How a musician locks onto a rhythm, according to science
A study from McGill University reveals the secret of musicians who have excellent time.
03 September, 2020
Credit: Greg Weaver/Unsplash
- When a person locks onto a beat, it's because their brain rhythms have become aligned with it.
- Listening and physically performing are brain functions not directly related to rhythm synchronization.
- The study tracked EEG brain activity during listening, playing along, and recreating rhythms.
<p>For as long as anyone remembers, parents have rocked their babies to sleep. The simple, regular rhythm soothes and relaxes a wee one, and <a href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdfExtended/S0960-9822(18)31662-2" target="_blank">research has shown</a> that the same thing can even help adults sleep and to consolidate memories. The way in which rhythm works on us is a curious thing. For musicians, of course, being able to lock onto, perform along with, and recreate a rhythm is a basic, mandatory skill. But how exactly does this work?</p><p>This is the question a team of researchers — themselves musicians — from <a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/channels/news/keeping-beat-its-all-your-brain-324171" target="_blank">McGill University</a> in Toronto sought to answer in their new study, "Rhythm Complexity Modulates Behavioral and Neural Dynamics During Auditory–Motor Synchronization," published in the October 2020 issue of the <a href="https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/jocn_a_01601" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience</a>.</p><p>The study was led by <a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/psychology/caroline-palmer" target="_blank">Caroline Palmer</a>, who explains, "The authors, as performing musicians, are familiar with musical situations in which one performer is not correctly aligned in time with fellow performers — so we were interested in exploring how musicians' brains respond to rhythms."</p><p>There are at least three aspects to working with a rhythm: hearing it, comprehending it, and physically performing. The researchers were curious about what separates a solid player from one whose rhythmic sense was iffy. "It could be that some people are better musicians because they listen differently or it could be that they move their bodies differently."</p><p>It turned out neither was the case.</p><p>Says Palmer, "We found that the answer was a match between the pulsing or oscillations in the brain rhythms and the pulsing of the musical rhythm — it's not just listening or movement. It's a linking of the brain rhythm to the auditory rhythm."</p>
Listening and tapping
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzYyNDIzNS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0MzU4NjIzOH0.vK-N6A-goMccmBsL5xOyrzmWoxsiOHDKV-J9YPfHj7Y/img.jpg?width=980" id="48cf6" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1adaf404031fa0036848a1ba4193c1fd" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="TR-808 rhythm composer" />A beat machine that produces notes similar to those used by the researchers
Credit: Steve Harvey/Unsplash
<p>Palmer and her colleagues worked with 29 adult musicians — 21 female and 6 males, aged 18 to 30 years old — each of whom was proficient with an instrument, having studied for a minimum of six years. With electroencephalogram (EEG) electrodes affixed to their scalps, the participants listened to and tapped along with different versions of three basic rhythms as the scientists captured their brain activity.</p><p>Each rhythm was preceded by a four-beat count off. </p><ul><li><a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/files/newsroom/simple1-1.mp3" target="_blank">Rhythm 1:1</a> — repeatedly played a simple series of evenly spaced clicks.</li><li><a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/files/newsroom/moderate1-2.mp3" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rhythm 1:2</a> — repeatedly played a two-beat phrase with a higher-pitched sound for the first beat of each phrase and a lower-pitched sound for the second.</li><li><a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/files/newsroom/complex3-2.mp3" target="_blank">Rhythm 3:2</a> — repeatedly played the most complex rhythm of the three, a series of triplets. In this case, the lower-pitched sound played the quarter notes while a higher-pitched sound played the triplet notes.</li></ul><p>(Tap or click each rhythm's name above to listen to its complete version with no beats or sounds omitted.)</p><p>The participants were assigned Listen, Synchronize, and Motor tasks. In the:</p><ul><li>Listen task — participants were played a dozen modified versions of the rhythms and asked to report any missing beats they noticed.</li><li>Synchronize task — individuals played along with a dozen versions of the rhythms, in some cases supplying sounds researchers had removed from the patterns.</li><li>Motor task — participants were asked to reproduce a dozen rhythm variations after hearing each one.</li></ul>Beat markers
