The Creative Mind: Music and the Brain

The whir of the washing machines, down at a local laundromat, keeps tempo as the words for this article unfold. Patrons busy themselves in solitary worlds, each wrapped up in thoughts of their own, quietly unloading, folding, and organizing clean clothes as the unexpected beat of laundromat “silence” provides: patterns of people performing tasks in a repetitious fashion. Closely I watch. Its inherent rhythm is catching, my toe neatly tapping onto the linoleum floor. Part of me thinks that any minute now a Bjork song-and-dance will take place, each non-descript citizen flamboyantly breaking into a charismatic, heartfelt musical performance.

This is not the case; in fact, this scenario takes place solely in my head, front and center, as I decide how to begin a complex description of where music meets creativity, and the fine line of where genius infiltrates the fatty tissues of the brain.

The ability of the brain to make sense out of nonsense is truly an art form. Musicians are able to interpret a vast sea of information; immaterial thoughts, ideas, and imagination and then weave it into the material world in the form of a musical composition. Neuroscientists are refining and defining where creativity and genius reside within the brain, literally pin-pointing where an insight hits plain view sight. Here’s what the brainy kids have discovered so far….

Musicians interpret the structured aspects of music like a language; aware of inflections, reading the underlying musical harmonics, the structure and stepping stones based upon hours of practice (Neuhaus, 2006)(Limb 2006)(Sieborger 2007). The areas of the brain, which become active in improvisational jazz pianists, are the same that light up when complex language is used (Limb 2006). It’s like a conversation between people only, rather than words, instruments and notes are the medium of dialogue. The vibraphonist for Portland’s Point Juncture Washington, Victor Nash, reiterates this feeling. “Music has nothing to do with sound, body, function, technique, style, (or) anything concrete…. It’s a feeling that is somehow translatable between people independent of musical language or visual cues.”

The artists who most reshape our perceptions of the world tend to be unconventional rebels and out-of-the-box believers who constantly seek new frontiers. Scientists confirm this tendency within the confines of the skull: where the areas in the brain responsible for employing rules, regulation, or the societal cues that keep us “normal” are down regulated during improvisational performances (Robertson 2008). Scientists surmise that a tuning down of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex allows musicians to tune out the distractions - those regulatory cues where feelings of failure originate - allowing creativity to flow more easily and thoughts to become less constrained by rules and regulations (Limb 2008). Moreover, artists aren’t afraid to tread upon new ground, define boundaries in the chaos of musical notes. This makes sense because areas of the brain reflective of this dance, the prefrontal cortex, have greater electrical activity during moments of creativity and improvisation (Limb 2008).

Some ascribe musicians as philosophers, taking the abstract and formulating musical patterns from its chaos. According to James Lincoln Collier, author of “The Making of Jazz”, jazz is essentially a musical experiment, in search of the new and striking discoveries, adding and subtracting on top of existing permutations (Collier 1978). The language of music is built upon two factors: structure and potential. Psychologists argue that geniuses have a common thread, knowing the rules, and creating unique ways to break them.

So what functions within the brain constitute a musical genius? The verdict is still out on this one, yet in the meantime, whet your whistle with this. Genuine music gets to you. It grips you in the heart, makes you stop what you’re doing, stare into space… and truly listen, not just passively absorb the external collage of sounds. Genuine music is a primal, emotive force scripted with thought-provoking notes. Most importantly, it has the potential to knock you upside your head and make you stop… and listen… body and soul. This is when you know you’re inside the musician’s head, reading his thoughts, following his narrative. You are being steered, lead by your ears, on a ship of undulating emotion as it takes you on a fantastic voyage. Nash expresses a similar notion,

“your body is completing tasks that have been rehearsed on the subconscious level, but your mind is elsewhere—I’ve heard it described as picking up a transmission, that the music exists on a higher plane, you just tune into it like a program already in progress.”

Tuning my attention back to my external surroundings, the fuzziness of laundromat world comes into view. Each movement ticks in precision with the circular 12-hour metronome overhead. It’s a crazy world that we live in, kudos to the musical artists that successfully harness the chaotic, universal patterning, and best wishes to the scientists in pursuit of the illusive muse. Both are noteworthy expeditions.

Limb CJ, Kemeny S, Ortigoza EB, Rouhani S, Braun, AR. Left hemispheric lateralization of brain activity during passive rhythm perception in musicians. The anatomical record. 2006. Volume 288A; Issue 4; p 382-389.

Limb CJ, Braun AR. Neural substrates of spontaneous musical performance: An fMRI study of Jazz improvisation. PLoS One. 2008. 3(2): e1679.

Neuhaus c, Knosche TR, Friederici AD. Effects of musical experience and boundary markers on phrase perception in music. J. Cognitive Neuroscience. 2006. March; 18(3): 472-93.

Robertson P. What is a Musical Genius? Clinical Medicine. 2008. 8:178-81.

Sieborger FT, Ferstl EC, Cramon DY. Making sense of nonsense: An fMRI study of taks induced inference processes during discourse comprehension. Brain Research Vol 1166. 29 August 2007, p77-91.