NEUROCREATIVITY
What will neuroscience tells us about the genesis of great science, art, music and literature?
Creativity is rarely the flash and flow of spontaneous inspiration - but usually emerges from crucial knowledge, wealth of personal experience, critical understanding and hard labour (1). Take for example, Heinz Holliger (81y), the premier oboist of his generation and a highly respected creative avant garde composer of international repute (2). Compare his rendition of his own composition ‘Capriccio for Oboe’ (3) with that of an extremely talented much younger oboist, Yechang Jung (3) playing a similar piece by Holliger. The quality of the two performances is tangible - one is a dazzlingly display of dynamic virtuosity (both technical and emotional), the other more synthetic and impersonal.
Using contemporary techniques that show complex human brain activity in real-time, advances have been made towards understanding the functional neural architecture of the musical mind (4). But what would such studies report about these two individualistic performances? How would profound and subtle intersubject differences, such as nuances of musical expression - phrasing, tone, tempo, dynamics, articulation, inflection, and other characteristics - reveal themselves in the dynamic functional clouds of coloured voxels generated in the brains of each performer?
Asked if he would participate in a functional brain imaging study to explore the neuroscience of his creativity and technical wizardry, Heinz Holliger graciously declined (personal communication to PLG, April 2017) - saying that he wanted ‘an element of mystery’ to remain. His keen philosophical insight echoes Heisenberg (5), Eccles (6) and d’Espagnat (7) and many others, including Wittgenstein (8) and the anonymous author of ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’ (9). All of whom agree that ‘uncertainty’, ‘veiled reality’ and ‘unknowing’ have been, are, and (similar to 'The Nature of Love') always will be an inextricable and ineffable part of our ‘human mystery’.
Creativity could even reside in the spaces between the mathematical equations – which at first glance, are devoid of print, seemingly empty and containing nothing. Creativity might also lie in the golden silence between the notes of music (10), in between the brush strokes and in the interstitial void amid the swirling kaleidoscopic vortex of coloured fMRI voxels in the brain. Since ‘nothing is ever-perfect', a complete understanding of human creativity, at the level of the individual, is possibly indeterminate, intractable - beyond the reach of human knowledge and comprehension - probably of all neuroscientific and philosophical enquiry ‘in æternum’.
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‘Der Wolhtemperiete Kortex’ (The ‘Well-Tuned’ Cortex) (11).
A lazy quantum wanders along the lane,
in search of the prefrontal cortical tissue,
since there inside J. S. Bach’s brain,
a certain molecule is at issue.
Herr Bach, composing Book 1 FUGA VIII - searches the canyons of his mind:
“Do I write D# or Eb* ...or something of their kind?”
The musical quantum speaks with boasting lust:
“You think you’re creative, in fact you must!”
Your freedom of thought does not exist,
It just me having a molecular tryst!'
The quantum wavers somewhat leisurely…
strutting through the seductive electrons indecisively!
Electron 7 is a stylish fertile wave equation,
…who gets ‘The Causal Jump’ - on this occasion.
Where upon, as if spontaneously,
Johann shouts ‘...danke Gott...’ and writes D# immediately.
* In the equal temperament system of tuning D# and Eb are enharmonic – i.e the same pitch/sound.
(1) Sawyer, R. K. ‘Explaining Creativity. The Science of Human Innovation’. OUP. (2006).
(2) Biography of Heinz Holliger: http://www.schott-music.com/shop/persons/featured/9042/
(3) Holliger: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovqT3TnoFds (accessed 15/7/13)*
Jung: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewpT6Xpf2hM (accessed 15/7/13)*
(4) Oechslin, M. S. et al. Cereb Cortex [Epub ahead of print] (2012).
(5) Heisenberg, W. Z. Phys. 43: 172–198. (1927).
(6) Eccles, J.C. ‘The Human Mystery’. Springer Verlag, Berlin. (1984).
(7) d’Espagnat, B. ‘Veiled Reality: An Analysis of Present-Day Quantum Mechanical
Concepts’ Westview Press Inc. USA. (2003).
(8) Wittgenstein, L.‘Über Gewissheit’ Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and George Henrik von Wright. Longman
Press. (1974).
(9) Anon. ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’ 14th century text. Penguin Books Aylesbury, UK. (1977).
(10) Gann, K. ‘No such thing as silence: John Cage’s 4’ 33’’ ’. Yale University. (2010).
(11) Bach, J.S (1722) ‘Das Wohltemperierte Klavier‘ Bk 1. ‘Prelude and Fugue N0. VIII. Edition Peters, Leipzig.
[NB. ‘The Well-Tempered Klavier’ is regarded as among the most influential works in the history of Western music.]
(12) Note: D# = Eb. The same musical pitch but completely different symbolic representations.
(13) Gabbott, P.L. ‘Opening poem to Caravaggio’. PhD Thesis (1985). The Open University, Milton Keynes. MK
(modified from original).
