Red is the Colour of Improvisation

RED IS THE COLOUR OF IMPROVISATION “LIFE IS A LOT LIKE JAZZ, IT’S BEST WHEN YOU IMPROVISE.”

— George Gershwin (1898–1937), composer and pianist.

Neuroscientist, surgeon and musician, Charles Limb has unveiled the circuits of creativity in the brain, thanks to magnetic resonance imaging. A fascinating story of blood flows in the prefrontal lobes…

Words by Jeffrey T. Iverson

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INVESTIGATION

RED IS THE COLOUR OF IMPROVISATION “LIFE IS A LOT LIKE JAZZ, IT’S BEST WHEN YOU IMPROVISE.”

— George Gershwin (1898–1937), composer and pianist.

Neuroscientist, surgeon and musician, Charles Limb has unveiled the circuits of creativity in the brain, thanks to magnetic resonance imaging. A fascinating story of blood flows in the prefrontal lobes…

Words by Jeffrey T. Iverson

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INVESTIGATION

To visit the winery of Château Palmer, with its towering steel vats glistening like a fleet of spacecraft and its immaculate white laboratory lined with test tubes and computers, it’s easy to conclude that fine winemaking is solely a matter of science, rigour and technique. Yet speak with the estate director, Thomas Duroux, and it becomes clear that the birth of a vintage depends on something far more abstract and elusive – spontaneous creativity.

Every year, Duroux gathers a small group of Château Palmer’s top tasters to help him solve a singular puzzle: how to assemble multiple lots of wines from a host of vineyard parcels to create one blend which encapsulates both the perennial spirit of a terroir and the unique attributes of a vintage.

“IN MY PROFESSION, THERE ARE TWO DIFFERENT WAYS TO TASTE WINE,”

he says.

“FIRST, THERE IS THE PURELY OENOLOGICAL APPROACH. YOU TASTE A WINE, AND YOU PUT INTO PRACTICE ALL YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE TO SCAN AND DISSECT IT. WHAT ARE ITS QUALITIES, WHAT ARE ITS FLAWS?” It’s the method Duroux, with a palate informed by years studying the microbiology and chemistry of wine, uses after harvest to assess the evolution of every lot of wine vinified. But months later, once those lots have matured, the time for blending arrives, and with it the need for a wholly different approach.

“IN THIS MOMENT, WE FORGET OUR TECHNICAL BAGGAGE, WE SET ASIDE OUR OENOLOGICAL, ANALYTIC TASTING PALATE, AND ENTER INTO A WORLD WHICH IS MORE ARTISTIC, A WORLD OF GREATER FREEDOM, OF PURE CREATIVITY.” Over several sessions, the winery echoes with spirited repartee as the team tastes barrel after barrel while debating questions of identity, substance and style.

“IT’S LIKE A GROUP OF MUSICIANS WHO ARE CREATING A PIECE, PLACING NOTES TOGETHER, ONE AFTER ANOTHER, TRYING TO COMPOSE A LOVELY HARMONY,”

says Duroux.

“THEY SEARCH, THEY EXPERIMENT, THEY PRACTISE, AND SUDDENLY THEY STOP, LOOK AT EACH OTHER AND SMILE. THAT’S WHAT BLENDING IS: WE TASTE, WE TALK, WE ARGUE, WE TASTE AGAIN, AND THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN ‘BOOM’, WITHOUT A WORD, WE ALL KNOW WE’VE GOT IT. THEY’RE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MOMENTS IN OUR PROFESSION, BECAUSE IT’S REALLY LIKE A BIRTH. AND IT HAPPENS EVERY YEAR.”

And yet Duroux is still no closer to being able to explain how exactly they’re able to do it.

“IT’S A STATE BEYOND CONTROL,”

he muses,

“A STATE OF SUBJECTIVITY AND THE SUBCONSCIOUS, WHERE WE MUST TRUST IN OURSELVES AND THE MYSTERIOUS FORCES THAT DRIVE US.”

