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Key points
- A new study shows brain activity differs among well-practiced and less experienced musicians.
- There needs to be more than being a well-practiced professional to achieve a flow state.
- Two critical ingredients for achieving flow are consistent practice and letting go of cognitive control.
We have frequently heard the phrase that practice makes perfect. No similar popular phrase relates to what makes us soar in creative output.
However, neuroscience has now shed light on this through evidence revealing that experience (e.g., consistent practice) and mentally letting go during an activity can free the mind to produce an uninhibited flow of innovative performance. Repeated practice and cognitive letting go are relevant for entrepreneurs, writers, educators, and social media content creators, among others, who often need to experience ongoing creative output. However, all humans likely appreciate being "in the zone."
Flow
Most people don't consider their brains' role in what they aim to innovate in their work. But psychologists who study creativity have used neuroimaging of the brain to see what the brain does when we get "in the zone" (Rosen, Oh, Chesebrough, Zhang, & Kounio, 2024), or what psychologists call flow. Flow is an intrinsically enjoyable state of being in which what one is doing is accomplished with such passion and mastery that nothing else seems to matter when engaged in it.
Rosen et al., 2024 used electroencephalographic recordings of the brain activity of low-experienced and high-experienced musicians while engaging in improvisational jazz guitar. Researchers said they chose jazz improvisation as a creative, divergent-thinking task. Although the researchers chose improvisational jazz guitar to study flow in the brain, great improvisational jazz musicians have exemplified flow when playing various instruments. For example, Charlie Parker is on the saxophone, Miles Davis is on the trumpet, John Coltrane is on the piano, and Pat Metheny is on the guitar.
Experience
The persons mentioned above are the names of experienced professional musicians. They are known to have practiced and played for hours. In their study, Rosen et al. found differences in the electrical activity of the brains of experienced guitarists compared to less experienced improvisational jazz guitarists. Their research explains how a guitarist such as Metheny represents practice to the point of creation of a specialized network of neural connections in the cortex (auditory, touch, visual).
Based on Metheny's many hours of devoted practice, these areas would be expected to display heightened functioning. However, practice is only one requirement to reach a state of flow. The other requirement is increased freedom of mind or loss of mind control.
Loss of Cognitive Control
The frontal lobe is the executive control area of the cortex. We rely on it to plan and make decisions. So, imagine the opposite effect if the superior frontal gyri were to decrease in activity. The result would be reduced cognitive control, making our minds more uninhibited to roam and creatively free to innovate. Achieving a state of decreased cognitive control requires intentionality to resist the urge to strategize, plan, and direct outcomes.
Thus, if you want to creatively flow as a writer, rapper, dancer, entrepreneur, or improvisational musician, practice often and train yourself to let go of your desire to plan and control where your words, hands, body, or mind want to flow. Evidence shows that we can turn our frontal cortex down to support this flow among people already experienced in their craft.
References
Rosen, D., Oh, Y., Chesebrough, C., Zhang, F., & Kounio, J. (2024).
Creative flow as optimized processing: Evidence from brain oscillations during jazz improvisations by expert and non-expert musicians,
Neuropsychologia, 196, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2024.108824.
