Abstract
Previous studies of musical creativity suggest that this process involves multi-regional intra and interhemispheric interactions, particularly in the prefrontal cortex. However, the activity of the prefrontal cortex and that of the parieto-temporal regions, seems to depend on the domains of creativity that are evaluated and the task that is performed. In the field of music, only few studies have investigated the brain process of a creative task and none of them have investigated the effect of the level of creativity on the recruit networks. In this work we used magnetic resonance imaging to explore these issues by comparing the brain activities of subjects with higher creative abilities to those with lesser abilities, while the subjects improvised on different rhythmic fragments. We evaluated the products the subjects created during the fMRI scan using two musical parameters: fluidity and flexibility, and classified the subjects according to their punctuation. We examined the relation between brain activity and creativity level. Subjects with higher abilities generated their own creations based on modifications of the original rhythm with little adhesion to it. They showed activation in prefrontal regions of both hemispheres and the right insula. Subjects with lower abilities made only partial changes to the original musical patterns. In these subjects, activation was only observed in left unimodal areas. We demonstrated that the activations of prefrontal and paralimbic areas, such as the insula, are related to creativity level, which is related to a widespread integration of networks that are mainly associated with cognitive, motivational and emotional processes.
Highlights
Over the last two decades, a great amount of work has been devoted to exploring the neural basis of creativity using functional neuroimaging
We performed three independent regressions between the whole-brain activities defined by the aforementioned contrast and fluidity, flexibility and Cscores. These analyses resulted in a single brain map for each regression that showed the brain areas that were more strongly modulated by creativity level during the creation task than the repetition task
We examined only two groups: the high creative group (HCG) which was formed by those subjects with high scores in both fluidity and flexibility (11 subjects) and the low creative group (LCG) which was formed by subjects (10) with lower fluidity and flexibility scores
Summary
Over the last two decades, a great amount of work has been devoted to exploring the neural basis of creativity using functional neuroimaging. Bengtsson et al [6] used fMRI to investigate which cortical regions are involved in the generation of new musical material during improvisation on the basis of a visually displayed melody in professional classical pianists These authors found activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), the presupplementary motor area (pre-SMA), the premotor cortex (PMC) and the posterior part of the superior temporal gyrus (STG). The comparison of improvisation with the production of a well-learned musical sequence revealed deactivation of the dlPFC and lateral orbital regions and activation of the frontopolar cortex These findings seem to be directly opposed results, comparison of the studies is difficult because the experiments and the type of musicians evaluated were quite different. Based on the existing literature on creativity [6,7,11] we hypothesized that we would find more activation in brain regions involved in cognitive flexibility (i.e., the prefrontal cortex) and motivation (i.e., the insula) in the higher creative group compared to the lower creative group during improvisation
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