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Indeed, how can one explain any creative act? How does a musician compose a sonata, an artist paint a canvas, an author write a novel? Researchers have long been fascinated by this nebulous question, yet have struggled to find ways to study it scientifically.

“CREATIVITY IS A FUNDAMENTAL AND REMARKABLE HUMAN CAPACITY,”

noted the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences in 2013,

“YET THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF CREATIVITY HAS BEEN LIMITED BY THE DIFFICULTY OF RECONCILING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND CREATIVE PROCESSES.”

Today, that’s finally changing, thanks in part to a revolutionary American neuroscientist named Charles Limb. Several years ago, Limb discovered that an art form he’d loved since childhood could also be an extraordinarily illuminating experimental model for the study of creativity – jazz.

By bringing jazz musicians into the laboratory and studying their brain activity during performance, Limb is not only revealing the neural underpinnings of jazz improvisation, but has begun to pull back the curtain on the creative state experienced by people in myriad disciplines.

“HUMANS HAVE SHOWN CREATIVITY IN VIRTUALLY EVERY ARENA, BE IT ART AND MUSIC, FOOD OR WINE,”

Limb tells us.

“I HAPPEN TO BE MOST INTERESTED IN MUSICAL CREATIVITY, BUT I DON’T THINK ONE IS MORE VALID FIELD TO STUDY THAN ANOTHER. I THINK THEY ALL STEM FROM THE SAME SOURCE, WHICH IS THIS HUMAN BRAIN WE HAVE WHICH IS CAPABLE OF INVENTION.” Charles Limb can’t recollect a time when he wasn’t mesmer-ised by music. One of his earliest memories is the sensation of piano keys under his toddler fingers at his childhood home on Long Island, New York.

“FOR AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER I’VE HAD THIS DEEP CONVICTION THAT MY LIFE WAS ENTIRELY BETTER BECAUSE OF THE FACT THAT MUSIC EXISTED AND I WAS ABLE TO HEAR IT,” he says.

“NOTHING HAS COME EVEN CLOSE TO MUSIC FOR ME AS A SOURCE OF COMFORT, INSPIRATION, INSIGHT...

MUSIC HAS BEEN MY CONSTANT TEACHER.” By high school, he was proficient not only in piano, but also in bass and saxophone, studying jazz performance while amassing a kaleidoscopic CD collection. Limb was torn in choosing a career, but followed the example of his parents, both physicians who emigrated from Korea. He went to Yale School of Medicine and became an otolaryngologist – a surgeon dealing with conditions of the ear and throat.

Yet even after he was appointed as a surgical resident and fellow in otolaryngology at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Limb’s music obsession endured. And after several years of sharpening his surgical skills and publishing his first research on hearing-related conditions, finally he felt the need to bridge his profession and passion.

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“BETWEEN THE LATE 1990S AND EARLY 2000S I WAS GETTING FRUSTRATED BECAUSE I’D BEEN STUDYING THE EAR, BUT I WASN’T GETTING ANY CLOSER TO UNDERSTANDING MUSIC,” he recalls. The problem was that,

“AS STUDENTS, OUR TEXTBOOKS SEEM TO TEACH US THAT RESEARCH EXISTS TO EXPLAIN HOW CLOUDS FORM, OR THE HISTORY OF MINERALS. YET WHAT INTERESTED ME WERE QUESTIONS YOU’D ASK YOURSELF IF YOU WERE ALONE ON A DESERT ISLAND, AND FOR ME THEY’D BE ABOUT MUSIC. BUT THEN I STARTED REALISING THAT PERHAPS MUSINGS AND QUESTIONS ABOUT MUSIC WERE JUST AS VALID AS QUESTIONS ABOUT THE BIOCHEMISTRY OF MAMMALS. AND IF SO, THEN THERE WERE MANY INTERESTING QUESTIONS WORTH RESEARCHING, NOT JUST HISTORICALLY OR MUSICOLOGICALLY, BUT ALSO COGNITIVELY AND NEUROBIOLOGICALLY.” Limb was far from the first scientist to be both awed and perplexed by music. In his 1871 book The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin wrote that man’s

“CAPACITY OF PRODUCING MUSICAL NOTES… MUST BE RANKED AMONGST THE MOST MYSTERIOUS WITH WHICH HE IS ENDOWED.”

