Creative flow as optimized processing: Evidence from brain oscillations during jazz improvisations by expert and non-expert musicians.

During jazz improvisation, a flow state is linked to reduced frontal brain activity (transient hypofrontality) and, in highly experienced musicians, less activity in the default-mode network's posterior nodes. Less experienced musicians show no such modulation. The findings suggest creative flow reflects optimized, domain-specific processing from extensive practice, paired with diminished cognitive control, rather than broad engagement of task-positive networks.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Using a creative production task, jazz improvisation, we tested alternative hypotheses about the flow experience: (A) that it is a state of domain-specific processing optimized by experience and characterized by minimal interference from task-negative default-mode network (DMN) activity versus (B) that it recruits domain-general task-positive DMN activity supervised by the fronto-parietal control network (FPCN) to support ideation. We recorded jazz guitarists' electroencephalograms (EEGs) while they improvised to provided chord sequences. Their flow-states were measured with the Core Flow State Scale. Flow-related neural sources were reconstructed using SPM12. Over all musicians, high-flow (relative to low-flow) improvisations were associated with transient hypofrontality. High-experience musicians' high-flow improvisations showed reduced activity in posterior DMN nodes. Low-experience musicians showed no flow-related DMN or FPCN modulation. High-experience musicians also showed modality-specific left-hemisphere flow-related activity while low-experience musicians showed modality-specific right-hemisphere flow-related deactivations. These results are consistent with the idea that creative flow represents optimized domain-specific processing enabled by extensive practice paired with reduced cognitive control.