Bengtsson Sara L, Csíkszentmihályi Mihály, Ullén Fredrik
Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2007 May;19(5):830-42. doi: 10.1162/jocn.2007.19.5.830.
Studies on simple pseudorandom motor and cognitive tasks have shown that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and rostral premotor areas are involved in free response selection. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate whether these brain regions are also involved in free generation of responses in a more complex creative behavior: musical improvisation. Eleven professional pianists participated in the study. In one condition, Improvise, the pianist improvised on the basis of a visually displayed melody. In the control condition, Reproduce, the participant reproduced his previous improvisation from memory. Participants were able to reproduce their improvisations with a high level of accuracy, and the contrast Improvise versus Reproduce was thus essentially matched in terms of motor output and sensory feedback. However, the Improvise condition required storage in memory of the improvisation. We therefore also included a condition FreeImp, where the pianist improvised but was instructed not to memorize his performance. To locate brain regions involved in musical creation, we investigated the activations in the Improvise-Reproduce contrast that were also present in FreeImp contrasted with a baseline rest condition. Activated brain regions included the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the presupplementary motor area, the rostral portion of the dorsal premotor cortex, and the left posterior part of the superior temporal gyrus. We suggest that these regions are part of a network involved in musical creation, and discuss their possible functional roles.
关于简单伪随机运动和认知任务的研究表明，背外侧前额叶皮层和嘴侧运动前区参与自由反应选择。我们使用功能磁共振成像来研究这些脑区是否也参与更复杂的创造性行为——音乐即兴创作中的反应自由生成。11名专业钢琴家参与了这项研究。在一种条件下，即“即兴创作”，钢琴家根据视觉呈现的旋律进行即兴创作。在对照条件下，即“再现”，参与者凭记忆再现他之前的即兴创作。参与者能够高度准确地再现他们的即兴创作，因此“即兴创作”与“再现”的对比在运动输出和感觉反馈方面基本匹配。然而，“即兴创作”条件需要将即兴创作存储在记忆中。因此，我们还纳入了一种“自由即兴创作”条件，即钢琴家进行即兴创作，但被指示不要记住他的演奏。为了确定参与音乐创作的脑区，我们研究了在“即兴创作 - 再现”对比中出现且在“自由即兴创作”与基线静息状态对比中也存在的激活情况。激活的脑区包括右侧背外侧前额叶皮层、辅助运动前区、背侧运动前皮层的嘴侧部分以及左侧颞上回后部。我们认为这些区域是参与音乐创作的网络的一部分，并讨论了它们可能的功能作用。
