\u201cI started looking at jazz musicians playing the blues as a way to understand how the creative brain emerges from a neuroscience perspective,\u201d said Charles Limb, associate professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at John\u2019s Hopkins University.<\/p>\n
When musicians go to an improvisation, the brain switches, Limb said, and the lateral prefrontal lobes responsible for conscious self monitoring became less engaged. \u201cMusicians were turning off the self-censoring in the brain so they could generate novel ideas without restrictions,\u201d he said. Interestingly, the improvising brain activates many of the same brain centers as language, reinforcing the idea that the back and forth of improvisation between musicians is akin to its own language.<\/p>\n
The same principle applies to something like writer\u2019s block. \u201cWhen you\u2019re trying so hard to come up with ideas you can\u2019t do it, you can\u2019t force it,\u201d Limb said. \u201cThen at another time, some flip switches and you\u2019ve got this flow going on, this generation of ideas.\u201d When the stakes are higher and the brain is actively over-thinking something, it can interfere with processes that have become routinized, causing behavior or performance to suffer.<\/p>\n
Luckily, creativity isn\u2019t an unknowable, mystical quality. It can be developed. \u201cYou have to cultivate these behaviors by introducing them to children and recognizing that the more you do it, the better you are at doing it,\u201d Limb said. The problem is a lot of kids don\u2019t get much unstructured time either in school or out of it. School is often based on right or wrong answers, leaving little room for students to come up with ideas that haven\u2019t been taught to them before.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t have to be so directed all the time,\u201d Limb said. \u201cWe\u2019ve taken a lot of the joy out of things that used to be joyful.\u201d Even a lot of music lessons have become about the discipline of learning to play well, not the joy of creating the music. Children should have part of every lesson reserved for improvisation and free form play, Limb said. The same could be said for free play on the playground and experimentation with new ideas in the classroom. Unprogrammed time is necessary for students to practice using their creativity.<\/p>\n
In recent years many schools have cut their art programs as non-essential subjects. At the same time, leaders are crying for more creative thinking in students. \u201cWe tend to look at education of creative aspects of children as something that happens incidentally and that is entertainment-based,\u201d Limb said. But that misses the connection between creativity and the idea generation necessary for strong problem solving skills. \u201cArt may be one of the best ways to train the brain to have this kind of creative fluency,\u201d Limb said. He believes art is as central to education as math and reading, especially when created in collaborative environments like band or orchestra.<\/p>\n
Limb is working to set up an experiment testing his theory with kids who have never had drawing or music lessons before. He\u2019d like to see what\u2019s going on in their brains when first allowed to improvise. Capturing the brain as it begins to create could help deepen an understanding of how to support creative growth.<\/p>\n
Creativity may even be hardwired into human brains, an essential feature that has allowed the species to adapt repeatedly over the course of history. \u201cVery early on there\u2019s this need for the brain to be able to come up with something that it didn\u2019t know before, that\u2019s not being taught to it, but to find a way to figure something out that\u2019s creative,\u201d Limb said. \u201cThat\u2019s always been essential for human survival.\u201d<\/p>\n
Creating is core to the human experience throughout time, Limb says. \u201cThe brain has been hard wired to seek creative or artistic endeavors forever,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t need it to survive, you wouldn\u2019t think, and yet the brain wants it and seeks it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Interestingly, the creating brain looks a lot like the dreaming brain, one of the most creative states humans can enter, but one associated with unconsciousness. Similar to what Limb observed in jazz musicians, when people dream the self-monitoring part of the brain is suppressed and the default network in the brain takes over. This is the introspective part of the brain, as well as the autobiographical part. That\u2019s why dreams feel so personal, pulling from experiences or recent worries. \u201cThe brain is an organ and some of its functions are geared toward generation of unpredictable ideas,\u201d Limb said. That\u2019s just how it\u2019s meant to function.<\/p>\n
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