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzYyNDQyNi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyNDA5NDU4OX0.GKl27Ed_kuwLg0r_eh_s6yUoes8RN_QS2fMHLBx0vBI/img.jpg?width=980" id="b927a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b73b2bdc7bb4f9b3c4499fab78b7c5f6" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="chart with wave lines" />Credit: Chaikom/Shutterstock
<p>The scientists were able to identify neural markers representing each musician's beat perception, revealing the degree of synchronicity between the researchers' rhythms and the brain's own rhythms. Surprisingly, this synchronicity turned out to be unrelated to brain activity associated with either listening or playing.</p><p>Said the study's first authors, PhD students Brian Mathias and Anna Zamm, "We were surprised that even highly trained musicians sometimes showed reduced ability to synchronize with complex rhythms, and that this was reflected in their EEGs."</p><p>While the musician participants were all reasonably competent at tapping along to the rhythms, the degree to which the markers aligned to the beats was what separated the good players from the best. "Most musicians are good synchronizers," say Mathias and Zamm. "Nonetheless, this signal was sensitive enough to distinguish the 'good' from the 'better' or 'super-synchronizers,' as we sometimes call them."</p><p>When Palmer is asked whether a person can develop the ability to become a super-synchronizer, she answers: "The range of musicians we sampled suggests that the answer would be 'yes.' And the fact that only 2-3% of the population are 'beat deaf' is also encouraging. Practice definitely improves your ability and improves the alignment of the brain rhythms with the musical rhythms. But whether everyone is going to be as good as a drummer is not clear."</p>
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New Google AR exhibits let you see prehistoric creatures up close
Google's Arts & Culture app just added a suite of prehistoric animals and NASA artifacts that are viewable for free with a smartphone.
25 August, 2020
Google Arts & Culture
- The exhibits are viewable on most smartphones through Google's free Arts & Culture app.
- In addition to prehistoric animals, the new exhibits include NASA artifacts and ancient artwork.
- The Arts & Culture app also lets you project onto your walls famous paintings on display at museums around the world.
<p>Many of the world's museums are closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but now you don't need to leave the couch to see some of the creatures on display at institutions like Moscow's State Darwin Museum and London's Natural History Museum. <a href="https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/arts-culture/invite-ancient-creatures-your-living-room-ar/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FMKuf+%28The+Keyword+%7C+Official+Google+Blog%29" target="_blank" rel="dofollow">Google's Arts & Culture app just added a suite of new exhibits</a> that can be viewed in augmented reality through your smartphone.</p><p>After installing the app on an ARCore-supported Android device, an iPhone, or an iPad, users can project the creatures onto any surface, take photos and videos, change their size, and move them around the room. </p><p>One of the strangest new exhibits is the <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/QwGIdPc45fzOug" target="_blank">Cambropachycope</a>, a tiny crustacean from the Cambrian Period that has one of the world's oldest preserved compound eyes. Here's a look:</p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU4MTg1OS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0MDg5MDkxNX0.gw896Sfmmx6R5ys1JpelsmfMweLl_i6Fn5gH0jBabMY/img.png?width=980" id="a6307" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ce7fdbf4b36e13d66b434c946954a223" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Google Arts & Culture
<p>Other animals on display include:</p><ul><li><a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/opabinia-a-500m-year-old-creature-with-five-eyes/jwEx938NwO9A5w?hl=en" target="_blank">Opabinia</a> — A 500-million-year-old arthropod with five eyes</li><li><a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/GAG_J9wcz31GXw" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer dofollow">Skeleton of the blue whale</a> – The largest animal to ever exist on Earth</li><li><a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/LgGLuNutwk-OPQ" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer dofollow">Spotted trunkfish</a> — A fish with an unusually strong carapace made from thick hexagonal scale plates called scutes</li><li><a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/HwHAh659CiUWEA" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer dofollow">Aegirocassis</a> — A 480-million-year old marine animal, believed to be the oldest large filter feeder, which existed hundreds of millions of years before whales and sharks</li></ul><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU4MTg2MC9vcmlnaW4uZ2lmIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyNzUwMzgzMn0.JmkjgpCDknwCrCEEXmHx7POByvK7-QRcDT9jEi7Nmc8/img.gif?width=980" id="2b112" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="2a3a9c7b9e7b24fa991fd3cd66d3a2ac" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Apollo 11 command module" />
