Study finds singing and imagining improvised music elicits flow-like brain states

 You just might want to have your doctor figure this out. It can't be any worse than the non-existent stroke protocols s/he has.

Study finds singing and imagining improvised music elicits flow-like brain states

MedicalXpress Breaking News-and-Events|October 15, 2021

A research team at Georgia State University has identified how the brain changes when artists are in a state of "flow" and found that simply imagining improvised performances elicits the same flow-like brain states as when musicians are singing.

In the new study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers recruited 21 advanced jazz musicians, who were prompted to vocalize or imagine one of the four scores from the Bebop era of jazz based on a standard 12-bar blues chordal progression while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The multidisciplinary research team—which includes experts in mathematics, physics, music, neuroscience and computer science—then used the fMRI data to identify how a musician's brain reconfigures connectivity depending on the degree of creativity required during jazz performances, focusing on two major brain networks: the default mode network and the executive control network.

"We estimated static functional network connectivity as jazz musicians were vocalizing, imagining, improvising or performing pre-learned, memorized scores," said principal investigator Victor M. Vergara.

Martin Norgaard, associate professor in the School of Music and co-author of the study, says the work provides new insight into the minds of expert jazz musicians at work.

"What's so fascinating is that we saw very similar brain patterns and activity whether they were actually scat singing or just imagining an improvised performance," said Norgaard.

The study builds on previous research demonstrating that subjects' brains show lower functional connectivity during musical improvisation. The new findings reveal that improvisation is associated with a state of weak connectivity to the brain's executive control network and to a feeling of "flow," which allows unhindered musical creation.

"The executive control network is typically active in many tasks, including solving problems. The default mode network seems to be more active when a subject is in the resting state," said Norgaard. "We saw that when expert musicians are improvising, the brain is interfering less with their creativity."

The study was conducted in collaboration with the Center for Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science (TReNDS), which is supported by Georgia State, the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. Vince Calhoun, founding director of TReNDS and a Distinguished University Professor in Psychology and Neuroscience, said the new study allowed researchers to observe widespread and richer effects of connectivity. It is the first analysis of whole brain connectivity during vocalized and imagined real-time production of creative output.

"The brain is highly dynamic, so mapping how brain function changes over time is a much more natural way to analyze the data and capture functional patterns linked to either behavioral conditions or to resting," said Calhoun.

As part of the team at TReNDS center, Vergara and his colleagues were able to extract signals from the brain using a non-invasive method to reduce any interference in the creative process. The team created a custom algorithm to identify the resting state networks.

"Brain imaging produces vast amounts of time-varying measurements that are difficult to parse. Pattern recognition algorithms were necessary to pinpoint the relevant brain areas involved in the creative process," said Vergara. "We then compared the different patterns to understand the differences between performing improvisation and pre-rehearsed music."

The study's paradigm allows for the inclusion of expert jazz performers with many different instrument specializations, which suggests the results may be broadly applicable to all improvising musicians. Future research could adapt the same paradigm to other activities where creation happens in real time—like in performing freestyle rap or spoken-word poetry and even playing sports—potentially identifying common threads in the creative process inside the human brain.

"Now there are more specific questions we can consider, like what changes are happening in the brain while someone improvises or which different networks are involved," said Norgaard. "That's called dynamic connectivity, and that's what we're hoping to research next."

The research team includes Robyn Miller, assistant professor of Computer Science, Mukesh Dhamala associate professor of Physics and Astronomy, as well as collaborators at Pennsylvania State University and Harvard Medical School.

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If you can't imagine things, how can you learn?

What protocol is your doctor following to get you to imagine your 100% recovery? 

If you can't imagine things, how can you learn?

Never underestimate the power of visualisation. It may sound like a self-help mantra, but a growing body of evidence shows that mental imagery can accelerate learning and improve performance of all sorts of skills. For athletes and musicians, “going through the motions,” or mentally rehearsing the movements in the mind, is just as effective as physical training, and motor imagery can also help stroke patients regain function of their paralysed limbs.
For most of us, visual imagery is essential for memory, daydreaming and imagination. But some people apparently lack a mind’s eye altogether, and find it impossible to conjure up such visual images – and their inability to do so may affect their ability to learn and their educational performance.
Firefox co-creator Blake Ross recently described how it feels to be blind in your mind, and his surprise at the revelation that other people can visualise things. “I can’t ‘see’ my father’s face or a bouncing blue ball, my childhood bedroom or the run I went on ten minutes ago,” he wrote on Facebook. “I thought ‘counting sheep’ was a metaphor. I’m 30 years old and I never knew a human could do any of this. And it is blowing my goddamned mind.”

