Neuroscience of Jazz

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When you transition from a memorized state to a creative state,” says Limb, hot spots appear in the prefrontal cortex; they “imply that there is a self-expressive or autobiographical region that’s active” here during these improvisations. At the same time, “There’s this broad shutdown of activity that’s occurring in the lateral prefrontal cortex, what we call deactivation... One of its main roles is conscious self-monitoring and regulation of output so it matches an intended effect.” Expression plus deinhibition is what Mike Pope calls “getting out of your own way.”

“Limb is intrigued by the possibility that his research could lead to creativity-enhancing drugs (as opposed to drugs currently used that heighten alertness, for example, or that dampen inhibition — like booze). “We are going to have interventions, whether they are pills or other sort of commonly available things, that are going to specifically affect the way our creative circuitry works. I don’t know if it’ll be during my lifetime or not, but I’m quite sure that’s going to happen one day. And I think we’d be foolish as a scientific community to ignore it. I mean, creativity — you probably can’t get to a more important basic process by which we evolve.”