It frees up your mind, makes you feel smarter and come up with ideas you didn't know you had. And see the value in other people's ideas in a way you wouldn't otherwise.
So it's wonderful that people like Charles Limb, a surgeon, have begun to study the neurology of improvisation.
Using an fMRI scanner he watched the brains of professional jazz improvisers as they improvised on a keyboard inside the MRI. He compared what their brain did like this to what their brains did when they played a learnt piece. If you're eager to see it for yourself, the TED video starts to get into the "what" of it around 8:25 minutes.
What Charles found is that there was more activity in the area known for being autobiographical and self-reflective (the medial pre-frontal cortex) At the same time there was less activity in self-monitoring area of the brain (the lateral pre-frontal cortex).
Dr Limb describes this as a "weird dissociation in your frontal lobe, so you're not inhibited, not shutting down new generative impulses".
Then looking at the interactive musical improvisation activity called trading fours: (where musicians riff off each other) he discovered that this activates the left inferior frontal gyrus (Broca's area) - which is the language and expressive communication area (even though there is no language involved).
The study has only looked at 8 subjects so far, so there is so much more to understand.
See the video here
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