You may remember moments when you were in flow state, or being "in the zone," when you get involved in a task or are working on something creative. This research study from Drexel University is studying how flow state works in the brain. They focus on flow state with musicians, but engaging in art can rely on the flow state as well. Flow state is also what can work very well in art therapy for deeper processing.
What has your experience been with the flow state?
https://neurosciencenews.com/creativity-zone-neuroscience-25697/
Unlocking Creative Flow:
How the Brain Enters the Zone
·March 4, 2024
Summary: A new study unveils how the brain
enters the creative flow state, famously known as being “in the zone.” By
analyzing jazz improvisations through EEGs, the research confirms that creative
flow combines extensive experience with a conscious release of control,
allowing for automatic idea generation.
This “expertise-plus-release” model suggests that deep
creative flow is more accessible to those with significant experience and the
ability to let go. The findings offer a new understanding of flow, challenging
previous theories and opening avenues for enhancing creativity through practice
and relinquishment of control.
Key Facts:
- The
study supports the “expertise-plus-release” theory of creative flow,
indicating that expertise and the ability to release control are essential
for achieving deep creative states.
- High-flow
states are associated with increased activity in the brain’s auditory and
touch areas, and decreased activity in executive control regions,
supporting the idea of reduced conscious control during creative flow.
- Practical
implications suggest that achieving productive flow states requires
building expertise in a creative field and then training to “let go,”
enabling the brain’s specialized circuits to operate autonomously.
Source: Drexel University
Effortless, enjoyable productivity is a state of
consciousness prized and sought after by people in business, the arts,
research, education and anyone else who wants to produce a stream of creative ideas and products.
That’s the flow, or the sense of being “in the
zone.” A new neuroimaging study from Drexel
University’s Creativity Research Lab is the first to reveal how the
brain gets to the creative flow state.
The study isolated flow-related brain activity during a
creative task: jazz improvisation. The findings reveal the creative flow state
involves two key factors: extensive experience, which leads to a
network of brain areas specialized for generating the desired type of ideas,
plus the release of control – “letting go” – to allow this
network to work with little or no conscious supervision.
Led by John Kounios, PhD, professor in the College of Arts
and Sciences and Creativity Research Lab director, and David Rosen, PhD, a
recent graduate from the College and Johns Hopkins University postdoc – the
team determined their results suggest that creative flow can be achieved by
training people to release control when they have built up enough expertise in
a particular domain.
“Flow was first identified and studied by the pioneering
psychological scientist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,” said Kounios. “He defined it
as ‘a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else
seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do
it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.’”
Kounios noted that although flow has long been a topic of
public fascination as well as the focus of hundreds of behavioral research
studies, there has been no consensus about what flow is. Their new study
decided between different theories of how flow is involved when people produce
creative ideas.
Theory: Is Flow a State of Hyperfocus?
One view is that flow might be a state of highly focused
concentration or hyperfocus that shuts out extraneous thoughts and other
distractions to enable superior performance on a task.
A related theory based on recent research on the
neuroscience of creativity is that flow occurs when the brain’s “default-mode
network,” a collection of brain areas that work together when a person
daydreams or introspects, generates ideas under the supervision of the
“executive control network” in the brain’s frontal lobes, which directs the
kinds of ideas the default-mode network produces. Kounios likened it to the
analogy of a person “supervising” a TV by picking the movie it streams.
Alternative Theory: Flow is Expertise Plus Letting Go
An alternative theory of creative flow is that through years
of intense practice, the brain develops a specialized network or circuit to
automatically produce a specific type of ideas, in this case musical ones, with
little conscious effort. In this view, the executive control network relaxes
its supervision so that the musician can “let go” and allow this specialized
circuit to go on “autopilot” without interference.
The research team said the key to this notion is the idea
that people who do not have extensive experience at a task or who have
difficulty releasing control will be less likely to experience deep creative
flow.
The study’s results support the “expertise-plus-release”
view of creative flow.
The researchers tested these competing theories of creative
flow by recording high-density electroencephalograms (EEGs) from 32 jazz guitar
players, some highly experienced and others less experienced. Each musician
improvised to six jazz lead sheets (songs) with programmed drums, bass and
piano accompaniment and rated the intensity of their flow experience for each
improvisation.
The resulting 192 recorded jazz improvisations, or “takes,”
were subsequently played for four jazz experts individually so they could rate
each for creativity and other qualities. The researchers then analyzed the EEGs
to discover which brain areas were associated with high-flow takes (compared to
low-flow takes).
The high-experience musicians experienced flow more often
and more intensely than the low-experience musicians. This shows that expertise
enables flow. However, expertise is not the only factor contributing to
creative flow.
The EEGs showed that a high-flow state was associated with
increased activity in left-hemisphere auditory and touch areas that are
involved in hearing and playing music. Importantly, high flow was also
associated with decreased activity in the brain’s superior
frontal gyri, an executive control region.
This is consistent with the idea that creative flow is
associated with reduced conscious control, that is, letting go. This previously
hypothesized phenomenon has been called “transient hypofrontality.”
For the high-experience musicians, flow was associated with
greater activity in auditory and vision areas. However, they also showed reduced activity
in parts of the default-mode network, suggesting that the default-mode network
was not contributing much to flow-related idea generation in these musicians.
In contrast, the low-experience musicians showed little
flow-related brain activity.
“A practical implication of these results is that productive
flow states can be attained by practice to build up expertise in a particular
creative outlet coupled with training to withdraw conscious control when enough
expertise has been achieved,” said Kounios. “This can be the basis for new
techniques for instructing people to produce creative ideas.”
Kounios added, “If you want to be able to stream ideas
fluently, then keep working on those musical scales, physics problems or
whatever else you want to do creatively—computer coding, fiction writing—you
name it. But then, try letting go. As jazz great Charlie Parker said, ‘You’ve
got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then,
when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just
wail.’”
About this creativity and neuroscience research news:
Author: Annie Korp
Source: Drexel
University
Contact: Annie Korp – Drexel University
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Creative flow as optimized processing: Evidence from brain
oscillations during jazz improvisations by expert and non-expert musicians”
by John Kounios et all. Neuropsychologia
Abstract
Creative flow as optimized processing: Evidence from
brain oscillations during jazz improvisations by expert and non-expert
musicians
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.
