Real-time creativity: What happens in the brain of musicians when they improvise?

Musical improvisation is one of the purest expressions of human creativity. Because it is both spontaneous and structured, it offers a unique opportunity to observe how the brain generates novel and contextually appropriate ideas in real time. This unique characteristic motivated an international research team to investigate the brain activity of jazz pianists while 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 progression (iFreely).

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and the LEiDA technique (which tracks how the brain dynamically reorganizes during an activity), the researchers examined how different levels of creative freedom activate specific brain networks. In both improvisation conditions, they observed increased activation in auditory, motor, and salience networks, which are 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 (DMN) and the Executive Control Network (ECN), were less active during the most free-form improvisation (iFreely).

This study reveals that improvisation is more than mere inspiration: it involves a dynamic reconfiguration of brain activity that balances emotion, technique, and structure. By uncovering how the brain adapts to create music in real time, the researchers provide new insights into the neural mechanisms underlying human creativity. This study was published in the scientific journal Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, in the article Creativity in Music: The Brain Dynamics of Jazz Improvisation, as a part of research project 263/20 - Brain routes to creativity: Uncovering creative flow in Jazz with neuromodulation, supported by the Bial Foundation and led by Henrique Fernandes.

ABSTRACT

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.