March 8, 2008

The Brains of Jazz Musicians

Scientists funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) have found that, when jazz musicians are engaged in the highly creative and spontaneous activity known as improvisation, a large region of the brain involved in monitoring one’s performance is shut down, while a small region involved in organizing self-initiated thoughts and behaviors is highly activated.

Link

posted by in music, psychology, science | * | 8 comments 

comments

  1. Deron Bauman on March 8th, 2008 at 11:46 am

    I bet that happens in climbing. I have had a few moments when everything shut down except for the simple act of moving up the rock. Some of my best memories.

  2. Andrew Simone on March 8th, 2008 at 11:50 am

    I played jazz trumpet pretty seriously when I was younger and I know exactly the experience the article is talking about.

    It is fantastic.

  3. Deron Bauman on March 8th, 2008 at 11:54 am

    yes, it is fantastic. precisely.

  4. Sheila Ryan on March 8th, 2008 at 12:06 pm

    Simone, the things we learn about you.

  5. Andrew Simone on March 8th, 2008 at 12:46 pm

    For your amusement, Sheila, there is an old video I made with a terrible camera for a talent contest. I was just hamming it up and, obviously, didn’t think I would win.

    I hadn’t played in 10 years (i.e., I was awful), but you get the idea.

  6. John Buaas on March 8th, 2008 at 6:51 pm

    Surely the same thing happens to writers as well. I recently posted about Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and while looking around for stuff to link to I read somewhere that he said that he wrote the poem as though he was in a hallucinatory state. The manuscript for that poem has maybe two words changed on it.

  7. Amy Mabli on March 8th, 2008 at 11:42 pm

    Cool video, Andrew.

  8. Andrew Simone on March 9th, 2008 at 1:27 am

    thanks. I had fun with it. it was done in one take.

Leave a Reply


Ads via The Deck