Google Arts & Culture
<p>Google's new AR exhibits also include a handful of NASA artifacts, like the <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/jAGjIi6RFQBOFg" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer dofollow">Apollo 11 command module</a> and Neil Armstrong's A-7L spacesuit, and also a statue of <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/3QFU2nR_dVV9Lg" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer dofollow">Lanzón</a>, the pre-Inca "smiling god".</p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU4MTg0OC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2MzcwMTQ0OX0.RjKkLrPlq0tFGTsDK-VFL6Jz5PVdOmjF3lPrrIIzj00/img.png?width=980" id="46195" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b8dd7e11ceb09fd3f1803f055d26a6a6" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Neil Armstrong's spacesuit" />
Google Arts & Culture
<p>Not into NASA artifacts or strange fish? You can also use the Arts & Culture app to project onto your walls paintings like <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/qwH7SFUucsTJjQ" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer dofollow">Frida Kahlo's self portraits</a>, Gustav Klimt's "<a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/HQGxUutM_F6ZGg" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer dofollow">The Kiss</a>," Rembrandt's "Night Watch," and Johannes Vermeer's <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/project/vermeer-paintings" target="_blank" rel="dofollow">complete works</a>.</p>
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Unleash your inner da Vinci with these art and science drawing lessons
Learn how to draw realistic figures for comic books, anatomy courses, and more.
14 June, 2020
- Masterpieces like the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper followed countless hours of anatomical studies.
- Leonardo da Vinci was fascinated by the human form.
- The Complete Creative Art & Science of Drawing Bundle teaches you how to draw human bodies, heads, and more.
<script async="true" src="https://widgets.stackcommerce.com/js-deal-feed/0.1/widget.js" type="text/javascript"></script><p>Fans of the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper are captivated by Leonardo da Vinci's exceptional eye for human forms. Those masterpieces followed countless hours of anatomical studies. Da Vinci was fascinated by the human form, most famously expressed in his classic sketch The Vitruvian Man. </p><p>There are many ways of capturing human figures through drawing, from precise anatomical sketches to essences of characteristics. <strong><a href="https://shop.bigthink.com/sales/the-complete-creative-art-science-of-drawing-bundle?utm_source=bigthink.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=the-complete-creative-art-science-of-drawing-bundle&utm_term=scsf-395850&utm_content=a0x1P000004sOitQAE&scsonar=1" target="_blank">The Complete Creative Art & Science of Drawing Bundle</a></strong> will teach you how to draw a wide range of human bodies, heads, movement, perspective, and much more. </p><p>In this 12-course bundle, you'll learn how to draw 3D objects that appear to occupy space. A human figure drawing course instructs you on the basics of anatomical perspective. From there, you can home in on heads, one of the most challenging aspects of the human body to draw. </p><p>Perhaps you're not that interested in photorealism. That's fine; there's a course on dynamic superheroes that will prepare you to create the comic book that's been in your head. Or, you can forget bodies altogether. Maybe you're more interested in textures and patterns. This bundle has you covered in that aspect as well. 3D objectives and environments? Check. </p><p>No drawing bundle would be complete without a course on animals. In 31 lessons, you'll be given the tools to create the best cat memes around. Two courses on shading will also help you master depth. And if you're intrigued by digital drawing, a master class in creating fantasy art in Manga Studio 5 is included as well. In other words, you'll be well on your way to calling yourself an artist.</p><p><strong><a href="https://shop.bigthink.com/sales/the-complete-creative-art-science-of-drawing-bundle?utm_source=bigthink.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=the-complete-creative-art-science-of-drawing-bundle&utm_term=scsf-395850&utm_content=a0x1P000004sOitQAE&scsonar=1" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The Complete Creative Art & Science of Drawing Bundle</a></strong> is on sale now for $39.99, a 96% discount from the regular cost of $1,172.</p><p><em>Price subject to change.</em></p><h3><strong>More from the Big Think Shop</strong></h3><ul class="ee-ul">
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Musicians and their audiences show synchronized patterns of brain activity
Researchers observed "inter-brain coherence" (IBC) — a synchronisation in brain activity — between a musician and the audience.
