Neural substrates of spontaneous musical performance: an FMRI study of jazz improvisation.

ABSTRACT: To investigate the neural substrates that underlie spontaneous musical performance, we examined improvisation in professional jazz pianists using functional MRI. By employing two paradigms that differed widely in musical complexity, we found that improvisation (compared to production of over-learned musical sequences) was consistently characterized by a dissociated pattern of activity in the prefrontal cortex: extensive deactivation of dorsolateral prefrontal and lateral orbital regions with focal activation of the medial prefrontal (frontal polar) cortex. Such a pattern may reflect a combination of psychological processes required for spontaneous improvisation, in which internally motivated, stimulus-independent behaviors unfold in the absence of central processes that typically mediate s

SUBMITTER: Limb CJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2244806 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature