[Dixielandjazz] Functional MRI studies when pianists are improvizing.

[Les Elkins]

Hello,

A link to a press release from Johns Hopkins has a bit more info. I've
copied it below.

The idea of improvisation being syntactic- working with patterns- but not
symantic- dealing with meanings- really resonated for me. I've seen the
idea in other places (essays by Leonard Bernstein among others), but never
so succinctly put. As someone who came to improvisation (at least competent
improvisation!) relatively late in life, it matches my suspicions as well.

As an aside: For a while I was a regular (if not competitive) autocrosser,
a sort of entry level car race where you get half an hour to walk a 'track'
of traffic cones and have four cracks to get your best time on it. For many
events, the admissions guy for Peabody Conservatory (where the piano
players in the study came from) was a few cars down the line from mine. We
had several chats in the grid about how much autocrossing hit the same
mental processes as sight-reading music. It's scary how much the processes
felt similar!

(Another aside: The mechanic I take our cars to has a piano performance
degree from Peabody, but that's another story....)

-Les Elkins


http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/the_musical_brain_novel_study_of_jazz_players_shows_common_brain_circuitry_processes_both_music_and_language

The Musical Brain: Novel Study of Jazz Players Shows Common Brain Circuitry
Processes Both Music and Language
Release Date: 02/19/2014
 Researchers scanned brains while musicians "traded fours

The brains of jazz musicians engrossed in spontaneous, improvisational
musical conversation showed robust activation of brain areas traditionally
associated with spoken language and syntax, which are used to interpret the
structure of phrases and sentences. But this musical conversation shut down
brain areas linked to semantics - those that process the meaning of spoken
language, according to results of a study by Johns Hopkins researchers.

The study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to track the
brain activity of jazz musicians in the act of "trading fours," a process
in which musicians participate in spontaneous back and forth instrumental
exchanges, usually four bars in duration. The musicians introduce new
melodies in response to each other's musical ideas, elaborating and
modifying them over the course of a performance.

The results of the study suggest that the brain regions that process syntax
aren't limited to spoken language, according to Charles Limb,
M.D.<http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/profiles/results/directory/profile/0008761/charles-limb>,
an associate professor in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck
Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Rather, he
says, the brain uses the syntactic areas to process communication in
general, whether through language or through music.

Limb, who is himself a musician and holds a faculty appointment at the
Peabody Conservatory, says the work sheds important new light on the
complex relationship between music and language.

"Until now, studies of how the brain processes auditory communication
between two individuals have been done only in the context of spoken
language," says Limb, the senior author of a report on the work that
appears online Feb. 19 in the journal *PLOS ONE*. "But looking at jazz lets
us investigate the neurological basis of interactive, musical communication
as it occurs outside of spoken language.

"We've shown in this study that there is a fundamental difference between
how meaning is processed by the brain for music and language. Specifically,
it's syntactic and not semantic processing that is key to this type of
musical communication. Meanwhile, conventional notions of semantics may not
apply to musical processing by the brain."

To study the response of the brain to improvisational musical conversation
between musicians, the Johns Hopkins researchers recruited 11 men aged 25
to 56 who were highly proficient in jazz piano performance. During each
10-minute session of trading fours, one musician lay on his back inside the
MRI machine with a plastic piano keyboard resting on his lap while his legs
were elevated with a cushion. A pair of mirrors was placed so the musician
could look directly up while in the MRI machine and see the placement of
his fingers on the keyboard. The keyboard was specially constructed so it
did not have metal parts that would be attracted to the large magnet in the
fMRI.

The improvisation between the musicians activated areas of the brain linked
to syntactic processing for language, called the inferior frontal gyrus and
posterior superior temporal gyrus. In contrast, the musical exchange
deactivated brain structures involved in semantic processing, called the
angular gyrus and supramarginal gyrus.

"When two jazz musicians seem lost in thought while trading fours, they
aren't simply waiting for their turn to play," Limb says. "Instead, they
are using the syntactic areas of their brain to process what they are
hearing so they can respond by playing a new series of notes that hasn't
previously been composed or practiced."

Along with Limb, other Johns Hopkins researchers involved in the study
include Gabriel F. Donnay, B.S.; Summer K. Rankin, Ph.D.; Monica
Lopez-Gonzalez, Ph.D.; and Patpong Jiradejvong, M.S.

This project was funded by the Dana Foundation and the Brain Science
Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.



-- 
"NEVER use a maj7 chord in any bar that is named after a deceased NASCAR
  driver, a large-calibre firearm, or an intoxicated farm animal."
-Rev. Billy C. Wirtz's Universal Chord Law