31 March, 2020
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
When a musician is playing a piece, and the audience is enjoying it, they can develop physical synchronies. Both might tap their feet, sway their bodies, or clap their hands.
<p> "Through music, the producer and the perceiver connect emotionally and behaviourally," note the authors of a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811920301427?dgcid=rss_sd_all" target="_blank">new paper</a>, published in <em>NeuroImage</em>. And now this team, led by Yingying Hou at East China Normal University, has uncovered a connection right down at the neural level. The team has observed "inter-brain coherence" (IBC) — a synchronisation in brain activity — between a musician and the audience. What's more, the strength of this coherence could be used to predict how much the audience enjoyed a piece.</p><p>The team used a technique called near-infrared spectroscopy to monitor the brain activity of a professional violinist while he was videoed playing a series of 12 brief, classical pieces. They then used the same technique (which involves shining beams of light through the skull, to monitor changes in blood flow) on 16 women while they watched the video, and listened to all of these pieces. (Because gender differences in inter-brain synchronisation have previously been observed, only women were recruited as listeners.)</p>
<p>The violinist had been instructed to look directly at the camera and maintain a neutral expression while he played the pieces, which each lasted about 100 seconds. If he was enjoying one piece more than another, the team hoped this would not be obvious to the viewers. They were told to gaze at the violinist's face while they listened. After each piece, they rated how much they liked it on a seven-point scale.</p><p>The data revealed inter-brain coherence between each of the listeners and the musician, for all of the violin pieces. That is, there were similar patterns of heightened activity in certain key regions of the brain while the violinist played and the other participants listened.</p><p>The key regions included the left temporal cortex (which is thought to focus on processing the rhythm of sound information), the right inferior frontal cortex and the postcentral cortices. These two latter regions have been highlighted as important hubs of a hypothesised mirror system that allows a sender and receiver to share brain representations. "In the present study, the frontoparietal mirror neuron system allows audiences to experience or comprehend the mind of the performer as if they were to 'walk in another's shoes'," the researchers believe.</p>
<p>The team also produced an average IBC score for each piece of music, and compared these with the listeners' averaged liking scores for each piece. They found clear correlations. The more popular pieces were marked by stronger inter-brain coherence in the left temporal cortex between the audience as a whole and the performer.</p><p>The team also reported that the link between level of coherence and popularity only developed during the second half of each piece. This could be because there are two stages to music appreciation, they suggest. The first stage involves recognising rhythms, and identifying the potential musical structure of a piece. During the next stage, the listener develops aesthetic judgements and experiences emotional resonance, and generates stronger predictions about the sounds that 'should' follow. "If the expectation matches the incoming information, the musical performance will be experienced as pleasant," the team thinks.</p><p>More work will be needed to explain why the coherence-liking effect only emerged at a group level, and to explore whether the results obtained here will also apply to other types of musical instrument, and other genres. The team also note that the near-infrared technique only allowed them to look at blood flow in the cortex, not other deeper areas that might be involved in the response to music production and perception, too, such as limbic structures. Also, by design, this study only involved women. Whether men will respond in the same way is unknown.</p><p>Still, it's fascinating research. "This study expands our understanding of music appreciation," the researchers write, adding: "The results can potentially be applied to the development of brain indices for predicting public attitudes towards various musical performances."</p><p>– <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811920301427?dgcid=rss_sd_all" target="_blank">The averaged inter-brain coherence between the audience and a violinist predicts the popularity of violin performance</a></p><p><a href="https://emmayoung.net/" target="_blank">Emma Young</a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/EmmaELYoung" target="_blank">@EmmaELYoung</a>) is a staff writer at <a href="https://digest.bps.org.uk/" target="_blank">BPS Research Digest</a></p><p>Reprinted with permission of <a href="https://digest.bps.org.uk/" target="_blank">The British Psychological Society</a>. Read the <a href="https://digest.bps.org.uk/2020/03/23/musicians-and-their-audiences-show-synchronised-patterns-of-brain-activity/" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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Talent, you’re born with. Creativity, you can grow yourself.
