A new research has claimed that playing jazz music improves creativity.
In famous jazz trumpeter Miles Davis’ words: “I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.” For neuroscientist Dr. Charles Limb, jazz is pure creativity in action.
“When you hear great jazz, like John Coltrane or Miles Davis, it has this jaw-dropping quality to it, and what’s been described as ‘a sound of surprise’ takes place,” Limb said.
“And you think to yourself, ‘Wow, that’s not just phenomenal music, that’s phenomenal neurobiology.’
“I had always intuitively understood that the creative process in jazz improvisation is very different than the process of memorization,” he explained.
“That is immediately apparent when you play.”
Conducting the result himself, Limb asked jazz musicians to play a memorized song. During this time while their brains were scanned inside a functional MRI and then to have them riff a bit during the scan to compare the differences. The result showed link between jazz music and creativity.