Musical creativity and the motor system

The Epistemic Limits of Impactful Dreams: Metacognition, Metaphoricity, and Sublime Feeling

Taxonomic studies of dreams that continue to influence the dreamer's thoughts and feelings after awakening have distinguished three types of impactful dreams: nightmares, existential dreams, and transcendent dreams. Of these, existential dreams and transcendent dreams are characterized by recurrent metacognitive appraisal of the epistemic tension between complementary (a) metaphoric (A "is" B) assertions and (b) literal (A "is not" B) assertions. Metacognitive appraisal of such complementary metaphoric and literal assertions is detectable as the felt sense of inexpressible realizations. The poesy of such inexpressible realizations depends upon the juxtaposition of a metaphoric topic and vehicle that are both "semantically dense" but at an abstract level "distant" from each other. The result is "emergence" of attributes of the metaphoric vehicle that are sufficiently abstract to be attributes also of the metaphoric topic. The cumulative effect of successive metaphoric/literal categorical transformations produces a higher-level form of metacognition that is consistent with a neo-Kantian account of sublime feeling. Sublime feeling occurs as either sublime disquietude (existential dreams) or as sublime enthrallment (transcendent dreams). The aftereffects of these two dream types are thematically iterative "living metaphors" that have abstract (but not "totalizing") ontological import.

The "thinking system" in a new school concept: A rhythmic teaching approach in physical education to develop creativity

System Thinking is an actual construct supported by several scientific evidence that offer a perspective on how phenomena relate. Rhythm methodology, teaching-learning, and enjoyment in physical education are the main system elements we hypothesize interacting closely to determine direct or mediated effects on motor creativity and rhythmic perceptive capacity. Seventy-six elementary and middle school students (8.9 ± 2.1 years) were randomly assigned to two groups: a) an intervention group that received a physical education lesson based on rhythmic methodology and b) a control group that received conventional lessons without specific rhythmic interventions. Participants were engaged in eight physical education lessons lasting one hour each for eight weeks. Tests and questionnaires were administered before and after the intervention to evaluate motor creativity, rhythmic perception capacity, self-perception and enjoyment. Two lessons were randomly analyzed to identify the teaching style and motor content (moderate and vigorous activity). The main results revealed direct effects on the intervention group's motor creativity (p = 0.001) and its rhythmic perception capacity (p = 0.02). Furthermore, enjoyment mediated the effects of the intervention on motor creativity (p = 0.01). Finally, the results have shown that self-perception does not mediate the effect of rhythmic intervention group on motor creativity and rhythmic perceptive capacity (p > 0.05). A rhythmic methodology proposed by specific multi-teaching styles can involve children and young people in an enjoyable activity with more moderate to vigorous physical activity.

An fMRI-study of leading and following using rhythmic tapping

Leading and following is about synchronizing and joining actions in accordance with the differences that the leader and follower roles provide. The neural reactivity representing these roles was measured in an explorative fMRI-study, where two persons lead and followed each other in finger tapping using simple, individual, pre-learnt rhythms. All participants acted both as leader and follower. Neural reactivity for both lead and follow related to social awareness and adaptation distributed over the lateral STG, STS and TPJ. Reactivity for follow contrasted with lead mostly reflected sensorimotor and rhythmic processing in cerebellum IV, V, somatosensory cortex and SMA. During leading, as opposed to following, neural reactivity was observed in the insula and bilaterally in the superior temporal gyrus, pointing toward empathy, sharing of feelings, temporal coding and social engagement. Areas for continuous adaptation, in the posterior cerebellum and Rolandic operculum, were activated during both leading and following. This study indicated mutual adaptation of leader and follower during tapping and that the roles gave rise to largely similar neuronal reactivity. The differences between the roles indicated that leading was more socially focused and following had more motoric- and temporally related neural reactivity.

Effects of Musical Classes on Motor Creativity According to Age, Sex, and Weight Status in Young Students: A Music-Oriented versus Conventional Education Plan

Motor creativity can be influenced by the specificity of the school-class environments (music-based education plans) and individual characteristics. This study aimed to investigate the effects of music oriented and conventional education plans on rhythmic perceptive capacity, motor creativity, and skill- and health-related fitness components in young students according to age, sex, and weight status. One hundred sixty-three young Italian students from elementary (second and fourth grade) and middle school (sixth and eighth grade) were enrolled in the study according to their education plan (music oriented or conventional). All participants were tested for rhythmic perceptive capacity (Stambak's test), motor creativity (Divergent Movement Ability test), skill-related (Körperkoordinationstest Für Kinder), and health-related (Multistage Fitness test) components. Individuals were also considered according to age (elementary and middle school), sex, and weight status. Significant age × education plan and sex × education plan interactions (p < 0.01) were found in motor creativity (locomotor and stability skills) and motor competence (balance and jumping-like activities). No significant weight status × education plan interaction was found. The predominant role of music in the music-oriented education plan appeared to foster the ability to enhance motor creativity in elementary and middle school students compared to the conventional plan. Moreover, music-oriented experience also seems relevant for expressing and exhibiting motor competence (i.e., balance) in relation to sex.