Neurologists believe aphantasia affects approximately 2% of the population, or one in 50 people

We’ve known that some people cannot visualise things in their mind’s eye since the 1880s, when the controversial psychologist Francis Galton – one of the pioneers of eugenics – published a paper called Statistics of Mental Imagery. Galton set out to “define the different degrees of vividness with which different persons have the faculty of recalling familiar scenes under the form of mental pictures”.
He asked his scientific colleagues to think of their breakfast table and describe to him the vividness of their impressions, and found this ability varied markedly – some individuals could draw up a mental image just as brilliant as the scene itself, whereas others could only conjure up an extremely dim image, or none at all.
Today, neurologists refer to this inability to form mental images as “congenital aphantasia” – from the Greek words a, meaning “without”, and phantasia, meaning “a capacity to form mental images” – and they believe it affects approximately 2% of the population, or one in 50 people. Remarkably, though, aphantasics do experience visual imagery in their dreams, so it seems that only voluntary visualisation is affected.
In the classroom, mental imagery seems to be especially important for reading comprehension and learning word meanings, and, according to at least to one theory, is a cornerstone for literacy.

Dual-coding theory, put forward by Allan Paivio of the University of Western Ontario in 1971, distinguishes between verbal and non-verbal thought processes, and places mental imagery as the primary form of non-verbal representation. Thus, information is stored in two different ways – verbally and visually – and although these two codes are independent of one another, and can each be used alone, they can also interact to enhance learning and recall.
Dual-coding theory has its limitations, the main one being the assumption that thought processes are based on nothing but words and images. Nevertheless, numerous studies published since the early 1970s confirm that mental imagery does indeed play an important role in how schoolchildren acquire literacy skills.

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The work shows, for example, that mental imagery helps eight-year-olds remember what they read, and that students who are asked to create mental images during word memory tasks learn two and a half times as much as those who are told merely to repeat the words they need to remember. Verbal recall and visual images do appear to be separate but related, and while the ability to use imagery is not directly related to measures of intelligence, vocabulary, and reading comprehension, the spontaneous use of imagery helps children to learn and understand prose.
More recently, other studies have shown that mental imagery can help students grasp abstract concepts, and that encouraging students to use imagery can improve their understanding of such concepts.
One study shows that using mental imagery helps primary school pupils learn and understand new scientific words, and that their subjective reports of the vividness of their images is closely related to the extent to which imagery enhances their learning. Visualisation techniques are also helpful for the teaching and learning of mathematics and computer science, both of which involve an understanding of the patterns within numbers, and creating mental representations of the spatial relationships between them.

Aphantasia could possibly affect how students revise for exams, too. Using mind maps is one common strategy, which has been shown to effectively help them retain and recall information, and merely visualising the appropriate page of their revision notes can also help them to recall the information on it. It follows, then, that an inability to create mental images would hinder students’ abilities to use such strategies.
Although aphantasia was first recognised more than one hundred years ago, there has been very little systematic research on the phenomenon, and so we still know very little about it.
For example, are people with aphantasia able to imagine sounds or touch sensations, or does the condition affect imagery in senses other than vision? Galton alluded to this in his original 1880 paper, concluding that “the missing faculty seems to be replaced so serviceably by other modes of conception... Men who declare themselves entirely deficient in the power of seeing mental pictures can nevertheless give life-like descriptions of what they have seen.”

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Regardless, research into visual imagery would seem to suggest that students with aphantasia are likely to experience difficulties with learning, but as yet there is no research confirming that this is the case.
“We know that children with aphantasia tend not to enjoy descriptive texts, and this may well influence their reading comprehension,” says neurologist Adam Zeman of the University of Exeter who, together with his colleagues, gave the condition its name last year. “But there isn’t any evidence directly linking it to learning disabilities yet.”
Zeman adds that people with aphantasia may be able to form visual images, but just don’t have conscious access to them. “The story really is still at the early stages, so the implications for education haven’t been explored,” he says.

Researchers use questionnaires to determine the vividness of mental images, and people’s scores on these tests are closely correlated to measures of activity in visual brain regions.
Thus, it may be possible to objectively measure individual differences or variations in the vividness of people’s mental images, and to identify students who have aphantasia. If it becomes clear that the condition does in fact impinge on children’s ability to learn, it may then be possible to devise alternative learning strategies for them.