And Darwin had never even heard a jazz master in the throes of improvisation, producing a sweeping solo out of thin air.

“I KEPT THINKING OF JOHN COLTRANE, WHO WAS ONE OF MY MUSICAL IDOLS,” recalls Limb.

“I’D ASK MYSELF, ‘HOW IS WHAT HE’S DOING EVEN REMOTELY POSSIBLE?’ IN A SENSE, I KNEW IT WAS POSSIBLE, BECAUSE I TOO COULD DO SOME RUDIMENTARY VERSION OF IT. YET THIS IS NOT A CAPACITY THAT SEEMS VERY EXPLAINABLE, JUST USING THE KNOWN FACTS. AND THAT’S WHEN THIS IDEA STARTED TO TAKE HOLD IN ME THAT A FUNCTIONAL BRAIN STATE COULD BE AT THE ROOT OF IT ALL.” To test that hypothesis, Limb needed use of a relatively new technology – functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI, which not only takes pictures of the brain, but can show when a neural area receives blood flow (i.e. becomes active). So Limb headed to the National Institutes of Health, one of the world’s foremost medical research centres, and began a fellowship with collaborator Allen Braun to answer his “holy grail question”: what happens in jazz musicians’ brains when they improvise? But getting a musician and their instrument into a cramped fMRI tube was no easy task – its magnetic field is so powerful that any metal would be catapulted into the machine’s core. So Limb spent two years creating a small, non-magnetic keyboard, to be played on the musician’s lap with the use of mirrors.

Finally, he could devise his experiment. In the fMRI, a professional jazz musician would first play a C-minor blues melody Limb had asked him to memorise, and then he would improvise on that melody, while the scientists observed the subject’s brain activity. Jazzmen jamming in brain scanners...

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“IT SEEMED LIKE A PIPE-DREAM EXPERIMENT,” Limb laughs.

“BUT WE HAD THIS SENSE THAT WE WERE ONTO SOMETHING NEW, THAT THIS WAS TRULY UNDISCOVERED TERRITORY. I HAD NO IDEA WHAT I WOULD FIND, OR IF ANYONE WOULD CARE, BUT I CARED.” The results were fascinating. Published in 2008 in the scientific journal of the Public Library of Science under the title “Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An fMRI Study of Jazz Improvisation”, it described a cascade of activity observed in the subjects’ frontal lobes – the part of our brain which most differentiates us from other mammals, and is often considered the seat of human consciousness. When the memorised melody was played, as expected, the neural areas typically associated with performing complex tasks became active.

But when the musician improvised, the scientists witnessed a radical change. During improvisation, the part of the brain which allows humans to express themselves, the medial prefrontal cortex, became highly active. But simultaneously, the part of the brain responsible for inhibition and self-monitoring, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, essentially shut down. Watching this curious dissociation in the frontal lobe play out on his computer screen, Limb sensed he’d finally discovered a window into John Coltrane’s confounding genius.

“IN JAZZ, IN ORDER TO GENERATE A NEW IDEA, OR PLAY SOMETHING WITH ABANDON, YOU HAVE TO HAVE A CERTAIN LACK OF CONCERN ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT YOU’RE RIGHT, WHETHER IT SOUNDS GOOD,”

says Limb. As Miles Davis said,

“DO NOT FEAR MISTAKES, THERE ARE NONE.”

In observing this deactivation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, Limb discovered

“A NEURAL EXPLANATION” of the jazz master’s capacity to “let go” and trust in his creative impulses. But Limb realised that the implications of the research went far beyond music. For what is a jazz solo if not a prototypical example of spontaneous creativity?

“I THINK A JAZZ MUSICIAN’S IMPROVISATION IS AN EXAGGERATED FORM OF WHAT HAPPENS TO MOST PEOPLE WHEN THEY’RE COMING UP WITH SOMETHING NEW,”

says Limb.

