Connecting to create: expertise in musical improvisation is associated with increased functional connectivity between premotor and prefrontal areas.
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.
Department of Neuroscience and Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, SE-171 77 Stockholm, Sweden; and PhD Programme in Experimental Biology and Biomedicine, Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology, University of Coimbra, Portugal.
Ana Luísa
AL
Pinho
Örjan
Ö
de Manzano
Peter
P
Fransson
Helene
H
Eriksson
Fredrik
F
Ullén
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D003405:Creativity; D056228:Feedback, Sensory / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009146:Music; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011361:Professional Competence; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult
D010100:Oxygen
Creativity; expertise; fMRI; improvisation; music; plasticity