THE BRAIN DAY FUN CONTINUES
Now that we've gone bottom-up, let's put the top-down and talk about brain activity that is generated BY the brain
(note: none of us are losers)
(note: none of us are losers)
I'm using music (naturally) as an example here. If you're a musician, and you're noodling (very scientific term) around, WHAT'S GOING ON IN THE BRAIN?
Firstly, your executive control areas are working. They're coming up with the plan and sending the information to your motor cortices.
Here's where things get *interesting*. Doing an explicitly learned action (unlike, say, breathing) requires memory, and playing a musical instrument requires a thing called *procedural memory*
You can think of procedural memory as knowing HOW to do something (declarative memory is another type, and this is knowing THAT/ABOUT something)
As you might guess, procedural memory is harder to learn (like riding a bike), but is also harder to forget (like riding a bike)
Playing music is physical (even singing. Heck. ESPECIALLY singing.), and the actions you need to play your instrument will be learned over time spent practicing. If you're serious, eventually they'll start to automate and you won't have to think about them so much.
Why? Your executive network is able to outsource processing to the motor cortices saving up its own energy for more difficult/interesting tasks.
So with enough training, you'll be able to not think so much about how to play the instrument, and can devote more attention to what you want it to sound like!
For this, we're back to memory. If you're playing a memorized piece, your memory will jump in to coordinate your actions with the frontal planning network. The auditory cortices will monitor your output for accuracy, and that will feed back into the system in one big happy loop!
If you're improvising, things get even more interesting. For a musician, solo improvisation temporarily suspends part of the executive control network, meaning you experience less inhibition than when you're doing other, similar tasks.
(back to this GEM of a paper: journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…)
MORE INTERESTING STILL is when another person enters the equation. Your complete executive control system suits back up. Possibly to assist in collaboration. Paper: journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…
Again, greater fluency comes with more practice, and professional musicians' brains do show differences in volume in areas related to their instrument (review paper here: homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/pseries/CCN09/…)
Aaaaand one for the violinists: citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/downlo…
So these networks might look different depending on your instrument and level of expertise, but it's still a sophisticated loop of planning and executing actions based on prior learning.
The tiny pieces of prior learning (notes, chord patterns, etc.) are fitted together according to how you want them to sound and, bit by bit, MUSIC HAPPENS.
(Review papers on improv and creativity in general here: libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/R_Be… ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…)
This is a dynamic process, in that is changes from moment to moment. Though sections may have similar themes and be composed of similar or identical bits, the output is evolving over time.
And that's a bit about music as a top-down process. Let's keep chatting and tomorrow, IT'S MUSIC DAY.
