What is the experience of improvisation and what are its neurobiological correlates? One way to flesh out an answer, or at least to get the lay of the land, so to speak, is to look at how improvisation compares with other kinds of brain states and states of experience that have been explored with science, such as dreaming and psychedelics. That’s what we’re embarking upon here. In this video, you are going to discover that there are some quite interesting relationships between what’s happening in the brain during improvisation and what happens to the brain under the influence of dreaming and classical psychedelics.
References:
Rinpoche, Tenzin Wangyal. Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep, The (p. 9). Shambhala. Kindle Edition.
Seth, A. (2021). Being you: A new science of consciousness. Penguin.
Ramachandran, V. S., & Rogers-Ramachandran, D. (2000). Phantom limbs and neural plasticity. Archives of neurology, 57(3), 317-320.
Braun, A. R., Balkin, T. J., Wesenten, N. J., Carson, R. E., Varga, M., Baldwin, P., … & Herscovitch, P. (1997). Regional cerebral blood flow throughout the sleep-wake cycle. An H2 (15) O PET study. Brain: a journal of neurology, 120(7), 1173-1197.
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Carhart-Harris, R. L., Leech, R., Hellyer, P. J., Shanahan, M., Feilding, A., Tagliazucchi, E., … & Nutt, D. (2014). The entropic brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 20.
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Neuroscience of Improvisation video on changes in prefrontal cortex activation associated with improvisation: https://youtu.be/_lcaXsuDRIw
Tagliazucchi E., Carhart-Harris R., Leech R., Nutt D., Chialvo D.R. Enhanced repertoire of brain dynamical states during the psychedelic experience. Hum. Brain Mapp. 2014;35(11):5442–5456. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/hbm.22562]. [PMID: 24989126]. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar] [Ref list]
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Uncorrected transcript from Otter.ai:
0:00
What is the experience of improvisation and what are the neurobiological correlates? Well, one way to flesh out an answer, or at least to get a lay of the land, is to look at how improvisation compares with other kinds of brain states and states of experience that have been explored in science, such as dreaming, and psychedelics. And that’s what we’re going to embark upon at least and begin a journey into in this video, you are going to discover that there are some quite interesting relationships between what’s happening in the brain during improvisation, and what happens during dreaming and classical psychedelics.
0:59
The neuroscience of improvisation has focused on creativity to date, improvisation being this quintessential example of creative behavior. And there’s more to the story, I think. And that’s what I’m going to be going into expanding to look at the relationship between states associated with improvisation and those associated with non dual transpersonal, and other kinds of experiential states that are being explored in the context of dream research, psychedelics, and meditation. So we will of course, touch on creativity. You can’t not talk about that in the context of improvisation, but I’m looking to expand the conversation a bit with you, okay, a little background on consciousness, which will be relevant to the discussion. We do not know, as you likely are aware where consciousness comes from. However, there are some dominant perspectives and theories that that are theoretical in nature. And the one that I think is going to be most helpful for us today, is adhered to by folks like Anil, Seth and others. They refer to waking consciousness as a controlled hallucination. So everything you’re experiencing, seeing, hearing and so on is being generated by the brain that is the dominant perspective now in cognitive neuroscience. This modern neuroscience perspective echoes age old insights from the Buddhist tradition. For example, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche writes that, normally, a dream is thought to be unreal, as opposed to real quote unquote waking life. But waking life to is dreamlike, we spend most of our waking time in the dreams of the moving mind. Or more succinctly, he writes, waking life is also a dream. And based on this, all contents of consciousness are the interaction of expectations, it building upon what you know, from the past. And sensations are the five senses plus interoception, which is awareness of internal states and proprioception, which is awareness of your movement. So your waking consciousness is, according to this perspective, essentially, a hallucination that is the meeting of your expectations for the world, your predictions, and a filtering through based upon incoming sensory input. Now, of course, this changes a little bit in the context of dreaming psychedelics, and other such states. In these kinds of states, you have experiences that are flowing from predictions from emotional implicit associations with less of that filtering going on, so you’re experiencing things that don’t actually align with reality. The the fact of this hallucination is quite clear, we come face to face with this, when we look at illusions. So for example, visual illusions, there are many auditory illusions such as the missing fundamental para Dahlia, which is seeing human forms and faces and clouds and other inanimate objects, Phantom Limb experiences as discussed and researched by Ramachandran and others. So when we encounter these