Need to get creative? A type of brainwave has been linked to creativity, and the more聽synchronised these are, the higher the quality of your creative output.
Joel Lopata at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and his colleagues found this out by asking 22 pianists to listen to, play back, or improvise jazz melodies.
During these tasks, the team monitored the electrical activity in each person鈥檚 pre-frontal cortex 鈥� a region of the brain that orchestrates our thoughts and goals. When groups of neurons send signals at the same time, this creates a wave of electrical activity that can be picked up using EEG caps. Different types of waves have been associated with different mental states 鈥� delta waves are detectable during deep sleep, for instance, whereas beta waves are a sign that someone is聽analysing something critically.
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Alpha brainwaves, which have a frequency of around 7 to 14 Hertz, have previously been linked to coming up with creative ideas, such as answering questions like 鈥渘ame as many original uses for a mop鈥�. When the team聽analysed聽the brainwaves of the pianists, they found that聽these waves become more聽synchronised聽鈥� more neurons fire聽at the same time 鈥撀爓hen聽a person is being more creative. But聽they聽only saw this聽in聽those who have had formal improvisation training.
Great improvisations
Among the formally-trained improvisers, alpha waves became more聽synchronised聽when they played back music they had previously heard, and even more聽synchronised聽when they were actively being creative and improvising their own melodies.
When expert musicians聽listened to these improvisations, the ones they rated as the best melodies were found to be those linked to the highest levels of聽synchronisation聽seen during the experiment.
But no increase in alpha wave聽synchronisation聽was seen in pianists who聽had improvisation training.聽鈥淥ur results suggest that creativity can be聽characterised as a distinct mental state 鈥� one that can be nurtured through training, and that can reflect the quality of the finished product,鈥� says Lopata.
Practice makes perfect
Training may help because creative tasks can be approached in different ways. One option is to be rational and analytical about it, which is associated with an increase in beta wave activity. The other is to tap into more intuitive and flexible streams of ideas, which has been associated with alpha wave activity.
鈥淲e might interpret our findings as suggesting that the trained musicians were better at focusing their intentions internally to this more intuitive, flexible way of thinking, which led to better improvisation,鈥� says Lopata.
However, Bernhard Hommel, at Leiden University, in the Netherlands, says there probably isn鈥檛 a single creative brain state. He says creative acts consist of many different聽components, and聽engaging in one may make you poorer in another.
Boosting creativity
Even so, would boosting your alpha wave activity make yourself more musical? Researchers have tried giving electrical brain stimulation to novice jazz聽musicians, and聽found that it聽. 鈥淭his may have put them into an alpha state, where they were better able to come up with new ideas, which improved their performance,鈥� suggests Lopata, who was not involved in that experiment.
But Rachel聽Wurzman, at the University of Pennsylvania, has warned against sourcing your own DIY brain stimulation online. In an open letter published in 2016, she listed many safety issues, including the fact that enhancing some cognitive abilities may come at the cost of others.
Lopata says that an activity like free-writing, where you write a spontaneous stream of ideas, would probably help you practice getting into the聽alpha zone. His team is now looking at what teaching measures best facilitate a creative mental state in adults and children.
Read more: Creative people physically see and process the world differently
