Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci.

ISSN 0077-8923

A N N A L S O F T H E N E W Y O R K A C A D E M Y O F SC I E N C E S
Issue: The Emerging Science of Consciousness: Mind, Brain, and the Human Experience

Difculties in the neuroscience of creativity: jazz improvisation and the scientic method
Malinda McPherson and Charles J. Limb
Department of OtolaryngologyHead and Neck Surgery, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland Address for correspondence: Charles J. Limb, M.D., Associate Professor, Department of OtolaryngologyHead and Neck Surgery, Johns Hopkins Hospital, 601 N. Caroline St., 6th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21287

Creativity is a fundamental and remarkable human capacity, yet the scientic study of creativity has been limited by the difculty of reconciling the scientic method and creative processes. We outline several hurdles and considerations that should be addressed when studying the cognitive neuroscience of creativity and suggest that jazz improvisation may be one of the most useful experimental models for the study of spontaneous creativity. More broadly, we argue that studying creativity in a way that is both scientically and ecologically valid requires collaboration between neuroscientists and artists. Keywords: creativity; neuroscience; improvisation; jazz

Introduction Studies of the underlying neural substrates of creativity have been few and far between, and have been limited due to the difculty of reconciling the scientic method and the creative process.15 While studies of the perception of complex or creative stimuli (such as music, lm, or sculpture) are logical extensions of a long line of classical studies in neuroscience that have examined basic sensory perception, the examination of artistic creativity itself poses a far greater challenge. Much of this challenge is due to the inherent differences between creative processes and the scientic method. Creativity can be broadly dened as the ability to produce work that is both novel and in some way appropriate for a given context.6 By comparison, the scientic method encompasses the principles and procedures used to systematically acquire knowledge, including problem identication, data collection, and hypothesis testing.7 Even a cursory comparison reveals an immediate lack of easy reconciliation between science and creativity, with at least two glaring questions of signicance for the scientist: rst, can creativity be systematically studied under controlled conditions without destroying its essence or missing its essence entirely? Second, can the generation

of novelty, an unpredictable process, be predictably replicated? Controls, constraints, and creativity The scientic process requires the establishment of controls and constraints so that observations derived from experimental manipulation of a variable of interest can be reasonably interpreted. When studying a process as elusive as creativity, however, experimental manipulation may not be possible if one is to maintain a natural environment for the creator. If a creator is placed in an abnormal, constraining environment during the course of a scientic study, the creative process itself is threatened, calling into question the validity of any observations made thereafter.8 We must address the question of whether it is truly possible to study high-level creativity in the laboratory. Although creativity consists of numerous smaller components, parsing creativity into these component parts may be a misleading way to assess creativity as a whole, since it may indeed be greater than the sum of its parts. Yet studying creativity as a single entity without this reductionist approach may leave the scientist with unwieldy data. In our opinion, both approaches are necessary to examine
doi: 10.1111/nyas.12174

