Sweeeet. Two researchers from the United States have uncovered what happens in brain of a jazz pianist when he or she goes off on an improvisational spree. And it looks as if all inhibitions are switched off in the name of music.

Charles Limb and Allen Braun put jazz musicians in an MRI machine and got them to play things they already knew on piano and to improvise. They then subtracted the results for memorized tunes from the results from improvisation, which should reveal only the parts of the brain used when riffing.

Cool fact: Limb and Braun had to create a special piano with no metal parts that could be used inside the MRI machine’s powerful magnetic fields (pictured below).

Creative juices flowing not only shut down the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain linked to self-censoring, but also fired up the medial prefrontal cortex, linked to self expression (research paper).

“What we think is happening is when you’re telling your own musical story, you’re shutting down impulses that might impede the flow of novel ideas,” says Limb (press release).

Their work was published last week in PLOS One, along with the press release which first put out the only headline this story was ever going to have. It’s only just come to my attention via today’s USA Today item, which reveals that Limb is about to start on scanning of poets, visual artists and ‘non-artists asked to improvise’.

UPDATE

From Scientific American:

This Is Your Brain On Arts – A three-year, multi-institutional study finds that early training in performing arts is really good for the brain.

Image top: Getty images

Image bottom: Johns Hopkins