Summary: Creativity is notoriously difficult to study as it unfolds, but musical improvisation offers a rare chance to watch spontaneous idea-generation in action. In a new imaging study, researchers examined how 16 skilled jazz pianists’ brains reorganized while they played a familiar tune from memory, improvised around its melody, or freely improvised over its chord changes.
The findings show that different levels of creative freedom activate distinct patterns of brain network coupling, shifting from more evaluative and controlled processing in structured improvisation to heightened sensory-motor and pleasure-related responses during freer creativity.
The work reveals how the brain dynamically transitions between networks to support real-time innovation. These insights offer a scalable framework for probing the neural architecture of human creativity as it naturally unfolds.
Key Facts
- Structured vs. Free Creativity: Constrained improvisation engaged more executive and evaluative networks, while freer improvisation increased auditory, motor, and salience activity.
- Dynamic Brain Substates: Improvisation levels produced distinct recurring network configurations linked to planning, perception, and spontaneous creativity.
- Real-Time Reconfiguration: The brain continuously reorganized network patterns depending on how much creative freedom the musician had.
Source: BIAL Foundation
Creativity is generally defined as the ability to generate ideas or products that are simultaneously new and appropriate to a given context.
Despite decades of research, studying creativity in action is still challenging due to its abstract nature and the difficulty of capturing real-time creative processes.
Musical improvisation is seen as an extraordinary manifestation of human creativity. Being both spontaneous and structured, it allows for the observation of how the brain generates real-time novel and relevant ideas.
It was precisely this characteristic that led an international team of researchers to investigate the brains of 16 skilled jazz pianists while they were performing the standard “Days of Wine and Roses” under three distinct conditions: playing from memory (byHeart), improvising based on the melody (iMelody), and freely improvising based on the chord changes (iFreely).
In the article Creativity in Music: The Brain Dynamics of Jazz Improvisation, published in September in the scientific journal Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, the researchers explain that they examined how different levels of creative freedom activate specific brain networks, using functional magnetic resonance imaging and the Leading Eigenvector Dynamics Analysis method (which tracks how the brain dynamically reorganises into different substates of networks over time).
With the support of the Bial Foundation, the project was carried out at Center for Music in the Brain, Aarhus University, Denmark. The team led by Henrique Fernandes (Aarhus University/The Royal Academy of Music), supervised by Peter Vuust, observed that, in the two improvisation conditions, there was increased activation in auditory, motor, and salience networks associated with musical perception, motor execution, and pleasure.
In contrast, networks linked to spontaneous thought, reflection, and decision-making, such as the Default Mode Network and the Executive Control Network, were involved differently depending on the level of improvisational freedom. Freer improvisation (iFreely) was marked by increased coactivation of these networks in a distinct substate, possibly supporting complex planning.
“The results revealed that increasing improvisational freedom corresponds to a shift in brain network engagement, from greater involvement of executive and evaluative networks in constrained improvisation to intensified activity in auditory-motor and salience networks during freer forms of creative expression”, says the project coordinator, whose team also includes Portuguese researchers from ICVS – Life and Health Sciences Research Institute, School of Medicine, University of Minho.
By identifying specific substates associated with different levels of creative freedom, this study provides new insights into the brain dynamics underlying musical improvisation, proposing a scalable method for exploring the neural basis of spontaneous creative behaviour.
“These results expand existing models of improvisation by emphasising the dynamic reconfiguration of specific and general networks, also highlighting the importance of interaction between networks over time rather than isolated static activation”, notes Henrique Fernandes.
Funding: This study was funded by a Medical Research Council Studentship and was also supported by La Caixa Foundation, Spain (LCF/BQ/PR22/11920014), the Foundation for Science and Technology, Portugal (UIDB/50026/2020, UIDP/50026/2020), BIAL Foundation (263/20), Salling Foundation, and The Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF117).
Key Questions Answered:
A: It blends structure with spontaneity, allowing researchers to observe creative idea-generation in real time.
A: Auditory, motor, and salience networks show heightened engagement when musicians improvise freely.
A: It more strongly recruits executive and evaluative networks associated with planning and controlled decision-making.
Editorial Notes:
- This article was edited by a Neuroscience News editor.
- Journal paper reviewed in full.
- Additional context added by our staff.
About this creativity and neuroplasticity research news
Author: Sandra Pinto
Source: BIAL Foundation
Contact: Sandra Pinto – BIAL Foundation
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Creativity in Music: The Brain Dynamics of Jazz Improvisation” by Henrique Fernandes et al. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
Abstract
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.