In such states of creative divergent thinking, the body is aroused and the pupils become dilated.
27 March, 2020
OSCAR RIVERA/AFP via Getty Images
Creativity, it is said, is intelligence having fun.
<p> It's the ability to generate ideas, solutions or insights that are strikingly original, and yet feasible: in cognitive terms, a compelling creative idea doesn't break down if one were to systematically tease apart its logic. At the same time, it weaves together concepts that were never before part of the same fabric. </p><p>A decade ago, a team of psychologists from the Netherlands <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10463281003765323" target="_blank">proposed</a> the 'dual pathway to creativity model', suggesting that creative ideation occurs when cognitive flexibility is married to cognitive persistence. Cognitive flexibility allows us to make rapid switches in thinking between one concept and another, and to think about multiple concepts simultaneously, while cognitive persistence enables us to stick with a difficult task or conceptualisation in order to achieve a goal. As with a musical harmony where the flautist, violinist, pianist and trombonist must all stick to their individual parts and yet listen to each other and adapt to make fine music, so it is with the creative brain.</p><p>The players in this neural orchestra <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2899886/" target="_blank">consist</a> of three functional brain networks. These form when different regions of the brain (that are not structurally adjacent) are activated together whenever we undertake specific tasks. When it comes to creativity, the major functional networks in <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/central-executive-network" target="_blank">play</a> are the central executive network (CEN), the salience network (SN) and the default mode network (DMN). Brain imaging studies <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18262825" target="_blank">reveal</a> that the CEN is important for flexible, moment-to-moment control. The lateral frontal and parietal brain regions are heavily involved when humans multitask, for instance. Tellingly, a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19607798" target="_blank">study</a> by neuroscientists at Vanderbilt University in the United States and the University of Queensland in Australia found that efficient multitasking is not represented in the brain as the ability to simultaneously process multiple streams of information, but is instead a very rapid processing of one task after the other. Significantly, they found that we can learn to speed up the processing of each individual task and, hence, multitask better.</p>
<p>The lateral frontal cortex is also heavily <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27893236" target="_blank">activated</a> when individuals engage in divergent thinking, and divergent thinking is how scientists measure creativity; in real life, we can think divergently every day – concocting a recipe from whatever's in the fridge, navigating a car through heavy traffic, making art from nontraditional materials using items from the recycling bin.</p><p>In contrast, the SN, or salience network, whose major hub is the anterior cingulate cortex, is important for sustained task maintenance. This brain region is involved in decision-making and self-regulation, in short, in almost any task that requires cognitive persistence. Finally, the DMN, or default mode network, whose main hubs are in the anterior medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex, represents what we think of when we're not task-focused. As humans, we spend much of our time daydreaming, <a href="https://aeon.co/ideas/let-the-soul-dangle-how-mind-wandering-spurs-creativity" target="_blank">mind-wandering</a>, procrastinating, mulling on the past and the future (it is, in fact, very difficult to remain in the present moment) and the DMN is the functional network behind all such self-referential thought. When we engage in tasks requiring us to pay attention to the external world, activity in the DMN is suppressed so that we're not sidelined by distracting, irrelevant thoughts.</p><p>Yet these same distractions and the faraway worlds of our imagination hold the secret to creativity, if only we might harness them and stitch them into the chain of ideas that builds towards a specific goal – a new recipe, a poem, a painting or a musical improvisation. Recent studies <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26553223" target="_blank">indicate</a> that hub regions of the DMN activate simultaneously with those of the CEN and SN, and function in concert during creative ideation. This is a remarkable dance, portraying the dynamic nature of our brain networks. Typically, the CEN and SN exert control over and oppose the DMN yet, during moments of creativity, the DMN allows the spontaneous generation of candidate ideas, possibly from our long-term memory storage, while the CEN/SN come together harmoniously to make use of these ideas towards a specific goal.</p>
