Are we drawn to create because of a need to express our emotions? And if so, can this premise be used to develop therapies to address negative emotional states?

This was the question that inspired Malinda McPherson, a first-year Ph.D. student in the Harvard/MIT Program for Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology, to conduct a functional MR brain-scan study on the minds of jazz pianists.

With sixteen years of experience as a classical violinist, McPherson set out to investigate the link between creativity and emotions. The research, published in the January 4, 2016 issue of Scientific Reports, was funded by the Dana Foundation and the Brain-Science Institute of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
McPherson conducted her research in the lab of Dr. Charles Lamb at the Johns Hopkins Hospital department of Otolaryngology, where prior studies have suggested a link between the areas of the brain engaged in emotional expression and activation of the brain’s creativity network.

The prior data indicated that emotions influence the intensity and variance in creative states, and that improvisational creativity deactivates the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The DLPFC is associated with planning and monitoring behavior and its deactivation is identified as a neural signature of the “flow state”, which frees creative impulses.

By having 12 professional pianists — with an average of 18 years performance experience — undergo a 24-minute scan while playing a small keyboard, McPherson's study found the connections between emotions and creativity to be more nuanced than previous demonstrated.

DLPFC deactivation occurred when pianists improvised melodies aimed at conveying an emotion expressed in a positive image, which took the form of a photo of a smiling woman.

In contrast, when shown an image of the same woman in a mildly distressed state, the improvised melodies elicited were connected to activation of the brain’s reward regions, which reinforces behavior associated with pleasurable outcomes, and greater connectivity with DLPFC.

To McPherson, the study suggests that even the intention of expressing an emotion — such as sadness — can have a powerful impact on neural activity. "Sadness in music may be pleasurable because we know the sadness is coming from the art, and not real-world tragedy," McPherson told HCB News.

In terms of the value these findings may have in health care, McPherson pointed out that certain midline brain structures that are often hyperactive in depressed individuals were suppressed in those regions during happy musical improvisation. “This study does support the hypothesis that changing your emotional intention and expressing different emotions through music, changes patterns of brain activity in unique ways," she said.

Although McPherson readily acknowledges the difficulty of bringing together genuine creativity with the scientific method, she regards functional MR as an invaluable tool for studying emotional and creative states.

Going forward, she would like to expand her research to include amateur musicians, classical musicians (who don’t improvise), other emotional states – like anger or euphoria — and clinical populations, like depressed patients.

Alzheimers/Neurology Homepage