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Dhakal, Kiran (1); Norgaard, Martin (2); Adhikari, Bhim M. (1, 3 ); Yun, Kristy S. (1); Dhamala, Mukesh (1, 4, 5, 6, 7)

(1) Department of Physics and Astronomy, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia. (2) School of Music, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia. (3) Department of Psychiatry, Maryland Psychiatry Research Center, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland. (4) Neuroscience Institute, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia. (5) Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia. (6) Center for Nano-Optics, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia. (7) Center for Diagnostics and Therapeutics, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia.

Address correspondence to: Bhim M. Adhikari, Department of Psychiatry, Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Tawes Ct, Catonsville, MD 21228 [email protected]

Introduction

Musical improvisation is an excellent model to study human creativity in which the output is created in real time and revision impossible. Similar to innovative verbalizations or movement sequences, musical improvisation is only possible because choices are constrained by esthetic rules and physical limitations (Pressing and In, 1988). Expert practitioners who have internalized these rules and practiced the related motor movements can produce amazingly intricate improvisations. Despite some previous studies, the neural underpinnings of musical improvisation are not clearly understood. This spontaneous process may involve divergent brain activation and connectivity patterns. One emerging idea is that creative behavior, such as musical improvisation, involves the dynamic interaction of the default mode network (DMN) and the executive control network (ECN) (Beaty et al., 2016). Interestingly, these two networks are usually associated with different tasks and are typically not active concurrently. DMN activity is associated with spontaneous and self-generated thought, including mind-wandering, mental simulation, social cognition, autobiographical retrieval, and episodic future thinking, whereas ECN activity is associated with cognitive processes that require externally directed attention, including working memory, relational integration, and task-set switching (Beaty et al., 2016). Improvisation may involve the interaction between an automatic bottom-up process (DMN) that may supply possible choices and a top-down control process (ECN) that may guide those choices according to hierarchical rules (Beaty, 2015; Beaty et al., 2016).

Improvisers manipulate elements on different hierarchical levels

The hierarchical structure of tonal music is a central constraint that may be used by the ECN to evaluate...

             

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