“…This was done by calculating the Levenshtein distance (LD) between a performed melody or rhythm and the corresponding target structure presented in the visual template. LD is a measure of the similarity between two sequences (Bengtsson et al, 2007;Levenshtein, 1966). It corresponds to the minimum number of single element deletions, insertions or substitutions required to transform one sequence into the other.…”

Brain structure links trait creativity to openness to experience

“…Additionally, a recent study found that the premotor region was a critical region for goal-directed actions (Gremel and Costa, 2013). Other fMRI studies also indicated that the premotor cortex is involved in diverse creative activities (Bengtsson et al, 2007;Chávez-Eakle et al, 2007;Aziz-Zadeh et al, 2012). In addition, Mostofsky et al (2002) found that boys with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which were known for being excessively impulsive, hyperactive and off-task (inattentive), had decreased volume in the premotor cortex.…”