How does improvisational jazz help us understand the brain? Dr. Charles Limb of the University of California-San Francisco, has been asking this question for years. In 2008, Limb asked jazz musicians perform a memorized piano riff while inside an MRI machine, then had them improvise inside the MRI machine. According to CNN, Limb found that when artists improvise, their medial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that allows us to express, becomes active. Simultaneously, their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which allows us to exert self-control, becomes inactive. In other words, to improvise requires turning on parts of our brain and turning off others. Since his initial studies, Limb has run similar experiments with improv comics and caricature artists who frequently perform spur-of-the-moment creativity.
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