illusions, it brings to the fore the fact that you do not directly experience reality but you are experiencing some kind kind of creation of the mind. Okay, that’s just some background that’s going to be helpful as we move through these, these ideas here related to improvisation. Now that we have established a perspective on what consciousness is, we can explore conscious states and also neural biological correlates of consciousness that are shared between improvisation, and both dreaming and psychedelics, as discussed in a another video, which I will link to in the show notes. One of the key characteristics of the improvising brain based on neuro science research to date, is a decrease in activity in an area called dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex or the DL PFC as an acronym, this part of the brain and the prefrontal cortex is responsible for self monitoring, critical judgment, filtering of ideas and actions and so on. And it appears that this tends to decrease in activity, when someone is improvising when an expert improvise, or at least, he’s improvising relative to when they are playing pre learned material. So let me switch gears a little bit and look at parallels with other kinds of mental states. Starting with dreaming, dreaming is very interesting. And we’ve learned a lot about what it looks like in your brain when you’re when you’re dreaming. So it’s, it turns out that the brain activity patterns associated with dreaming are very similar to your waking state. So you have the activation of emotional centers and motor centers and perceptual areas. But interestingly, and related to what we just saw in the neuroscience of improvisation is that one of the characteristic changes that is indicative of a dreaming state is the decrease in activity in the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, this area that’s involved in filtering your experience and this may be an interesting correlate with improvisation. So, Kahneman, put it nicely when talking about dreaming states, when he said, There is a more fluid and flexible cognitive process during reps that is rapid eye movement, sleep compared to non rapid eye movement, sleep and waking state. So this fluid and flexible cognitive processing, at least aligns with the phenomenology that is the experience of of improvising in a satisfying way, at least, he said that dreaming involves unconscious thought in progress, in which associated mechanisms are less tightly constrained by prefrontal cortical control mechanisms, and hence are predominantly driven by underlying emotions. So again, this seems to align with what we might expect for the states associated with improvisation, this, this freedom of the emotions to express themselves. And finally, he notes that dreaming involves changes in the sense of self, leading to depersonalization, loss of self and body boundaries and non dual awareness. And I’m just going to put a flag in that we’re going to get to this in a little bit, exploring these non dual experiences in relation to improvisation. But it’s it’s interesting that we see that in the context of dreaming. So now what if we look at another brain state that is being under being investigated more and more, there’s a reemergence of interest in psychedelics, the experience and therapeutic value of psychedelics starting with Roland Griffiths and and team in the early 2000s. And now centers around the world, Imperial College London, Johns Hopkins, university, Washington, Washington, McGill University, so many around the world are exploring the states. Interestingly, psilocybin which is a classic, psychedelic it is the psychoactive compound present in psychedelic mushrooms is associated with amongst Many changes in the brain, a decrease in activity in the frontal cortex. So aligned with what we’ve been seeing or are discussing in terms of improvisation and dreaming, also disrupted oscillation patterns and network connectivity in frontal cortex. And it has been hypothesized that this change in the activity and relationship between the frontal cortex and the rest of the brain, this could potentially contribute to the reduction in reality testing, and the increase in nonlinear thinking, which is characteristic of states of mind associated with psychedelics.
10:42
So in summary, we’ve seen here some very interesting relationships between what’s happening in the brain during improvisation, and what’s happening in the brain during dreaming and classical psychedelics. In particular, we focused on this change in what’s happening in prefrontal cortical areas, either a reduction or a disruption of activity and prefrontal cortex in relation to other areas of the brain. Researchers hypothesize that this change in activity pattern in the prefrontal cortex may account for the phenomenological changes that occurred during dreaming and under the influence of psychedelics, such as a decrease in reality testing, and also freedom of emotional associations. The expression of these these kinds of experiences certainly are associated with improvisation as well. So it makes sense that we’d see this relationship going forward, we are going to explore further what’s happening in the brain during improvisation in relation to these other kinds of experiences, dreaming and psychedelics, and also look at relationships in terms of the phenomenology the experience of the states. How does the experience of improvisation overlap in interesting ways with what’s happening during dreaming psychedelics, meditation and other states of mind and being
THE NEUROSCIENCE OF IMPROVISATION 