Creativity in Music: The Brain Dynamics of Jazz Improvisation

Jazz improvisation is a controlled yet ecologically valid framework for investigating spontaneous creative behavior. We examined spatiotemporal brain dynamics when skilled musicians applied different strategies to improvise on a jazz standard. We performed rest and task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging on 16 skilled jazz pianists playing "Days of Wine and Roses", with varying levels of improvisation freedom: (1) playing the melody from memory (byHeart); (2) improvising on the melody (iMelody); and (3) freely improvising (iFreely) on the chord changes. Behaviorally, higher levels of improvisational freedom were associated with a larger number of notes, greater melodic entropy, and reduced pitch predictability. Using the Leading Eigenvector Dynamics Analysis (LEiDA), we found increased activity in the reward system for all conditions compared to rest, including the orbito-frontal cortex. In the improvisation conditions compared to rest, there was a significantly higher probability of a brain state comprising auditory and sensorimotor areas related to musical performance and right insula belonging to the posterior salience network. The highest level of improvisational freedom (iFreely) had a higher occurrence of a brain substate, including the default mode, executive control, and language networks. These networks are involved in planning complex behaviors, decision-making, and motor control-all relevant for understanding neural signatures of creativity.