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Yeah Per - I'm a long time lurker/occasional poster and I always find your posts incredibly interesting/helpful and informative. I sent this link through to my Keyboardist in The Soldiers Of Fortune who is also doing his PhD in Psychology - something to do with pattern recognition/memory and music. He found it very interesting and had a few comments which I've pasted below as some of you on the list may find them interesting as well: "Ah yes, I've heard about this. I haven't read the study, I'll have to find it and be more informed about exactly what was happening - lots of times media coverage of these things misses the point or gets things wrong, etc. However, it does seem more or less intuitively right to me, with some disclaimers: Firstly, improvisation isn't really as improvised as people like to believe - most improvisers have a bunch of licks they play, which they know more or less well. Often it's things they know intuitively rather than consciously, but they're there. [I have themes and things that I tend to use in Sliced Bread in particular songs - I don't have solos planned...though with the Soldiers of Fortune in improvisations and jams I really would make it up as I went along, feed off others - maybe that's something the study missed - the fact that improvisation happens in a group, and that would alter the way things work.] Secondly, the other thing is that brain imaging studies like the one I presume they used are temporally pretty poor in resolution, but spatially pretty good - it's hard to figure out at which points in the improvisation bits of the brain were being used, etc etc. e.g., you might find that someone inhibits the monitoring process at the start of a phrase, but doesn't at the end of a phrase. Tim." -----Original Message----- From: Emile Tobenfeld (a.k.a Dr. T) [mailto:emile@foryourhead.com] Sent: Tuesday, 4 March 2008 8:51 AM To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com Subject: Re: OT: Interesting research on brain activities of improvisers Thanks for the great link. At 12:44 PM +0100 3/1/08, Per Boysen wrote: >I found this rather interesting: > >Scientists funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other >Communication Disorders (NIDCD) have found that, when jazz musicians >are engaged in the highly creative and spontaneous activity known as >improvisation, a large region of the brain involved in monitoring one's >performance is shut down, while a small region involved in organizing >self-initiated thoughts and behaviors is highly activated. > > >Link to read more: ><http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/02/29/the-real-ai-jazz-factor-think >-different/>http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/02/29/the-real-ai-jazz-f >actor-think-different/ > >I've always also filed meditation into the same type of brain >activities. Particularly disciplines where you practice to stay relaxed >and focused at the same time - without falling asleep, lose >concentration or wander astray along associational thoughts. But this >article doesn't mention meditation. > >-- >Greetings from Sweden > >Per Boysen ><http://www.boysen.se>www.boysen.se (Swedish) ><http://www.looproom.com>www.looproom.com (international) -- "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." F. Scott Fitzgerald Emile Tobenfeld, Ph. D. Video Producer and Digital Photographer Image Processing Specialist Video for your HEAD! Boris FX http://www.foryourhead.com http://www.borisfx.com My photography can be viewed at http://www.flickr.com/photos/22231918@N06/collections/72157603627170351/ ************** IMPORTANT MESSAGE ***************************** This e-mail message is intended only for the addressee(s) and contains information which may be confidential. If you are not the intended recipient please advise the sender by return email, do not use or disclose the contents, and delete the message and any attachments from your system. Unless specifically indicated, this email does not constitute formal advice or commitment by the sender or the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ABN 48 123 123 124) or its subsidiaries. We can be contacted through our web site: commbank.com.au. If you no longer wish to receive commercial electronic messages from us, please reply to this e-mail by typing Unsubscribe in the subject line. **************************************************************