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creativity: a top-down approach that emphasizes the idea that artistic creativity is best examined intact, and a bottom-up approach that emphasizes the idea that we must understand the subprocesses and brain modules that give rise to creative behaviors. In order to achieve this, one must recognize that there are natural implicit and explicit limitations within any creative domain. Recognizing the natural constraints that exist for a specic creative domain is an important guiding principle for scientists as they attempt to develop appropriate experimental controls. Of course, there are a range of creative domains (that include, but are not limited to, visual art, music, and dance), some of which lend themselves to scientic study better than others; for example, from a neuroscientic perspective, the process of writing a sonnet is likely more amenable to study than the process of writing a novel. Therefore, when choosing an appropriate creative domain to study, there are many interdependent factors that need to be accounted for. For example, what is the usual venue for the creative domain? Where and how does this creativity naturally occur? Does the creativity occur individually or in groups? It is also important to consider the time over which the creative activity occurs. For example, spontaneous musical improvisation and musical composition are both forms of creativity, but they take place during vastly different spans of time. Improvisation is conceived and realized essentially at once, whereas writing a symphony can take years of planning and editing. Finally, it is crucial to consider the training, skill set, cultural background, practice, and experience of the creators to be studied. Since each creative act requires a different combination of specic skills, a clear description and understanding of what these skill subsets are, will allow optimization of study design for specic experimental purposes. Jazz improvisation: a model for spontaneous creativity Thus far, we have identied the intrinsic conicts that arise when scientic methods are applied to the examination of creativity. These conicts are due to the very nature of creativity, which is novel, unpredictable, uncontrollable, and perhaps unmeasurableall difcult attributes from the perspective of neuroscience, which relies upon systematic measurement and control of variables of
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interest. When studying art and creativity, it is important to realize that neuroscience experiments differ from concerts, recitals, or gigs. The purpose of the experiment is to allow the scientist to control and measure whatever variables can be acceptably approached in this manner, rather than to recreate a concert or provide entertainment (of course, it may be that an experiment is specically focused on brain mechanisms involved in concert performance, in which case there is even less room for scientic controls). Therefore, scientic experiments of creativity should attempt to replicate natural artistic conditions not so that the artists can produce masterpieces on demand, but instead so that artists are comfortable and their behavior can be generally reective of the creative process of interest. Although not all creativity takes place within the domains of art, it does appear that the domains of art are always areas characterized by enormous creativity. In a sense, artists are creative expertshighly trained in the skills needed to enable creative states of mindthat can offer scientists a golden opportunity for study.9 For the development of a prototypical model to study creativity, certain features of artistic behavior are more suitable for examination than others. For example, creative domains with relatively short time frames (on the scale of seconds to minutes) are better suited to laboratory study than those with relatively long time frames (weeks to months), where practical experimental realities are germane and repetition is vital. Artists who are generally exible in their approach to their craft are also more suitable as participants in neuroscience investigations, in comparison to artists who only feel that they can produce creative output when all environmental factors are optimized. In light of these concerns, spontaneous improvisationespecially in jazz, arguably the most developed and advanced form of musical improvisationmay be the best starting point for scientic study. Jazz musicians typically produce music that is spontaneously conceived and immediately realized, with a high degree of exibility and time frames that are relatively short. While improvising, jazz musicians often enter a state of total focus known as a ow state; jazz musicians are particularly adept at entering this state when they improvise. When in a ow state, a person is operating at his peak of arousal and ability.10 Creativity during a ow state becomes nearly effortless in
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that the creator may not have to consciously think through or mediate their actions.11 Flow states likely exist in all forms of creativity; however, it seems as if they can be entered more quickly during tasks that require the integration of complex sensory input and motor output,12 such as those observed in jazz improvisation. As stated earlier, there is signicant scientic risk when studying creativity due to the fact that the product of creativity is by denition novel. Although many other domains of creativity will need to be scientically examined before neuroscientists can piece together a neural model of creativity, we suggest that jazz improvisation may be one of the most reliable approaches with which to frame the study of spontaneous creativity. Many of the difculties outlined above in the neuroscience of creativity can be reasonably addressed through the use of jazz.13 Jazz musicians are trained in quickly entering ow states and getting into the groove of the music. Professional jazz musicians are specically trained to create novel music, a skill that classical musicians, for example, may not practice as frequently. Jazz musicians practice their technical skills until they are masters so that they might render any musical idea they wish without being hindered by their technique; they are experts of their instruments and of creative improvisation. Jazz is an incredibly exible and diverse form of music, yet one that often includes several conventions and norms. Jazz improvisation, for example, can be restricted by key, tempo, meter, and mode (among other elements) and still not hinder the jazz musicians improvisations to a point where they are unable to enter a creative ow state.14 All of these characteristics that typify jazz music and musicians make this form of improvisation a highly suitable model for the neuroscientic study of creativity. Although it is impossible to predict precisely what somebody will create, the creative process itself, the act of being creative, can be replicated. Jazz musicians practice this process daily and in doing so, provide an ideal opportunity for the neuroscientic study of creativity. The need for a neuroscience of creativity Irrespective of the particular modality studied (be it jazz improvisation or some other form of creativity), a great need exists for a neuroscience of creativity. Indeed, there may be no single human endeavor that is more deserving of neuroscientic
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inquiry than our capacity to createit is the root of all innovation and problem solving, how individual brains generate new information, and how we collectively evolve as a society.15,16 As such, we have a pressing need to understand exactly how this process takes place in the human brain. By characterizing the neural mechanisms that underlie creative processes, we can begin to understand how pathologic disease states relate to such behavior, and how we might optimize brain functioning for maximal creative output. It is less clear, however, whether art (or artists) really need neuroscientists. Humans have created works of art throughout their history, independently of whether they had any understanding of the neural mechanisms that gave rise to the percepts induced by their art; it is highly plausible that this process could continue indenitely regardless of what neuroscientists have to say about it. Yet it seems inarguable that an increased understanding of all aspects of the creative processincluding its neurobiology would not be of extreme interest to an artist, whose work depends entirely on this process. It is further hoped that through cross-fertilization of ideas between artists and scientists, the importance of commonly held interests that pertain to how all humans experience the world, will rise to the top. As a result of the numerous difculties in the neuroscience of creativity, we feel strongly that this interchange between artists and neuroscientists must take place so that neuroscientists can continually improve the accuracy to which their experiments reect artistic concerns and realities. In other words, we need more practice so that we can identify the most important questions and the most essential creative processes, and then study them in a way that is both scientically valid and artistically profound. This issue of the need for a neuroscience of creativity underscores a critically important point: questions about creativity cannot be solved solely by scientists. Philosopher Daniel Dennett has stated: Scientists sometimes deceive themselves into thinking that philosophical ideas are only, at best, decorations or parasitic commentaries on the hard, objective triumphs of science, and that they themselves are immune to the confusions that philosophers devote their lives to dissolving.17 Here, philosophical and philosophers could easily be replaced with artistic and artists, and ring true for the study of artistic creativity.
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Scientists cannot effectively study creativity without the intuitions and discoveries of the creative agents themselves. Likewise, artists cannot uncover the underlying neural and computational mechanisms of their creative domains without the help of scientists. Musicians, for example, have an intuitive concept of what mental processes are occurring when they are performing,18 as well as additional insights regarding which types of environments are natural versus unnatural. Scientists can use these intuitions to help focus research questions and develop ecologically valid models of creativity. In light of all of the above, it is evident that studying creativity requires a careful untangling of the preconditions and assumptions of both the scientic method and the creative domain under consideration. Conicts of interest The authors declare no conicts of interest. References
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