Science and all that jazz tunes secret of streaming creativity
Artists and writers are constantly seeking to enter 'the zone'; now science claims to have watched live the brain slip into that effortless stream of consciousness
WRITERS – indeed many artistic types – often talk about being 'in the zone', when the words are flowing with barely any conscious thought.
We're in that magical place, then, where the raw creativity simply crackles from its mysterious source of origin, out through our fingers, to be captured on the page. A blessing we pursue endlessly; often through a mire of tears and blood, until... we're kind of not there any more.
The story takes over, or else we become one with our muse; a synthesis of conscious artist and the unconscious but seemingly very much alive creation. It's an altered state of awareness, for sure; one that – as anyone knows who has experienced it – somehow takes us out of ourselves, and pours something else into our skulls.
Yes, it's easy to wax rhetorical; dress 'the zone' up in fanciful, maybe almost spiritual language, but deep down we surely know – and can admit – that the magic is rooted securely in the physical processes at work within the neurology of the brain.
The workings of the brain – as far as sentience goes – remain mostly a mystery, so little wonder we tend to get a little fanciful about it, but scientists are delving into its tangled enigma, in search of understanding.
It's not just authors and artists that crave this state of consciousness. That 'zone' of apparently effortless, enjoyable productivity is prized and sought after by people in business, too, as well as people in research, and education; indeed anyone who wants to produce a stream of creative ideas and products.
Now scientists claim to have peered deep into the grey matter and witnessed how the brain slips into a creative stream of consciousness; the process that unlocks the 'zone' and takes us into the flow.
We see you, muse
This is where we get a little less colourful in our language, and turn to the science; rather the scientists from the Creativity Research Lab, at Drexel University, Pennsylvania in the United States.
The team used neuroimaging technology to carry out the first live study of how the brain reaches a creative flow state: in this case, jazz improvisation.
According to the Drexel team, the findings reveal the creative flow state involves two key factors: extensive experience, which leads to a network of brain areas specialized for generating the desired type of ideas, plus the release of control – “letting go” – to allow this network to work with little or no conscious supervision.
Dr John Kounios, professor in the College of Arts & Sciences, and Creativity Research Lab director, led the study, along with David Rosen PhD, a recent graduate from the college, and a postdoc at John Hopkins University.
According to the team, their results suggest that creative flow can be achieved by training people to release control when they have built up enough expertise in a particular domain. They published their findings in the journal, Neuropsychologia.
“Flow was first identified and studied by the pioneering psychological scientist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,” said Kounios. “He defined it as ‘a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.’”
Kounios noted that although flow has long been a topic of public fascination, as well as the focus of hundreds of behavioural research studies, there has been no consensus about what flow is. Their new study decided between different theories of how flow is involved when people produce creative ideas.
Hyper-focus, or just letting go?
One view is that flow might be a state of highly focused concentration or hyperfocus that shuts out extraneous thoughts, and other distractions, to enable superior performance on a task.
A related theory, based on recent research on the neuroscience of creativity, is that flow occurs when the brain’s “default-mode network” – a collection of brain areas that work together when a person daydreams or introspects – generates ideas under the supervision of the “executive control network” in the brain’s frontal lobes, which directs the kinds of ideas the default-mode network produces.
Kounios likened it to the analogy of a person “supervising” a TV by picking the movie it streams.
There's an alternative theory of creative flow, however. This has it that through years of intense practice, the brain develops a specialised network, or circuit, to automatically produce specific types of ideas, in this case musical ones, with little conscious effort.
In this view, the executive control network relaxes its supervision so that the musician can “let go” and allow this specialised circuit to go on “autopilot” without interference.
The research team said the key to this notion is the idea that people who do not have extensive experience at a task, or who have difficulty releasing control, will be less likely to experience deep creative flow.
The study’s results are said to support the “expertise-plus-release” view of slipping into a stream of consciousness.
Wired for jazz
The researchers tested these competing theories of creative flow by recording high-density electroencephalograms (EEGs) from 32 jazz guitar players; some were highly experienced and others less so.
Each musician improvised to six jazz lead sheets (songs) with programmed drums, bass and piano accompaniment, and rated the intensity of their flow experience for each improvisation.
The resulting 192 recorded jazz improvisations, or “takes,” were subsequently played for four jazz experts individually so they could rate each for creativity and other qualities. The researchers then analysed the EEGs to discover which brain areas were associated with high-flow takes (compared to low-flow takes).
The high-experience musicians experienced flow more often and more intensely than the low-experience musicians. This shows that expertise enables flow. However, expertise is not the only factor found to contribute to creative flow.
The EEGs showed that a high-flow state was associated with increased activity in left-hemisphere auditory and touch areas that are involved in hearing and playing music.
Importantly, the team says, high flow was also associated with decreased activity in the brain’s superior frontal gyri, an executive control region. This is consistent with the idea that creative flow is associated with reduced conscious control, that is, letting go. This previously hypothesised phenomenon has been called “transient hypofrontality.”
For the high-experience musicians, flow was associated with greater activity in auditory and vision areas. However, they also showed reduced activity in parts of the default-mode network, suggesting that the default-mode network was not contributing much to flow-related idea generation in these musicians.
In contrast, the low-experience musicians showed little flow-related brain activity.
Kounios said: “A practical implication of these results is that productive flow states can be attained by practice to build up expertise in a particular creative outlet, coupled with training to withdraw conscious control when enough expertise has been achieved. This can be the basis for new techniques for instructing people to produce creative ideas."
He added, “If you want to be able to stream ideas fluently, then keep working on those musical scales, physics problems or whatever else you want to do creatively – computer coding, fiction writing – you name it. But then, try letting go.
“As jazz great Charlie Parker said, ‘You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.’”
Tune in, switch off, let the brain do its thing. One suspects many a creative writer (other artists, too) might well offer a nod of recognition. We've all been there; maybe not as much as we'd like, but take heart – it's a knack we can learn.
Main image: Postdoctoral researcher Yongtaek Oh plays the guitar while his electroencephalograms (EEGs) are recorded in the Creativity Research Laboratory. Image courtesy of Drexel University
MC