“A REASONABLE HYPOTHESIS IS THAT, TO BE CREATIVE, YOU SHOULD HAVE THIS WEIRD DISSOCIATION IN YOUR FRONTAL LOBE. ONE AREA TURNS ON, AND A BIG AREA SHUTS OFF, SO THAT YOU’RE NOT INHIBITED, YOU’RE WILLING TO MAKE MISTAKES, AND YOU’RE NOT CONSTANTLY SHUTTING DOWN ALL OF THESE NEW GENERATIVE IMPULSES.”

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Today, Limb has continued to test his hypothesis as chief of the Division of Otology, Neurotology and Skull Base Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco. In numerous follow-up studies, he has put freestyle rappers, stand-up comedians and caricature artists into the fMRI machine. In every experiment, he’s observed a similar distributed neural pattern, in which important areas of the prefrontal cortex are relatively deactivating. Such results convince Limb of a bright future for the science of creativity.

“ONE DAY, THERE SHOULD BE A UNIFIED MODEL OF CREATIVITY AND HOW IT UNFOLDS IN THE BRAIN… INCLUDING MUSIC, VISUAL ARTS AND VIRTUALLY EVERY OTHER ART FORM, PLUS ALL THE ANALYTICAL FIELDS THAT REQUIRE CREATIVITY, SUCH AS SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS,”

he says.

“IF YOU REALLY THINK ABOUT IT, I DON’T KNOW THAT YOU CAN DIVORCE CREATIVITY FROM ALMOST ANYTHING THAT HUMAN BEINGS HAVE ACCOMPLISHED.”

Indeed, for all the fuss anthropologists make about the opposable thumb, 1 what evolutionary anomaly was more essential to the survival of humanity than our capacity for innovation?

“I THINK YOU CAN EASILY ARGUE THAT CREATIVITY IS ONE OF THE CORE ATTRIBUTES THAT HAS ALLOWED US TO EVOLVE. I’M SURE THE THUMB WAS IMPORTANT AS WELL,”

he laughs,

“BUT I WOULD SAY THAT A NON-CREATIVE SPECIES WOULDN’T HAVE GOTTEN VERY FAR.”

1 The capacity to fully align and touch the thumb against the other fingers of the hand has long been considered as a uniquely human trait, and the source of our fine motor skills and dexterity.

Yet perhaps the greatest mystery of our species isn’t our compulsion to create for the sake of survival, but for the sake of pleasure and beauty – it makes Limb’s mind buzz with possibilities.

“FOR EXAMPLE, I THINK THAT STUDYING WORLD-CLASS CHEFS IS A VERY VIABLE TOPIC OF INQUIRY, THERE’S CLEARLY A CERTAIN JAZZ TO COOKING,” he enthuses.

“MASTER CHEFS MUST SOMETIMES FEEL OVERWHELMED WITH CREATIVE CHOICE, AND TRYING TO RESTRICT THOSE CHOICES MAY BE THE HARDEST PART.” For that matter, what about winemakers?

“MINIMISING ERRORS, GETTING THE RIGHT TEMPERATURES, ETC., THAT’S WHERE A LOT OF THE SCIENCE IS IN WINE,” he reflects.

“BUT THEN THERE IS A HIGHER LEVEL OR ORDER WHERE SCIENCE DOESN’T REALLY OFFER ANSWERS – IT HASN’T EXPLAINED THE AESTHETIC PREFERENCES THAT ONE MIGHT HAVE FOR A CERTAIN GRAPE, OR THE INTUITION WINEMAKERS MUST DEPEND ON TO CREATE A BLEND.” So many potentially fruitful avenues of research… In the meantime, though, Limb knows he may never exhaust the illuminating power of his original passion.

“TO ME, MUSIC IS A VERY HONEST, OPEN, TRANSPARENT FORM OF HUMANITY… THE MORE YOU LISTEN TO MUSIC, THE CLOSER YOU GET TO UNDERSTANDING WHO WE ARE.”

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