Modifying Sensory Afferences on Tablet Changes Originality in Drawings

According to some recent empirical studies revealing that creativity is linked to sensorimotor components, the current research was aimed at evaluating whether sensory afferences could modulate originality in drawing of children and adolescents. Sixty-nine children from 1st, 3rd, 6th, and 8th grades were required to produce a man who exists and a man who doesn’t exist with fingers or stylus on a tablet and with a pen on paper. Drawings were assessed with an originality scale comparing original drawings to unoriginal ones. Since, in comparison to drawings made on paper with a pen, drawing with fingers enhances proprioceptive information, this condition was expected, according to cognitive load theory, to favor originality in drawing by reducing cognitive resources devoted to motor control of the graphic gesture (lowering intrinsic load). On the contrary, since the use of a stylus involves a proprioceptive loss of information, which enhances intrinsic load by increasing cognitive resources devoted to motor control, it was expected that drawing with a stylus on the tablet would lead to the least original drawings. Results only partially confirmed these hypotheses. While the use of fingers on the tablet led to the highest original scores, using a stylus on the tablet did not impair originality in drawing of children and adolescents. On the opposite, the use of a stylus led 3rd–8th graders to perform better than with pen on paper. This modulation of the tool on originality does not confirm the hypotheses formulated in accordance with the cognitive load framework. However, it could be explained according to an embodied perspective of creativity considering the creative process as relying on a sensorimotor prediction process in which sensory afferences are central to generating and evaluate creative ideas. This research opens new avenues on creativity and proposes to consider the development of predictive motor control as a significant part of creativity development.

Spatiospectral brain networks reflective of improvisational experience

Musical improvisers are trained to categorize certain musical structures into functional classes, which is thought to facilitate improvisation. Using a novel auditory oddball paradigm (Goldman et al., 2020) which enables us to disassociate a deviant (i.e. musical chord inversion) from a consistent functional class, we recorded scalp EEG from a group of musicians who spanned a range of improvisational and classically trained experience. Using a spatiospectral based inter and intra network connectivity analysis, we found that improvisers showed a variety of differences in connectivity within and between large-scale cortical networks compared to classically trained musicians, as a function of deviant type. Inter-network connectivity in the alpha band, for a time window leading up to the behavioural response, was strongly linked to improvisation experience, with the default mode network acting as a hub. Spatiospectral networks post response were substantially different between improvisers and classically trained musicians, with greater inter-network connectivity (specific to the alpha and beta bands) seen in improvisers whereas those with more classical training had largely reduced inter-network activity (mostly in the gamma band). More generally, we interpret our findings in the context of network-level correlates of expectation violation as a function of subject expertise, and we discuss how these may generalize to other and more ecologically valid scenarios.

Beta and Theta Oscillations Correlate With Subjective Time During Musical Improvisation in Ecological and Controlled Settings: A Single Subject Study

In this paper, we describe the results of a single subject study attempting at a better understanding of the subjective mental state during musical improvisation. In a first experiment, we setup an ecological paradigm measuring EEG on a musician in free improvised concerts with an audience, followed by retrospective rating of the mental state of the improviser. We introduce Subjective Temporal Resolution (STR), a retrospective rating assessing the instantaneous quantization of subjective timing of the improviser. We identified high and low STR states using Hidden Markov Models in two performances, and were able to decode those states using supervised learning on instantaneous EEG power spectrum, showing increases in theta and alpha power with high STR values. In a second experiment, we found an increase of theta and beta power when experimentally manipulating STR in a musical improvisation imagery experiment. These results are interpreted with respect to previous research on flow state in creativity, as well as with the temporal processing literature. We suggest that a component of the subjective state of musical improvisation may be reflected in an underlying mechanism related to the subjective quantization of time. We also demonstrate the feasibility of single case studies of musical improvisation using brain activity measurements and retrospective reports, by obtaining consistent results across multiple sessions.