After hearing an extraordinary musical piece, you might wish to share the talent of the genius behind the work. Inadvertently, you are asking to share the unique function of his brain.
In a recent study, Aaron Berkowitz and Daniel Ansari collaborated to explore the differences between the brains of musical experts and individuals who have had little to no musical training. Berkowitz is affiliated with the Hopkins School of Medicine and the Department of Music at Harvard University.
Subjects participating in the study were 12 classically trained undergraduate pianists from the Dartmouth College Music Department, whose average training time was 13.5 years. The other 12 subjects were general Dartmouth students.
The criterion for their recruitment was less than three years of learning and/or playing an instrument. Eight of these subjects had no previous training whatsoever, and the average playing time for the rest was 0.67 years.
Each subject was asked to complete four tasks on a piano with five keys. In the first test, called Patterns/Metronome, subjects listened to seven melodies with simple note sequences like CCCCC, or CDEFG. They were instructed to choose one of the sequences and play one note per beat based on a two-beat-per-second metronome.
The second test was called Melodic Improvisation/Metronome. In this test, the subjects created original melodies to the rhythm of the metronome.
In the third test, Patterns/Rhythmic Improvisation, subjects played one of the five simple melodies from the first test, while inventing their own rhythms.
Finally, in the fourth test, Melodic Improvisation/Rhythmic Improvisation, subjects invented melodies (as in the second test) without a metronome (as in the third test). In this test, subjects were allowed both melodic and rhythmic freedom.
The tests each lasted 40 seconds, and subjects were allotted a 30-second rest time in between tests. The results were processed using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. An fMRI is a subset of an MRI scan, and measures the change in blood flow in relation to neural activity in the brain.
Surprisingly, scientists found only one difference between the brain imaging data of the respective groups. This difference occurred during improvisation. In the musically trained group, the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) was deactivated, while no changes in this region occurred in the nonmusical group.
The deactivation of the rTPJ allows musicians to enter a more focused state of mind and to disregard distracting stimuli. This is crucial during improvisation.
Non-musical individuals are missing this trait because of their lack of practice and musical experience. Hence, it was crucial for Berkowitz and Ansari to recruit individuals who had had limited previous musical experience and had been out of practice for a significant period of time before this study.
It is important to note that the two groups exhibited equal performance in regards to rhythmic freedom. Berkowitz and Ansari speculate that this is due to the infinite rhythmic possibilities in comparison to the limited ones in improvisation (due to the five-key constraint). The limited number of improvisation patterns required more effort and concentration from the subjects. Thus, subjects had to strive harder during melodic inventions in comparison with rhythmic ones.
One might wonder how Berkowitz and Ansari were able to simulate accurate improvisation in their study. After all, improvisation is a creative, unpredictable process that usually occurs under specific conditions, say, a jazz club. Improvisation also includes a whole spectrum of cognitive processes like "decision making, creativity, emotion, memory, [and] attention." It would be virtually impossible to simultaneously examine these processes and allocate each one to a brain region.
Berkowitz and Ansari therefore limited their study to a set of tasks that allowed them to examine the sole cognitive process of decision-making. While the study does not represent improvisation to the highest degree, it does utilize improvisatory tasks. This study provides us with an understanding of the neural correlation between attention and creativity. It makes us wonder whether nonmusical individuals can be trained to change their cognitive approach, and subsequently their brain function.
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