<p>Now that we understand the mechanisms in play, it's tempting to ask if we can learn to be more creative. Creativity does <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10519-016-9832-0" target="_blank">have</a> some genetic heritability: talent – mathematical, musical – runs in families. For example, the Dutch identical twins David Oyens and Pieter Oyens were both successful 19th-century painters. But, given that the human brain is plastic, constantly learning and changing, can we also learn to be creative, based on our experiences?</p><p>In a 2014 <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1871187114000194" target="_blank">study</a> from Stanford University in California, scientists paired with design school faculty to evaluate a very popular class: 'Creative Gym'. In this class, participants work individually on hands-on activities that are unconventional, fast-paced yet immersive, using everyday office supplies as materials. Students are asked to rapidly work through a series of phases: observe, brainstorm, synthesise, prototype and implement, repeating as necessary, to generate innovative solutions. The study showed that students in this creative capacity-building programme tested better on divergent thinking problems against students in a control group. In another <a href="https://behavioralandbrainfunctions.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1744-9081-10-9" target="_blank">study</a>, a collaborative team of neuroscientists and psychologists at Dalian University of Technology in China and the University of Oregon in the US tested participants on divergent thinking tests before and after short-term meditation (30 minutes per day for seven days). The control group practised relaxation for the same duration. The researchers found that creativity can be significantly enhanced by meditation.</p><p>Interestingly, these studies used quite contrasting approaches to test whether creativity is learnable. In the Stanford study, participants exercised cognitive flexibility to generate creative solutions in the classroom. Meanwhile, the meditative training of the Dalian-Oregon study was an exercise in cognitive persistence, the main focus being on building greater awareness of one's sensory experiences. While the researchers in these studies didn't use brain imaging, one can imagine the dynamic dance between the control networks in the brains of the learners, finely collaborating with the spontaneous-thought-generating default network. Overall, these studies suggest that there might be multiple ways to enhance creativity – many pathways to a more creative brain.</p>
<p>Artists, who are creative by profession, often recount the creative process as one in which they become transfigured in mind and body, and by a process over which they don't have much control. They talk about being 'in the zone', or in a state of flow. In such states of creative divergent thinking, the body is aroused and the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10400419.2018.1530533" target="_blank">pupils</a> become dilated. In a recent <a href="http://www.ickn.org/documents/Crea_Happy_COINs18.pdf" target="_blank">study</a>, researchers at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence in the US configured a smartwatch to sense body signals, including heartrate and accelerometer-derived body movement, and got individuals engaged in creative team activities to wear them all day. What they found was that the objectively measured body signals were significant predictors of perceived creativity, as reported by the test subjects. Higher intensity and higher consistency (or lower variability) of body-signal activity predicted greater creativity. The body-signal metrics further complemented self-ratings of personality type and mood.</p><p>Although researchers interested in the physical modalities and neurological pathways of creativity are making headway in understanding how it works – as well as how it can be stimulated – creativity retains a certain mystique as a unique state of being, when mind and body resonate in perfect harmony, like a tuning fork generating a pure tone.</p><p><em>This Idea was made possible through the support of a grant to Aeon from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation. Funders to Aeon Magazine are not involved in editorial decision-making.</em><img src="https://metrics.aeon.co/count/612a7c74-b235-4dc3-93ca-8290c4647611.gif" alt="Aeon counter – do not remove"></p><p>This article was originally published at <a href="https://aeon.co/?utm_campaign=republished-article" target="_blank">Aeon</a> and has been republished under Creative Commons. Read the <a href="https://aeon.co/ideas/talent-youre-born-with-creativity-you-can-grow-yourself" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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