Schedule of Events | Symposia

Creative Flow as Optimized Processing: EEG evidence during jazz improvisation

Poster Session E - Monday, March 31, 2025, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

David Rosen^1,2 (drosen9@jh.edu), Yongtaek Oh¹, Christine Chesebrough¹, Fengqing (Zoe) Zhang¹, John Kounios¹; ¹Drexel University, ²Johns Hopkins University

Using a creative production task, jazz improvisation, we tested alternative hypotheses about the flow experience: (A) that it is a state of domain-specific processing optimized by experience and characterized by minimal interference from task-negative default-mode network (DMN) activity versus (B) that it recruits domain-general task-positive DMN activity supervised by the fronto-parietal control network (FPCN) to support ideation. We recorded jazz guitarists’ electroencephalograms (EEGs) while they improvised to provided chord sequences. Their flow-states were measured with the Core Flow State Scale. Flow-related neural sources were reconstructed using SPM12. Over all musicians, high-flow (relative to low-flow) improvisations were associated with transient hypofrontality. High-experience musicians’ high-flow improvisations showed reduced activity in posterior DMN nodes. Low-experience musicians showed no flow-related DMN or FPCN modulation. High-experience musicians also showed modality-specific left-hemisphere flow-related activity while low-experience musicians showed modality-specific right-hemisphere flow-related deactivations. These results are consistent with the idea that creative flow represents optimized domain-specific processing enabled by extensive practice paired with reduced cognitive control

Topic Area: OTHER